Phoenix and Ashes

He made a little sound of mingled amusement and disgust. "There is one thing that Mad Ross is right about. All this is going to change in the next few years, Eleanor, and change drastically, and most of those people back there haven't a clue. This war is putting an end to their world as they know it, though it was starting to crumble around the edges before that." He sniffed. "A bloodline isn't worth much if you can't keep the roof over your head patched. And I can name you a dozen men in my circle, men who are contemporaries of my father, who've married chorus beauties, actresses, their children's governesses—even their housekeepers! There will be more of that—and there will be women who had no men in their families survive this war, who will marry policemen, gardeners, tradesmen—or never marry or remarry at all. And as for the people my age—" he shook his head. "We've seen too much. We've learned too much, and most of it was bitter. I've been thinking about this a very great deal, ever since that big push at Ypres started." He took a very deep breath. "I came to the conclusion that if Mater was going to insist that I do my family duty, it was going to be on my terms, with a woman I could respect, with intelligence; someone who could talk with me."

Her hands were sweating. Nervously, to save her silk gloves, she pulled them off.

He recaptured her hands. "These hands, no matter what they work at, are not all of you, Eleanor—not even most of what you are. You are intelligent, kind, forgiving—I could go on for the next half hour and still not come to the end of your good points. No, perhaps you don't 'fit in' with all of that behind me. But 'all that' is going to have to change if it is going to survive at all in the coming years. I am going to have to change. I don't see any reason why that change shouldn't come in a way that accommodates you, and your own changes."

Now she was shaking. But it wasn't only because of what he was saying. No, for no reason that she could understand, Alison's coercions were lightening around her.

And so were the spells binding her to the hearth-stone.

This had come without real warning. Granted, she had spent too long searching for the Air Master, and now they were pulling on her insistently, but she couldn't understand why she hadn't had some sign before this.

She felt them, like a corset laced too tight, squeezing off breath, and making it hard to think. Soon, they would become uncomfortable.

Then painful. Then maddening—

"I won't ask you for any kind of a decision now, Eleanor," he was saying, as she felt her hands growing cold. "But I would like you to consider the possibility of seeing me as more than your friend. I would like to know that there is a chance for me in your future."

She wanted to pay attention to his words, but she couldn't. She felt the spells closing in on her. It was becoming hard to breathe; the tugging at her mind and body were growing intolerable. And she couldn't help herself. She began to shake, and she pulled her hands out of his and sprang to her feet in a single convulsive movement.

"Eleanor!" he exclaimed, as she whirled to face him, hoping he could see something of her inner struggle in her expression. "Eleanor, what's wrong? Please, I haven't offended you again—"

She shook her head, frantically, and wrapped her own hands around her throat, trying to force some last words out of it before she had to run—

But the words that came were not the ones she had expected.

"Reggie—" she heard herself gasping "—I love you!"

And then, she turned, and ran, leaving him calling after her. She couldn't even understand what he was saying at that point, the spells were tightening on her so painfully. He had no hope of catching her, lame as he was, of course. Sarah would be waiting—

—but she could not stop for Sarah.

No, she could not stop for anything.

All she could do was run, for as long as she was running in the right direction the bands of pain around her body, around her mind, would ease just enough to allow her to continue running. But if she stopped, even for a moment. . . .

She did not take the road. The road was too long. She fled headlong and heedless through the grounds, across the long, empty lawn, and into the "wilderness" which was no wilderness at all, of course, only a carefully cultivated illusion of one. She couldn't think; not clearly anyway. Only fragments of thought lanced across the all-encompassing demand of Alison's spells.

Why was this happening?

She stumbled across a bridle-path that went in the right direction, and turned down it; her rose-wreath and garland were gone, and her hair was down all one side. Her sides ached, but the coercions were not letting up. A branch tangled with her skirt and she yanked it free without missing a step.

How had the coercions suddenly snapped into place?