—when his mind healed—
But dash it all, there wasn't one of these society fillies that he could stand being in the same room with for the course of a cardparty! How was he to tolerate one day in, day out, for the rest of his life?
The mere thought took away his appetite, and he excused himself from the table, going out onto the terrace to stare unseeing down into the gardens. He had made some progress towards the goal that Lady Virginia had set for him; his shields were far more transparent now, and he had been making some small, tentative attempts at reading the currents of magic around him. As a result, he sensed it was her coming up behind him, long before she spoke.
She stood beside him, looking out onto the vista that had cost his distant ancestor a pretty penny to produce. "Sometimes I wonder if you hate me, Reggie," she said, in a voice that sounded tired.
He turned towards her with surprise. "Hate you? No! Why should I hate you?"
"Because I tell you all the uncomfortable truths you would rather not hear. It's a privilege of age. But that doesn't make it less painful to hear them, I'm sure." She made a little, annoyed sound in the back of her throat. "Not that I'm going to stop telling them to you."
"Not that I expect you to," he countered. He leaned on the marble balustrade and looked out into the garden. "Mater wants me married. She wants it with a desperation that frightens me. I don't want a wife, or a fiance, or anything like one. I won't insult you by claiming some noble motives, my lady, or pretending I want to spare some unknown girl grief when I go back to the Front; the simple fact is that I have not met one single young woman who would be 'suitable' in Mater's eyes who was not a dead bore, an empty-headed mannequin suited only for displaying expensive clothing, or—"
He almost said, "Or a hard-eyed chit who would wait just long enough for me to get onto the train to the Channel-ferry before collecting her lovers to populate my house at my expense," but decided that discretion was the better part there. Besides, Lady Virginia would want to know who he was talking about, and he didn't want to tell her.
"Or an opportunist more interested in my title and social connections than myself," he concluded, instead.
"Ah," said her ladyship, nodding wisely. "The Robinson girls."
"Among others." He laughed without humor. "They aren't the only ones by a stretch, but they are the most persistent at the moment. I think even their mother would be casting her cap at me, if she thought she could slip herself past Mater's eye."
Lady Virginia sighed. "I almost wish she would try; it might shake your mother's friendship with the creature. I know this is unreasonable of me, and I know that I should be happy for her to have a friend— but there is something about that woman and her girls that puts my back up."
Reggie knew what it was, even if Lady Virginia didn't. She would never admit it, never recognize it in herself, but Lady Virginia was a snob . . . the idea of someone whose money came from trade marrying into the aristocracy secretly outraged her. Well, it probably wouldn't outrage her if the girl was also a Master—but Mastery was another sort of aristocracy.
Or perhaps, as long as it's someone else's blue-blooded family, and not hers, nor that of her friends, it wouldn't matter so much.
It was hardly her fault; it was the way she'd been raised. And he probably would not have noticed, if it hadn't been for that stupid not-quite-quarrel he'd had with Eleanor.
He sighed. He missed those conversations. He missed her company, her wit, her intelligence, and how she was kind without making him feel as if he owed her something for her kindness. He'd been down to the meadow several times, but she'd never again appeared. Either he had offended her so much that she was shunning his company, or else his timing was so exquisitely bad that she thought he was avoiding her—and as a result she had stopped coming.
Or else, and this was the likeliest, she was kept too busy for frivolous visits in the middle of the day to the meadow. It was summer, after all, and there were probably a thousand chores she was being made to do. Oh, it made him depressed to think about it, that fine, keen mind, shackled to some sort of menial work. It was like seeing a Derby winner hitched to a plow.
If only he could do something for her without insulting her further.
If only some of those empty-headed dolls his mother kept dragging about could have a fraction of her intelligence and personality.
"There will be young women you've never even seen at this weekend, Reggie," Lady Virginia said, breaking into his melancholy thoughts. "Perhaps—"
"Or perhaps not," he said, more harshly than he had intended, and tried to soften it with a sheepish smile. "I'll keep an open mind, my lady. I won't promise more than that."
There was one saving grace in all of this. With the weekend looming up, and all of the preparations that even Lady Virginia would have to help with, she wouldn't be pressuring him so much to take up his magic quickly.
A silver lining of sons. These days, he would take whatever sliver of silver he could get.
"Exactly what sort of girl interests you, Reggie?" she asked, out of the blue. "I've never been able to make you out. I must suppose you had your little flings—"
"Quite enough, with my debts honorably discharged," he replied, flippantly. "There is one thing to be said in favor of a girl who only expects money and presents from one; you always know where you are with her, and she always has someone waiting in the wings when you tire of her."
Lady Virginia winced. "Is that the prevailing attitude now?" she asked soberly. "In my day, there was at least a pretense of romance."
"We haven't time to waste on romance, my lady," he said flatly. "Not when—"
He didn't say it, but it was there, hanging in the air between them. Not when in a week or two or three you can be just another grave in Flanders.
She brooded down on the roses. "I expect there is a great deal to be said for knowing that if the—worst—happens, your current inamorata will simply shrug and move on to another when she sees your name in the papers. But those of your generation that live through this hideousness are coming out with scars of the heart and soul as well as the body, and I do not know what that will mean in the long run."
"Neither do I," he replied truthfully. "But you asked what sort of girl I find attractive—"
Involuntarily, the image of Eleanor, independent, clever, intelligent, entirely unsuitable Eleanor, flashed through his mind.
"Someone I can talk to, about anything," he said, finally. "Someone who has the brains not only to understand what I'm talking about, but to hold up her side of the conversation. When you have the wherewithal to buy as much beauty as you want, it isn't as important. Mind, I'm not saying that I don't like a girl to be pretty, but—" He shrugged helplessly. "Never mind. It's hardly relevant."