Phoenix and Ashes

Unless—Eleanor?

When he spoke his thoughts aloud, incredulously, Lady Virginia only shrugged, as she extended her toes towards the library fire. 'Magicians are always more vulnerable to magic than other folk,' she pointed out. 'If the girl is an Elemental Mage, then her stepmother would have an easier time of it in trying to control her. The hardest creature to affect by magic is someone who has none of it at all.'

He fidgeted with the cane he had taken from the stand near the door, and longed to be able to pace as he used to at times like these. To think of poor Eleanor, down there, in that repellent woman's hands—

She looked at him sharply. 'Reginald,' she said, very slowly, 'Are you in love with this girl?'

He would have thought it was obvious to a far less astute person than his godmother, but he replied, 'Yes. Yes, I am.'

'Your mother won't like it,' Lady Virginia cautioned. 'She's common.'

'So are the Americans that keep marrying into the peerage,' he snapped, feeling an entirely irrational surge of irritation. 'And so are the other two girls, and Mater would have no trouble at all throwing me to one of them!'

'Ah, but the Americans have fortunes—large fortunes,' his godmother retorted. 'Even if the girl inherited, and there's no guarantee of that, she's prosperous, but no heiress. And Alison Robinson is in Burke's, so presumably so are her daughters.'

'Is she?' he replied. 'Someone with the name she's claiming is, but anyone can claim to be a member of a family one is never going to encounter. And I didn't find any mention of Carolyn, Lauralee, or either of Alison's marriages in Burke's, if she is who she claims to be.'

'She was vetted by Alderscroft—' Lady Virginia began, and before she could continue, her jaw tightened. 'Alderscroft, who would swear his second-best hunter was a member of the peerage if he thought it would serve the cause. I begin to smell a rat, Reginald. Alderscroft may have used her before, and certainly knows she lives in Broom, so he might have told her to keep an eye on you, without bothering to tell me about it, may I add. But it is as certain as the sun rising in the east that she decided to aggrandize herself as soon as she saw the situation. I knew there was something about that woman that I did not like.'

'I may very well discover more you won't like before I'm through,' Reggie said grimly.

'It wouldn't surprise me.' Lady Virginia reached out and took his hand. 'Please promise me that you will not go tearing down there this instant in your motor.'

'I would like to—but I feel that would be a very bad notion,' he replied with feeling. 'I will go down there tomorrow. I might actually catch the girl myself, in which case, I will bundle her up here and put her in your hands. If there are coercions on her—you can deal with them.'

'Against a creature like Alison Robinson? I should think so,' his godmother told him, in a tone that would have been arrogant in anyone but a mage of her ability. 'I'll open up your father's workroom and prepare it. Heaven knows I've used it often enough in the past. On our home ground, Reginald, it would take an army of mages to defeat us.'

'If I can't find her immediately, I'll have to try subterfuge. And fortunately, I have an excuse.' He smiled thinly. 'I have these. And I will be looking for the girl who fits them.'

He held up the pink silk gloves. Lady Virginia raised an eyebrow.

'Forgive my skepticism, Reginald, but virtually any girl whose hands aren't completely ruined could fit into a pair of silk gloves—'

'Oh, no. Not these,' he retorted, and spread out the fingers of the left-hand glove. The three fingers.

Lady Virginia blinked. 'Ah,' she said. 'Well, that puts a different complexion on things, doesn't it? Rather like Anne Boleyn's set of five.'

'Rather like.' He folded the gloves carefully and tucked them inside his tunic. 'I'd like very much to see either Carolyn or Lauralee fit that glove.'

'Hmm.' Lady Virginia stared into the fire. 'Be careful what you wish for. If the girls are like the mother, they might find a way, at whatever cost.'

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