Finally she released Marina’s hands. “Never fear. I am going to see to it that you are fit for society. By the time you are out of mourning, you will be able to take your place among polite society with confidence. Now, I have work to do, and so do you.” She rang a bell on her desk, and the maid Mary Anne opened the door promptly. She must have been waiting just outside. “Mary Anne will take you to the dining room, where you will begin your education with your luncheon.”
Marina rose, feeling as limp as a stalk of boiled celery. Arachne picked up a paper from her desk and began to read it. Seeing no other option, Marina turned and followed the stiff back of the maid out of the room.
It seemed that lack of options was going to be her life for the foreseeable future.
But not forever, she promised herself. But not forever…
Chapter Nine
ARACHNE felt that her first interview with her niece had gone quite well. She’d kept the girl off-balance, inserted some doubts in her mind—and despite the girl’s protestations to the contrary, she was not particularly impressed with Marina’s intelligence. On the whole, she was, well, naive. Which was exactly how Arachne wanted things to remain.
She had the upper hand and kept it throughout the conversation—and discovered within the first couple of sentences that, contrary to her expectations, evidently no one had told the child anything about the curse or her aunt. How and why that had come about, she could not guess, but it gave her an advantage that she had never dreamed of having. With no expectations to counter, no preconceptions about her captor, it would be child’s play to manipulate the girl and her emotions.
Arachne was no fool; within a year she had known that her curse had somehow misfired, and that the child had been removed into hiding. After an initial campaign to find the girl failed utterly, she had sat back and reconsidered her options for an entire year.
She had concentrated on consolidating her financial—and magical—position for the first five years. At the end of that time, she had solidified her social position, ensuring that any odd tales or accusations would be dismissed as lunatic raving. She had competent overseers in place who were absolutely terrified of her, enabling her to take her immediate attention off her manufactories and simply let the money accumulate. She had a very great deal of that money. And she had an impenetrable magical sanctuary. If she had been able to baffle her brother and his Elemental Mage friends before, she would be completely invisible and invulnerable now.
That was when she insinuated one single agent of her own into the office of their legal man and had their will destroyed. Then she worked one single, very powerful spell, to make everyone who had ever touched that will forget that it had ever existed. With Hugh and Alanna certain that, no matter what happened to them, Marina was safe until her majority—with the instrument of that safety gone—Arachne had ten years, more or less, to allow her campaign to mature.
So she bided her time, installed her own spies in Devon and Tuscany, and awaited the opportunity to strike—not at the child, which they were expecting, but at Hugh and Alanna themselves. She’d had plenty of practice already. After all, she had already eliminated her own parents, and Alanna’s, though by means more mundane than magical.
She had known that the moment Hugh and Alanna were gone, the legal men would contact her—and once they were gone, intestate, leaving Arachne the only possible legal guardian, the law would give Arachne access to everything. Then it was just a simple matter of going through the carefully saved letters; putting them under lock and key did no good when Arachne was the keeper of the keys. Then, before the Tarrants got word of the tragedy themselves and spirited the child away—pounce. Stun them with the news of the deaths of their friends, and snatch the girl away with the backing of lawyers and police—that was the plan, and it worked to perfection. More than perfection, she had anticipated that the girl would have been warned, and that she might have to resort to any one of a number of complicated schemes, and at the least she would have had a dreadful struggle keeping her under control, until she decided what was to be done about her. Instead—the chit knew nothing—and Arachne’s task had just been simplified enormously.
After she called Mary Anne back into the room to take the girl in charge, she pretended to read an invoice while the footsteps receded into the distance. She wasn’t the only one waiting; after a moment, the door into the next room creaked, and her son Reggie stepped through.
She put the invoice down, and smiled at him. She was quite proud of him; he took entirely after her, and not after her late husband, who had been a pale and colorless sort of chap, although he’d been as cunning as a fox when it came to business.
Not cunning enough, though. Not at all curious about her associates, and what he called her “little hobbies.” Not at all careful about what he ate.
Reggie had inherited his cunning, which he turned to all manner of things, not just business. He had sailed through university, not troubling to make the effort for a First or Second because all he wanted was the degree. It wasn’t as if he was going to have to earn a living by means of it, so he enjoyed himself—and made social contacts. A great many social contacts. He was greatly sought after for every sort of party; facile, well-spoken, beautifully mannered and handsome, he made the perfect escort for any unaccompanied woman, and was guaranteed to charm.
Reggie could have any young woman he chose, to tell the truth, between his darkly stunning good looks and his—her—money. His only faults were that he was lazy and arrogant, and women were more than inclined to overlook both those flaws in the face of charm, wealth, and ravishing features.
“Well?” she asked, as he dropped carelessly down into the chair that the girl had just vacated.
“She’ll do—once your people bend her into the proper shape of lady.” He examined his fingernails with care, then graced her with a dazzling smile. “Properly subdued, she’ll be ornamental enough, for as long as we choose to keep her. But I confess, I cannot imagine why no one ever told her about you!”
“Neither can I,” Arachne admitted. “And for a moment, I toyed with the idea that she was feigning ignorance. But that child is as transparent as crystal; she couldn’t hide a secret if her life depended on it.”
Reggie laughed, showing very white teeth. “Appropriate, considering how much her life does depend on your will. How long do you intend to keep her?”
“I don’t know yet,” Arachne admitted, with a frown. “I don’t know why my curse has gone dormant, for one thing, and I don’t intend to do anything until I know the answer to that. She looks perfectly ordinary, magically speaking, with little more power than Mary Anne, so it can’t be her doing.”
“Your brother?” Reggie suggested, with a nod at the painting above the fireplace of the former owner of Oakhurst—a painting that Arachne intended to remove as soon as she could find something else that would fit there. Perhaps that landscape painting of a Roman ruin that was in the gallery. It would do until she could have a view of one of her manufactories commissioned.
“Hugh and Alanna were Earth Masters, but no more, and not outstandingly powerful. I think not. Whatever the cause, it must have been something that Hugh and Alanna had done to her.” She rested both elbows on the desktop, and propped her chin on one slender hand, watching him thoughtfully. “That, in itself, is interesting. I didn’t think they’d know anyone who’d even guess what I’d done, much less find a counter to it. I confess, I’m intrigued… it’s a pretty puzzle.”