Phoenix and Ashes

With light and music and laughter spilling out of the doors and windows above him, he returned to the garden bench to try and make some sense of what had just happened. One moment, she had been talking with him, perfectly sensibly—the next, she was fleeing as if pursued by demons. And yet, it couldn't have been what he said that sent her running away, could it?

Hadn't she managed to choke out that she loved him before she ran?

Surely her stepmother's hold over her could not control her here, in the privacy of Longacre's gardens—

Unless—

He shook his head at the thought. No, surely not. Surely it was not possible that Alison Robinson was a magician.

Was it?

He was completely unwilling to drop his barricades now. If Alison Robinson was a magician—heaven alone only knew what she had set in motion to try and ensnare him for one of her daughters. There might be a spell just waiting for a break in his defenses.

By the time he found Lady Virginia just paying her farewells to her cronies as the guests began to depart, and got her to come down into the garden with him, the traces of—yes—magic were almost too faint for her to read. All she could say for certain was that both Earth magic of the darker sort and Fire magic had left a hint of "scent" behind.

"Back inside, please," his godmother said when she'd finished. "It's altogether too damp and chilly for my bones. Let's adjourn to the library; there should still be a fire there."

Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed. He still wanted to go tearing after Eleanor, but he knew that would be the wrong thing to do. He had no plan of action, and to go into this without a plan was asking for trouble.

The Earth—well, dark magic of some sort—he had expected. But who was the Fire? The only mages here were Air—

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."