Phoenix and Ashes

Just for the sake of verisimilitude, Locke had a stack of papers on the table. The fact that none of those papers concerned her was something no one else would ever find out. Some of them, however, concerned Eleanor, who was the central topic of their conversation. Eleanor was a loose end that Alison very much wanted tidied up before there was a wedding in the offing. It would be harder to dispose of her quietly when one was connected to the Fenyxes of Longacre Park.

But Locke still had no better plan than the old one, even though he'd had weeks to think of alternatives. Alison was extremely disappointed in him; normally he was full of ideas, but he seemed terribly fixated on this one. Perhaps it was because of his own personal obsessions, but if that was indeed the case, the sooner he got them under control, the better.

"I tell you, Warrick, no matter how much you like your plan to break that wretched girl's mind, it is too complicated," Alison objected. "What's more, it relies too much on that man of yours, as well as bringing in possible confederates. I know you trust him, but every time you add a person to a plan you double the chances of something being said or done at the wrong time and either ruining the whole thing or giving the plan away. Or worse still, you've added the danger of having your confederate decide to betray you."

Warrick Locke frowned. "Robbie has been working with me for a very long time now. Frankly, if you are concerned about him doing something other than what he has been ordered to do, I can tell you that in all the time that I have known him, he has never once had an original idea for himself."

"It's too complicated a plan," Alison countered, throttling down her rising irritation with him. "There are too many things that can go wrong, including that the wretched child just might be tougher-minded than you think. The closer I come to reaching my goals, the less I like complicated plans. I find that the more I have to lose, the less inclined I am to take chances on something that might work. And the whole house of cards you wish to construct has far too many points of possible failure for my comfort."

"It's the only idea that has any chance at all of giving you the results you want," he replied, with ill grace. "If she dies, you lose, because the inheritance goes to the cousin. If she disappears, you lose, because until she's proven dead, you can't touch her money and when she's proven dead, the inheritance goes to the cousin. If she stays sane, and attains her majority, you lose, because sooner or later the trustees are going to want to see her to turn her fortune over to her and then there's no telling what will happen. If you injure her physically to the point that she can't care for herself, you still lose, because doctors will be involved, and someone will find out that you've been making a slave of her and making free with her inheritance. The only way you win is if you keep her alive and drive her so completely mad that she withdraws into herself and never comes out again. That means breaking her will, her spirit, and her mind, and there's only one way that I know for certain to do that. After all, it's not as if you can drop her down a hole and be done with her."

"Wait a moment—" she said, with a sudden surge of interest and a jolt of euphoria as his words caused an interesting image to flash across her mind. She caught and held that image; quickly extrapolated something from it, and then, smiled, slowly. "You just might have something, Warrick. You might just have solved the conundrum."

"Pardon?" He blinked at her, caught off-guard by her words.

"You said something very interesting. You said that I couldn't just drop her down a hole and be done with it." Her smile broadened. "But that just might be exactly what we want to do with her. There's more than one way to get the results we want from her."

Now he was completely confused, that much was very plain. "I thought the best plan was to break her mind."

"Be patient with me. What was the first spell I put on her? To bind her to the hearth. Correct?" She nodded as he frowned. "So this has kept her confined to the house and grounds. She can't go off on her own; that binding was intended to keep her from looking for help. But that same binding spell may serve us in another way. If she were to be taken away from the hearth, carried off somewhere, she would have to try and make her way back, no matter what obstacles were in her path. Or—? Do you remember how I constructed the bindings? Because I certainly do."