"Surely at some point," Lady Virginia began, "you must have encountered—"
It was time to put an end to this, so he put up the one argument he knew there would be no getting around. "My lady, there's another condition, and it's one I cannot tell Mater. I watched how father struggled to keep Mater ignorant of his Elemental work, the difficulties and even heartache it caused for both of them, and I decided a long time ago that I won't marry anyone who isn't an Elemental Master in her own right. I must have someone I don't have to keep that sort of secret from, and how likely is that?"
There. That will silence her. He actually had sworn that—before the war—so he wasn't lying. Not that he ever expected to take up the wand of an Air Master again. Merely dropping some of his shields had been shudderingly difficult; he could not even think about working real magic again without bringing on an attack of panic.
Lady Virginia looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Perhaps more likely than you think."
He snorted. "They're not exactly thick on the ground," was all he said. He tried not to think of Peter Scott with raw envy. Curse the man—he had the perfect partner, a woman who was an Elemental Master, brilliant, self-sufficient, and a stunning, exotic beauty.
Not that Mater wouldn't drop dead on the spot if I brought home a half-breed Hindu.
She was the one woman he had ever met who could actually understand, really and truly, what the war did to a man, did to his soul. Maybe that was the biggest problem with the girls of his set. They didn't, and couldn't. None of them had volunteered as nurses or VAD girls in France or Belgium. None of them had the least idea of the things that lay inside his mind; none of them would ever want to know. They preferred to think of the war the way those first volunteers had, as a chance for glory, and if one must die, to die nobly. They didn't know and couldn't understand that there was nothing noble or glorious about those churned-over fields, the dead zones of mud and razor-wire. And if he tried to tell them, they would turn away in horror.
Doctor Maya knew, and didn't flinch from it. But how many like her were there?
"It has been my experience, limited though it is, that if you are really determined in that direction, the partner will find you when you are both ready," she said gravely. "But I am sure that makes me sound like some sort of mystic, so I will keep my opinions to myself. Just keep an open mind as you promised—and open eyes as well."
She retreated to the house, leaving him staring down at the garden, wondering bitterly if anyone who hadn't experienced the Front could ever understand what it did to someone inside.
We look, act, and talk like our old selves, but we've been damaged, each and every one of us, he thought. We're scarred inside. Like rosebuds with canker-worms at their hearts. We look the same, but even if we live, we'll never blossom. And there is nothing that will change that. Nothing at all.
24
July 15, 1917
Broom, Warwickshire
SUNSHINE AND FRESH AIR FLOODED the kitchen, and The Arrows was very peaceful without the Robinsons and Howse present. So peaceful, that Eleanor wondered what it would be like to live here like this forever—if somehow, the Robinsons would just never return.
"I've thought and I've reasoned, and I've looked," Sarah said aloud, startling Eleanor as she concentrated on a particularly obtuse paragraph about the Hanged Man card. "And much as I hate to admit that I'm wrong—well, I'm wrong."
Eleanor blinked, and stared at her mentor. Sarah was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the kitchen, staring down at a pile of stones with markings on them. Rune-stones, she called them, and she used them not only to try and give her some direction for the future, but to try and learn what was going on around her that might be hidden from her. If, for instance, someone was sick enough that he needed to see the medical doctor and not just depend on her herbal remedies. There were many country folk who still were suspicious of the doctor and veterinarian, and sometimes it took Sarah a deal of convincing to get them to go to either gentleman.
"Wrong about what?" Eleanor asked. It took a lot to get Sarah to admit she was wrong about anything. She was dreadfully stubborn that way.
Then again, she had every right to be.
"I've always said that the big house and the village haven't got much of anything to say to each other," Sarah replied sourly, still staring down at her stones. "Still, I knew it was an Air Master that chased off the revenants; I knew it couldn't be a local witch, no matter how powerful, when you told me about it, and I was right. It turns out she's a guest up there at Longacre, though, and it seems that she's staying the summer. And that changes everything."
"An Air Master?" Eleanor said, catching her breath. Oh, granted, it wasn't her Element, but any Master could help her—
More to the point, unlike, say, a constable or any other authority figure, any Elemental Master would know she was telling the truth about Alison and what Alison had done to her. She wouldn't have to try and convince an Elemental Master that she wasn't mad because she was talking about magic.
"That's what we've needed, what you've needed, to see if you can't get cut free of your stepmother and her wicked magic. And now, I've asked the cards, the bones, and the stones, and they're all saying you need to go up there and meet with that Air Master. In fact, they say if you don't, well—" she shook her head. "It'll be bad, that's all. Not just bad for you, either. The stones reckon Alison's got some wicked mischief going that's going to be a trouble no matter what steps are taken to stop her, but horrible bad if she isn't stopped." Sarah looked up, her face full of fear. "I can't tell what it is, but at a guess, she's let loose some kind of sickness; she's Earth, and that's the sort of thing they do when they go to the bad. Pestilence and plague." Sarah bit her lip. "Well, the stones say that if you work with that Air Master and get yourself cut free, Alison will fall, but if you don't, she'll use you somehow and put more power into whatever it is she's done, and the stones don't say how much worse it will be, but they're all showing their bad sides."
She felt as if hope and fear were at war inside her. Hope, because here was exactly what she needed. Fear, because how could she ever get what she needed with Alison's hearth-binding still holding her? "But—I can't get as far as Longacre," she protested. "And even if I could, I can't just stroll up to even the tradesman's entrance and ask to be introduced to the Air Master!" Even if she knew the Air Master's real name. Especially not looking like a servant. She knew better than to go to the front door—she'd be turned away in a heartbeat.
"Well, now, that's not necessarily true . . . because you only need to get inside those walls once and talk to her. After that, if she's worth anything, and the stones say she is, she'll come to you." Sarah gathered up the stones and poured them into a little leather bag. "And there is one night, coming up, when you can walk in the front door and be presented like you were to the manor born. Provided you're wearing a fancy dress." She tilted her head to one side. "Think about it. The night of that fancy dress ball. If your stepsisters are good enough to be invited, you surely are as well."