“Oh, thank you,” she replied, flushing. “You’ve no idea what a good time I’ve had with you, here. I hope—”
But she couldn’t have said what she hoped; they wouldn’t have understood why she wished she could join their sewing circle. She was gentry; they were village. The gap was insurmountable.
As the others discussed projects, love affairs, and business of the village, one of the younger—and prettier—of the daughters helped her gather her hat, cloak, and gloves and escorted her to the door. “Thank you, Miss Roeswood; we were all dreading what sort of crack-brained notion the vicar might have had for us when he told us you were going to show us your ideas for the booth,” she said, and hesitated, then continued, “and we were afraid that he might be letting—ah—kindliness—get ahead of him. He’s a kindly gentleman, we all like him, but he’s never done a charity booth before.”
“He’s a very kind and very pleasant gentleman,” she agreed readily. “And don’t underestimate him, because he’s also quite intelligent. As you’ve seen, sometimes a new idea is better than what’s been traditional.”
“True, miss, and even though some folks would rather we had our old vicar back, well, he was a good man, but he’s dead, and they aren’t going to get him back, so at least Mr. Davies is one of us, and they ought to get to like him as much as us young ones, But please—some of us—”
Marina gave her a penetrating look, and she seemed to lose her courage, and blurted, “—we’ve been wondering about what you think of our vicar, what with making three visits in the week, and—”
She clapped her hand over her mouth and looked appalled at what she had let slip. Marina just chuckled.
“You mean, have I any designs on him myself, hmm?” she whispered, and the girl turned beet red. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, and surely had what schoolgirls called a “pash” for the amiable young man. Marina suddenly felt very old and worldly wise.
“My dear Miss Horn, I promise you that my only interest in our good vicar extends to his ability to play chess,” she said soberly. “And his ability to compose and deliver an interesting, inspiring, and enlightening sermon,” she added as an afterthought.
“Oh.” The girl turned pale, then red again, and ducked her head. Marina patted her hand, and turned to go.
The meeting with the ladies had taken less than an hour; she hadn’t expected it to take much longer, truth to tell. The cold air on her cheeks made enough of a distraction to get her tears swallowed down, and she mounted her horse feeling that she had done her duty, in more ways than one. If Arachne expected her back as soon as she finished, well, she was going to take her time, and never mind the cold.
“And she believed it?”
Arachne smiled; Reggie’s expression could not be more gratifying, compounded as it was of equal parts of astonishment, admiration, and envy. He leaned back into his chair in her personal sitting room, a lush and luxurious retreat furnished with pieces she had taken from all over the house when she first arrived here, and smiled. “Mater,” he continued, “That was brilliant! I never would have considered suggesting to Marina that her mother was a candidate for a sanitarium.”
“It honestly didn’t occur to me until I was in the middle of that conversation with her,” Arachne admitted. “But the child is so utterly unmagical—and seems to have been brought up that way—that when she was describing the letters her mother sent her about the Elemental creatures in the garden I suddenly realized how insane such tales would seem to someone who was not a mage.” Her hand unconsciously caressed the chocolate-colored velvet of her chair. “Ah, that reminds me—you have cleared out the miserable little fauns and such from the grounds, haven’t you?”
Reggie snorted. “A lamb sacrificed at each cardinal point drove them out quickly enough. All sweetness and light, was your Hugh’s precious Alanna—the Earth Elementals she had around here couldn’t bear the first touch of blood on the soil.”
Arachne smiled. “When we make this place ours, we shall have to use something more potent than lambs. And speaking of lambs—”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I have two replacements safe enough, both with the magic in them, both just turned ten.”
“Two?” She eyed him askance.
He sighed. “Besides the one that I took off to die, I lost a second that was carried off by a relative. Pity, that. She had just come to realize what was going to happen to her with that much lead in her. Her hands were starting to go. But the ones I’ve got to replace them are orphans off the parish rolls, and both are Earth, which should bolster our power immensely in that element.”
Arachne smiled. “Lovely,” she purred. “You are a wonderful pupil, dear.” She raised her cup of chocolate to her lips and sipped, savoring the sting of brandy in it.
“You are a wonderful teacher, Mater,” he replied slyly, and her smile broadened. “Fancy learning that you could steal the magic from those who haven’t come into their powers. I wouldn’t have thought of that—” He raised his glass of wine to her in a toast.
“It was others who thought of it before I did,” Arachne admitted, but with a feeling of great satisfaction. “Even if none of them were as efficient as I am.”
“That’s my mater; a model of modern efficiency. You took one ramshackle old pottery and made it into four that are making money so fast you’d think we were coining it.” He chuckled. “And in another six months?”
“There is a fine deposit of porcelain clay on this property, access to rail and water, near enough to Barnstaple for cheap sea shipping, plenty of water…” She flexed her fingers slightly as if they were closing around something she wanted very much. “And cheap labor.”
“And it is so very quiet here,” Reggie prompted slyly. “Well, Mater, I’m doing my part. I’m playing court to the little thing, and I expect I’ll have her one way or another by the summer, if your side doesn’t come in. Have you discovered anything? Just between the two of us, I’d as soon not find myself leg-shackled; it does cut down on a fellow’s fun, no matter how quiet the little wife is.” He shrugged at her sardonic expression. “There’s the social connections to think about, don’t you know. They don’t mind winking at a bit of jiggery-pokery when a fellow’s single, but once he’s married, he daren’t let ‘em find out about it, or they’ll cut him.”
She smiled, but sourly. “Ah, society. Well, once married, you needn’t stay married to her long.”
He frowned at that; the sulky frown he had whenever he was balked. “I’d still rather you found a way to make that curse of yours work,” he told her crossly. “Folk start to talk if a fellow’s wife dies right after the wedding. And this isn’t the middle ages, you know. There’s inquests, coroners’ juries, chemical tests—”
“That will do, Reggie,” she said sharply. “At the moment, we have a number of options, which include you remaining married to the girl. She doesn’t have to die to suit our purposes. She only needs to sicken and take to her bed.” She allowed a smile to cross her lips. “And no one would censure you very strongly for a little peccadilloes if you were known to have an invalid wife.”
“Hmm. And if I had an—institutionalized wife?” he ventured brightening. “A wife who followed—but perhaps, more dangerously—in the footsteps of her mother?”
She blinked. “Why Reggie—that is not a bad notion at all! What if we allowed some rumors about Alanna to spread down into the village? What would Marina think, having heard of her own mother’s fantasies, if she began seeing things?”