Phoenix and Ashes em-4 Read online

  But last June something different had happened.

  He'd gone off—then sent a telegram that something had happened, not to worry, and he would be back a week later than he had planned and he'd be bringing a grand surprise.

  She, more fool, hadn't thought any more of it—except, perhaps, that he was buying a new automobile. That was what he had done when he'd gotten the first one, after all, come back a week later, driving it, all bundled up in goggles and hat and driving-coat, and full of the adventure of bringing it all the way from London.

  And he came back, as she had half expected, not in the old rattle-bang auto, but in a sleek, long-bonneted thing that purred up the street.

  The problem was, he hadn't been alone.

  She had been with him. And right behind them, in their own car, They had come.

  She had come arrayed in an enormous scarlet hat with yards and yards of scarlet scarves and veils, and a startling scarlet coat of dramatic cut. Father had handed her out as if she was a queen, and as she raised a scarlet-gloved hand to remove her goggles, he had said, beaming with pride, "And here's my surprise! This is your new mother—" he hadn't said "stepmother," but Eleanor would never, ever call that horrible woman "Mother" "—Alison, this is my daughter. And look, Eleanor, here are two new sisters to keep you company! Lauralee, Carolyn, this is your sister Eleanor! I'm sure you're going to be the best of friends in no time!"

  Two elegant, languid creatures descended from the rear of the second automobile, wearing pastel blue and lavender versions of her getup, and removed their goggles to regard her with stares as blank and unreadable as the goggles had been.

  Broom had never seen anything quite like them. They looked as if they had come directly from the pages of some London quarterly. Only she smiled, a knowing little smile, a condescending smile that immediately made Eleanor aware of her untidy hair that was loosely tied with a ribbon like a child's, her very plain linen day-dress, not in vogue and not new, of her uncorseted figure, and her thick, clumsy walking shoes. The two girls raised their heads just a trifle, and gave her little patronizing smirks of their own. Then all three had sailed into the house without so much as a word spoken.

  And with a shock, Eleanor had found herself sharing the house and her papa with a stepmother and two stepsisters.

  Except—from the moment they entered the door, there wasn't a great deal of "sharing" going on.

  The first sign of trouble came immediately, when the girls inspected the house and the elder, Lauralee, claimed the second-best bedroom—Eleanor's room—as her own. And before Eleanor could protest, she found herself and her things bundled up the stairs to an untenanted attic room that had been used until that moment as a lumber room, with the excuse, "Well, you'll be at Oxford in the autumn, and you won't need such a big room, now, will you?" Followed by a whispered "Don't be ungracious, Eleanor—jealousy is a very ugly thing!" and a frown on her papa's face that shocked her into silence.

  The thing that still baffled her was the speed with which it had all happened. There'd been not a hint of any such thing as a romance, much less a marriage, ever! Papa had always said that after Mama, no woman could ever claim his heart—he'd gone a dozen times to Stoke-on-Trent before, and he'd never said a word about anything but the factory, and she thought that surely she would have noticed something about a woman before this.

  Especially a woman like this one.

  Oh, she was beautiful, no question about that: lean and elegant as a greyhound, sleek dark hair, a red-lipped face to rival anything Eleanor had seen in the newspapers and magazines, and the grace of a cat. The daughters, Lauralee and Carolyn, were like her in every regard, lacking only the depth of experience in Alison's eyes and her ability to keep their facade of graciousness intact in private.

  Eleanor only noticed that later. At first, they were all bright smiles and simpers.

  Alison and her daughters turned the house upside down within a week. They wore gowns—no simple "dresses" for them—like nothing anyone in Broom had seen, except in glimpses of the country weekends held up at Longacre. They changed two and three times a day, for no other occasion than a meal or a walk. They made incessant demands on the maids that those poor country-bred girls didn't understand, and had them in tears at least once a day. They made equally incredible demands on Cook, who threw up her hands and gave notice after being ordered to produce a dinner full of things she couldn't even pronounce, much less make. A new cook, one Mrs. Bennet, and maids, including a lady's maid just for Alison called Howse, came from London, at length, brought in a charabanc with all their boxes and trunks. Money poured out of the house and returned in the form of tea-gowns from London and enormous hats with elegantly scrolled names on the boxes, delicate shoes from Italy, and gloves from France.

  And amid all of this upheaval and confusion, Papa beamed and beamed on "his elegant fillies" and seemed to have forgotten Eleanor even existed. There were no tea-gowns from London for Eleanor. . . .

  Not that she made any great show against them. She looked like a maid herself, in her plain dresses and sensible walking shoes. They didn't have to bully her, not then, when they could simply overawe her and bewilder her and drown her out with their incessant chattering and tinkling laughter. And when she tried to get Papa alone to voice a timid protest, he would just pat her cheek, ask if she wasn't being a jealous little wench, and advise her that she would get on better if she was more like them!

  She might have been able to rally herself after the first shock— might have been able to fight back. Except that all those far-off things in the newspapers about assassinations and Balkan uprisings that could never possibly have anything to do with the British Empire and England and Broom—suddenly did.

  In August, the world suddenly went mad. In some incomprehensible way, Austria declared war on Serbia, and Prussia joined in, and so did Germany, which apparently declared war on everybody. There were Austrian and Prussian and German troops overrunning France and England was at war too, rushing to send men to stop the flood. And though among the country-folk in Broom there was a certain level of skepticism about all this "foreign nonsense," according to the papers, there was a sudden patriotic rush of volunteers signing up to go to France to fight.

  And Papa, who was certainly old enough to know better, and never mind that he already had been in the army as a young man, volunteered to go with his regiment. And the next thing she knew, he was a sergeant again, and was gone.

  Somehow Oxford never materialized. "Your dear father didn't make any arrangements, child," Stepmother said, sounding surprised, her eyes glittering. "But never mind! This will all be over by Christmas, and surely you would rather be here to greet him when he comes home, wouldn't you? You can go to Oxford in the Hilary term."

  But it wasn't over by Christmas, and somehow Papa didn't manage to make arrangements for the Hilary term, either. And now here she was, feeling and being treated as a stranger, an interloper in her own house, subtly bullied by glamour and not understanding how it had happened, sent around on errands like a servant, scarcely an hour she could call her own, and at the end of the day, retreating to this cold, cheerless closet that scarcely had room for her bed and her wardrobe and desk. And Papa never wrote, and every day the papers were full of horrible things covered over with patriotic bombast, and everything was wrong with the world and she couldn't see an end to it.

  Two more tears burned their way down her cheeks. Her head pounded, she felt ill and feverish, she was exhausted, but somehow too tired to sleep.

  Today had been the day of the Red Cross bazaar and tea dance. Organized by Stepmother, of course—"You have such a genius for such things, Alison!"—at the behest of the Colonel's wife. Though what that meant was that Eleanor and the maids got the dubious privilege of doing all of the actual work while Stepmother and "her girls" stood about in their pretty tea-gowns and accepted congratulations. Eleanor had been on her feet from dawn until well past teatime, serving cup after cup of tea, tending any booth w
hose owner decided she required a rest, watching with raw envy as her stepsisters and other girls her age flirted with the handsome young officers as they danced to the band Stepmother had hired for the occasion. Dances she didn't know— dances to jaunty melodies that caused raised, but indulgent eyebrows among the village ladies. "Ragtime"—that's what they called it, and perhaps it was more than a little "fast," but this was wartime, and beneath the frenetic music was an unspoken undercurrent that some of these handsome young men wouldn't be coming back, so let them have their fun. . . .

  Eleanor had cherished some small hope that at last someone who knew her would see what Alison was doing and the tide of public opinion would rise up to save her. Alison, after all, was the interloper here, and with her ostentatious ways and extravagance, she had surely been providing more than a little fodder for the village cats. But just when she was handing the vicar's wife, Theresa Hinshaw, a cup of tea, the woman abruptly shook her head a little, and finally looked at her, and frowned, and started to say something in a concerned tone of voice, out of the corner of her eye she saw Alison raise her head like a ferret sniffing a mouse on the wind, and suddenly there she was at the woman's elbow.

  "Mrs. Hinshaw, how are you?" she purred, and steered Eleanor's hope away into a little knot of other women.

  "I was wondering why we haven't seen Eleanor about," the vicar's wife began.

  "Yes, she used to run wild all about the village, didn't she, poor thing," replied Alison, in a sweetly reasonable tone of voice. "A firm hand was certainly wanted there, to be sure. You'd never guess to look at them both that she's the same age as my Carolyn, would you?"

  Eleanor saw Mrs. Hinshaw make a startled glance from the elegant Carolyn, revolving in the arms of a young subaltern, to Eleanor in her plain frock and apron and ribbon-tied hair, and with a sinking heart, saw herself come off second best.

  "No, indeed," murmured Mrs. Sutherland, the doctor's wife.

  Alison sighed heavily. "One does one's poor best at establishing discipline, but no child is going to care for a tight rein when she's been accustomed to no curb at all. Keep her busy, seems to be the best answer. And of course, with dear Charles gone—"

  The vicar's wife cast a look with more sympathy in it at Eleanor, but her attention was swiftly recaptured by Lauralee, who simpered, "And poor Mama, not even a proper honeymoon!" which remark utterly turned the tide in Alison's favor.

  From there it was all downhill, with little hints about Eleanor's supposed "jealousy" and "sullenness" and refusal to "act her age"—all uttered in a tone of weary bravery with soft sighs.

  By the time Alison was finished, there wasn't a woman there who would have read her exhaustion and despair as anything other than sulks and pouting.

  The music jangled in her ears and made her head ache, and by the time the car came for Alison and her daughters ("Dear little Eleanor, so practical to wear things that won't be hurt by a little wet!") and Eleanor was finished with the cleaning up and could trudge home again, she felt utterly beaten down. Her aching legs and feet were an agony by the time she reached an unwelcoming home and unfriendly servants. Alison and the girls held high celebration in the parlor, their shrill laughter ringing through the house as they made fun of the very people they had just been socializing with.

  She got plain bread-and-butter and cooling tea for supper in the kitchen—not even a single bite of the dainty sandwiches that she had served the ladies had she eaten, and of the glorious high tea that the cook had prepared for Alison and her daughters there was not a scrap to be seen. And by the time she went up all those stairs to her freezing-cold room, she'd had no strength for anything except hopeless weeping.

  What does she want from me? The question echoed dully in Eleanor's mind, and there seemed no logical answer. She had no doubt that Alison had married Papa for the money—for her all her airs at the tea, there was nothing in the way that Alison behaved in private that made Eleanor think that her stepmother found Papa's absence anything other than a relief. But why did she seem to take such pleasure in tormenting Eleanor?

  There didn't seem to be an answer.

  Unless she was hoping that Eleanor would be driven to run away from home.

  Oh, I would, but how far would I get? If that was what Alison was hoping, the very nature of this area—and, ironically, the very picture that Alison had painted of her stepdaughter today!—would conspire to thwart her. Eleanor wouldn't get more than a mile before someone would recognize her, and after that carefully constructed fiction of a sullen and rebellious child that Alison had created, that same someone would assume she was running away and make sure she was caught and brought back!

  And if Alison had wanted to be rid of her by sending her away, surely she would have done so by now.

  She'll never let me go, she thought bitterly. Not when she can make up lies about me to get more sympathy. And who believes in wicked stepmothers, anyway?

  She must have dozed off a little, because the faint, far-off sound of the door knocker made her start. At the sound of voices below, she glanced out the window to see the automobile belonging to Alison's solicitor, Warrick Locke, standing at the gate, gleaming wetly in the lamplight. He looked like something out of a Dickens novel, all wire-rimmed glasses, sleek black suits and sleek black hair and too-knowing face.

  Oh. Him again. He seemed to call at least once a week since Papa had gone. Not that she cared why he came. It was odd for him to come so late, but not unheard-of.

  Someone uttered an exclamation of anger. It sounded like Alison. Eleanor leaned her forehead against the cold glass again; she felt feverish now, and the glass felt good against her aching head. And anyway, the window-seat was more comfortable than the lumpy mattress of her bed.

  Her door was thrust open and banged into the foot of the bed. She jerked herself up, and stared at the door.

  Lauralee stood in the doorway with the light behind her. "Mother wants you, Eleanor," she said in an expressionless voice. "Now."

  Eleanor cringed, trying to think of what she could have done wrong. "I was just going to bed—" she began.

  "Now," Lauralee repeated, this time with force. And then she did something she had never done before. She took two steps into the room, seized Eleanor's wrist, and dragged her to her feet. Then, without another word, she continued to pull Eleanor out the door, down the hall, and down the narrow servants' stair.

  The stair came out in the kitchen, which at this hour was empty of servants—but not of people. Alison was there, and Carolyn, and Warrick Locke. The only light in the kitchen was from the fire on the hearth, and in it, the solicitor looked positively satanic. His dark eyes glittered, cold and hard behind the lenses of his spectacles; his dark hair was slicked back, showing the pointed widow's peak in the center of his forehead, and his long thin face with its high cheekbones betrayed no more emotion than Lauralee's or Carolyn's. He regarded Eleanor as he might have looked at a black beetle he was about to step on.

  But Alison gave her a look full of such hatred that Eleanor quailed before it. "I—" she faltered.

  Alison thrust a piece of yellow paper at her. She took it dumbly. She read the words, but they didn't seem to make any sense. Regret to inform you, Sergeant Charles Robinson perished of wounds received in combat—

  Papa? What was this about Papa? But he was safe, in Headquarters, tending paperwork—

  She shook her head violently, half in denial, half in bewilderment. "Papa—" she began.

  But Alison had already turned her attention away towards her solicitor. "I still say—"

  But Locke shook his head. "She's protected," he said. "You can't make her deathly ill—you've tried today, haven't you? And as I warned you, she's got nothing worse than a bit of a headache. That proves that you can't touch her directly with magic, and if she had an—accident— so soon, there would be talk. It isn't the sort of thing that could be covered up."

  "But I can bind her; when I am finished she will never be able to leave the house and
grounds," Alison snarled, her beautiful face contorted with rage, and before Eleanor could make any sense of the words, "you can't touch her directly with magic" her stepmother had crossed the room and grabbed her by one wrist. "Hold her!" she barked, and in an instant, the solicitor was beside her, pinioning Eleanor's arms.

  Eleanor screamed.

  That is, she opened her mouth to scream, but quick as a ferret, and with an expression of great glee on her face, Carolyn darted across the room to stuff a rag in Eleanor's open mouth and bind it in place with another.

  Terror flooded through her, and she struggled against Locke's grip, as he pulled her over to the hearth, then kicked her feet out from underneath her so that she fell to the floor beside the fire.