The Gates of Sleep

But if she did that, Uncle Sebastian would never forgive her.

Or he’d make me wear horrid, itchy wigs. He already did that now and again, and the things made her skin crawl. Bad enough to be wearing someone else’s hair, but she could never quite rid herself of the thought that insects would find the wigs a very cozy home. It was horrible, sitting there posing, sure that any moment something would creep out of the wig and onto her face!

She ran down the stairs to the kitchen, wanting to be there when everyone else came down. If anyone else had awakened with a fright or even an uneasy stirring in the night, they’d be sure to talk about it. In a household full of magicians, night-frights were no laughing matter.

The problem was, of course, that she didn’t have enough experience to tell a simple nightmare from a real warning. And with all the praises being heaped on her for her current progress with Elizabeth, she was rather loath to appear to be frightened by a silly dream.

And it wasn’t as if there had actually been anything menacing her, either! Just a vague feeling that there was something out there, some sinister hunter, and she was its prey. Now how could she ever explain an hysterical reaction to something as minor as that?

“Good morning, Sarah!” she called as she flew in at the kitchen door, relieved to see that she was the first down. She wouldn’t have missed anything, then.

“Morning to you, miss,” the cook replied, after a surprised glance. “Early, ain’t you?”

“Cocky-locky was crowing right outside my window,” Marina replied, taking the seat nearest the stove, the perquisite of the first down. Even in high summer, that was the favored seat, for whoever sat there got the first of everything from Sarah’s skillets. “I know he’s Aunt’s favorite rooster, but there are limits!”

“I’ll tell Jenny not to let them out until you’ve all come down of a morning,” Sarah replied with a chuckle. “She won’t mind, and it don’t take but a minute to take down the door. She can do ‘t when she’s done with fetchin’ water upstairs.”

She handed Marina a blue-rimmed pottery bowl full of hot oat porridge, which Marina regarded with resignation, then garnished with sugar and cream and dug into so as to get rid of it as soon as possible. Sarah had fed her a bowl of oat porridge every cold morning of her life, standing over her and not serving her anything else until she finished it, and there was no point in arguing with her that she never made the uncles eat oat porridge first. She would only respond that Aunt Margherita ate it, and what was good enough for her lovely aunt was good enough for her. Never mind that Aunt Margherita actually liked oat porridge.

For that matter, so did the uncles. They just never were made to finish a huge bowlful before getting served Sarah’s delectable eggs fried in the bacon fat, her fried kidneys, sliced potatoes, her home-cured bacon, country ham, and home-made sausages. Not to mention her lovely thick toast, cut from yesterday’s loaf, which somehow was always golden, warm enough to melt the butter, and never burned—

—though Marina had long suspected the touch of one of Uncle Sebastian’s Salamanders for that particular boon.

Or scones, left over from tea or made fresh that morning, with jam and butter or clotted cream. Or cake, or pie. That oat porridge left very little internal room for all the good things that bedecked the breakfast table.

No, the uncles got a much smaller bowl, and unless Sarah was running behind, they got it along with the rest of their breakfast. Sarah never scolded them if they left some of it in the bottom of the bowl.

Such were the trials of having the same person serve as cook and nursery-maid, she supposed, trying not to think about the porridge she was eating. It wasn’t so much the flavor, which reminded her strongly of the taste of iron but could be disguised with cream and sugar. It was the texture.

By the time she had only half finished her bowl, she heard a clatter of footsteps on the stair, and the rest of the household came down in a clump, trailed by Jenny carrying the last of the hot water cans. Properly dressed for the day, too—a cold morning didn’t encourage lounging about in one’s dressing gown!

“Well, finally, a sunny morning!” Elizabeth was saying as they came into the kitchen. “Good morning, Sarah.”

“Morning, ma’am. ‘Twon’t last,” Sarah predicted.

“Oh, try not to burst my illusions too quickly, will you?” Elizabeth laughed. “After all, I’ll be leaving in a week or so, can’t I at least hope that I won’t have to depart in a downpour?”

Sarah turned from the stove, spatula in hand. “Oh, ma’am, are you going that soon?” she asked, looking stricken. “But you haven’t heard half the things the village folk have dug up—and—you! haven’t even had a taste of one of my mince pies—and—”

“Sarah, I’m only going away over the holidays! I’ll be back just after Twelfth Night!” Elizabeth exclaimed, though she looked pleased at Sarah’s reaction. “I had no idea that I was anything but an additional burden to your duties.”

“Burden? Oh, ma’am, what’s one more at table? ‘tis been like having another in the family here.” Sarah tenderly forked bacon and sausage onto Elizabeth’s plate, giving her so much that Elizabeth transferred half of it to Marina when Sarah’s back was turned. Marina ate it quickly before Sarah could notice that she hadn’t finished her porridge.

“Well, Sarah’s right about that,” Sebastian said, with a wink for his wife. “Though I must say it’s ruined every one of the arguments we’ve had since she’s been here.”

“Oh? In what way has my presence interfered, pray?” Elizabeth responded, with a toss of her head. “Other than that the sheer weight of my intellect overpowers you light-minded painterly types?”

“Well, when it comes to a division between the sexes, it used to come out a draw, and Margherita and Marina had to compromise,” Sebastian pointed out, sounding for all the world as if it was the two females of the household who were unreasonable when it came to sitting down for negotiations. “Now there’s the three of you, and you run right over the top of us poor befuddled males.”

“If you’d learn to listen to reason, you wouldn’t be befuddled or find yourself in need of making compromises,” Elizabeth retorted. “Seeing as we are the ones who generally propose compromise in the first place, which you gentlemen seem to regard with the same attitude as a bull with a red rag.”

Somehow, within three sentences of that challenge, the conversation managed to come round to a spirited discussion of votes, university degrees, and equal responsibilities for women.

Marina listened, slowly munching her way through her breakfast, and began to see an interesting and quite logical explanation for the dream of last night.

It had to be a dream; none of the others had mentioned any unease at all, and they surely would. Even if they were cautious about speaking of magic in front of Sarah and Jenny, there were ways of saying things without actually saying them that amounted to a second language among the five of them.

No, it must have been a dream, and now Marina had a good idea of where it had come from.

She hadn’t thought about it much, but she had known for the last several days that Elizabeth’s return to her family was coming up shortly. How could she not be anxious about that, even though she knew that Elizabeth was going to come back? Her teacher was going to be gone, and not only was she not going to be getting new lessons in Water Magic, but if anything somehow went seriously wrong in her practicing, there would be no one in the household technically capable of putting it right again. The best they could do would be for Sebastian, the antagonistic Element, to put the whole mess down with sheer, brute force.

That could be very bad over the long run. The Elementals might take offense, and she’d be weeks in placating them.

So, that would explain all the unease, the tension, even the fear. And the feeling of something bad out there watching for her—well, dreams often showed you the opposite of what you were really feeling, and the fear came from the fact that no one would be watching for her with Elizabeth gone.

The anxiety as well—well, that was simply a straight reflection of the fact that with Elizabeth gone, she would be feeling rather lonely. For the first time she could remember, winter had not been a round of day after day, the same, with barely a visit or two to the village to break the monotony. Everyone had tasks that kept them involved except her. Posing might be hard work, but it wasn’t intellectually stimulating. But with Elizabeth here, she’d had a friend and entirely new things to do.

It was all as simple and straightforward as that!

Relieved now that she had found a logical explanation for what must have been a simple bout of night-fears, she joined in the discussion—which, despite Uncle Sebastian claiming it was an argument, never got to the point of raised voices, much less to acrimony. Elizabeth even appealed to Sarah a time or two, though Sarah only replied with “I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am,” or “I couldn’t rightly say, ma’am.” And, essentially, all of the women knew deep down that Sebastian was firmly on their side in the case of the Cause. He was only arguing because one of his greatest joys was in playing devil’s advocate. And another was to get Elizabeth sufficiently annoyed to exercise a talent for rather caustic wit that she rarely displayed.

At least, so long as it didn’t interfere with his meals. The only reason that Elizabeth got in some fairly long speeches without being interrupted was because Uncle Sebastian was enjoying his broiled kidneys. Twice Sarah purloined her plate to rewarm what had gotten cold and unappetizing.

Finally, he cleaned his plate with a bit of toast, popped it in his mouth, and stood up. “You win, Elizabeth, as usual. You’re right, I’m outnumbered, and besides, I am not going to waste this gorgeous light. You’ll have to do without Marina this morning, Elizabeth—I’ve got a buyer for Werther and I mean to have the money in time to finance a really good Christmas. Come along, poppet—”

He gestured at Marina, who quickly rose from the table and followed him. She saw that determined, yet slightly absent look in his eyes and knew it of old. Werther would be finished—in very few days, if the weather held.

And Marina was going to be spending a great deal of time sprawled half on, half off that pallet, nearly upside down.

Oh well, she thought, suppressing a yawn as she fitted her upper torso within the chalk marks on the floor. Uncle Sebastian’s doing my legs this morning, since that’s where the light is falling. So at least I’II get to make up my lost sleep today.

By the time Elizabeth left, Marina had all but forgotten about her disturbed night. The few times she thought about it, she was glad she hadn’t mentioned it; it would have been too, too embarrassing to be comforted and reassured over a nightmare. And in front of Elizabeth too—appalling thought!

She hadn’t seen a sign of a single Sylph or any other Air Elemental since then, but they didn’t much care for the cold, and she was too busy to summon one. The clear weather didn’t hold, either, and they liked rain even less than cold. With Uncle Sebastian claiming her time during the day, feverishly painting his Young Werther, Elizabeth claimed the hours between sunset and bedtime. Which was only right, of course—after all, that was why Elizabeth was here in the first place!

The result was that when the day of departure arrived, Marina was able to build a shield two layers thick, with the outer layer looking just like the sort of aura that any ordinary person might have. What was more, she could shield a workspace, or even a smallish room, and within the room, she could make the shield permanent.

She still hadn’t begun the next phase of her tutelage, which Elizabeth said would be the offensive and defensive uses of her power. That would have to wait; Elizabeth didn’t want her to even think about such a thing until there was another Water Master physically present while she practiced.

The day of departure was gray, but not raining, so they all went to see her off, using both carts, and combining the trip with a Christmas shopping expedition to the village and perhaps beyond. When Elizabeth’s train was safely gone, and the last glimpse of her hand waving a handkerchief out of the window was a memory, Marina and her aunt took one of the carts, and the uncles took the other. Uncle Thomas and Uncle Sebastian were in charge of arranging the Christmas feast.

“Make sure you get a gray goose, and not a white one!” Marina called after them as they set off on a round of the little village shop, the pub, and some of the farms. “The white ones are too fat!”

Uncle Sebastian waved absently; Uncle Thomas ignored them. Margherita sighed. “It’s the same thing every year, isn’t it?” she said to the pony’s back-pointing ears. “Every year, I tell them, ‘get a gray goose.’ And what do they do every year? They get a white one.

“Maybe if you told them to get a turkey?” Marina suggested delicately.

“Then they’d bring back a pheasant, I swear.” Margherita sighed again.

“Where first?” Marina asked, as Margherita took up the reins and glanced down the road after the uncles. Her aunt gave her a measuring look.

“Would you really, truly like a suit like Elizabeth’s?” Margherita asked, a bit doubtfully. “Personally, I would feel as if I’d been trussed up like the Christmas goose in one of those rigs, but if you really want one—”

“Oh, Aunt!” Marina said breathlessly, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. Margherita had resisted, quietly, but implacably, every hint that Marina had ever given her about more fashionable clothing. Nothing moved her, not the most delectable sketch in the newspaper, not the most delicious description of a frock in one of Alanna’s letters. “Do you think you’d really like that?” was one response, “It’s not practical for running about outside,” was another. And she couldn’t help but agree, even while, the older she got, the more she yearned for something—just one outfit—that was truly stylish.

“All right then. It won’t be a surprise, but it will be done in time for Christmas.” Margherita’s expression was a comical mix of amusement and resignation, as she turned the pony’s head and slapped the reins on his back.

“But, where are we going?” Marina asked, bewildered, as Margherita sent the pony out of the village, trotting along the road that ran parallel to the railway, into the west.

“Well, I don’t have the skill to make you anything like that! And besides, we’ll have to get you the proper corset for it as well; just compare what they’re showing in advertisements with what you own. We won’t find anything in Killatree; we might as well go to Holsworthy.” Margherita smiled. “You’ve never had anything other than the gowns I made or ordinary waists and skirts from Maggie Potter; you’ll have to be fitted, we’ll have to select fabric, and we’ll have to return for a final fitting.”

“Oh.” Marina was a bit nonplused. “I didn’t mean to cause all this trouble—”

“Nonsense! A Christmas gift needs to be fussed over a bit!” Margherita laughed, and flicked her whip warningly at a dog that came out of one of the farmyards to bark at them. “It’s not as if we were going all the way to Plymouth—although—” she hesitated. “You know, we could. We could take the train there, easily enough. The seamstress in Holsworthy is good, but she won’t be as modish as the one that creates Elizabeth’s gowns.”

For a moment, Marina was sorely tempted. Plymouth! She had never been to Plymouth. She had never been to any big city.

But that was the rub; she had never been to any big city. After a moment, her spirit quailed at the thought of facing all those buildings, all those people. Not Plymouth; not unless she’d had time to get her mind around going there. And then—well, she’d want to stay there for more than a day. Which meant she truly needed to get herself mentally prepared for the big city.

“I’d like something simpler than Elizabeth’s suit,” she said, after thinking of a good way to phrase it. “After all, couldn’t we do the ornamentation if I decide I want it later? And I’d like that better. If you can’t actually make the suit, I’d rather have your designs for ornaments.”

“We certainly could, Mari,” her aunt said warmly, which made her pleased that she had thought of it. “You know, this was Thomas’ suggestion for your Christmas present—and I suspect he had an ulterior motive, because it means that he won’t be in the Workshop from now until Christmas, trying to somehow craft something for you in secret and finish his commissions.”

“Well, I can’t blame him, since he’s running out of space in my room to put the things he’s made for me,” Marina replied, casting an anxious tendril of energy toward the sky. Was it going to rain? They had umbrellas, but Holsworthy was more than twice as far away as Killatree.

No. We’ll be fine. That was another lesson learned from Elizabeth; how to read the weather. Later she would learn how to change it, although that was dangerous. Little changes could have large consequences, and disturbing the weather too much could change convenience for her into a disaster for someone else.

So the pony trotted on, through the wet, cold air, along the road that smelled of wet leaves and coal smoke from the trains. Out in the pastures, sheep moved slowly over the grass, heads down, like fat white clouds—or brown-and-white cows raised their heads to stare at them fixedly as they passed. Jackdaws gave their peculiar twanging cry, and flocks of starlings made every sort of call that had ever echoed across the countryside, but mostly just chattered and squeaked.

In a little more than an hour, they reached the town of Holsworthy. It had a main street, it had shops, not the single, all-purpose little grocers, dry goods, and post office run by Peter Hunter and his wife Rosie. It even had a town square with a fountain in it, which had a practical purpose rather than an ornamental one. It provided water for anyone who didn’t have it in their house, and for man and beast on the street.

Cobblestone streets led off the main road, with the houses and shop buildings clustering closely together, huddling together like a flock of chickens in a roost at night. Marina had been here before, usually twice or three times in a year. There was an annual wool fair, for instance, that they never missed if they could help it. Uncle Sebastian ordered some of his artistic supplies here from the stationer, and Uncle Thomas some of the exotic woods he used to make inlays. This was where Aunt Margherita got her special tapestry wool as well as her embroidery silks.

Of course, there were things that could not be bought in Holsworthy; for those, Sebastian or Thomas went to Plymouth, or even to London, perhaps once every two years.

“While we’re here, oughtn’t we to do other Christmas shopping, especially since Uncle Sebastian and Uncle Thomas aren’t with us?” Marina asked, “I wanted to get them books, and there’s a lovely bookshop.”

“Exactly what I had thought.” Margherita pulled the pony up to let a farm cart cross in front of her, then reined him toward the fountain. The pony, nothing loath, went straight for the basin and buried his nose in the water. Margherita and Marina got down out of the cart, and Margherita led the pony and cart to the single inn in town. It also had a stable, and the pony could wait there in comfort and safety while they did their shopping.

The sign on the shop and in the window read, “Madame Deremiere, Modiste.” Now there was no Madam Deremiere, and had not been within the memory of anyone living in Holsworthy. Probably the lady in question had been an asylum seeker from the Great Revolution, or perhaps Napoleon. The current seamstress (also, by courtesy, called “Madame”) was the apprentice of her apprentice, at the very least.

The first task before them, once the greetings and mandatory cup of tea had been disposed of, was the selection of material—and here, sadly, the selection was definitely not what it would have been in Plymouth. There was no emerald wool like that of the suit that Marina had coveted. The choice of fabric was, frankly, limited to the sort of thing that the well-to-do yeoman farmer’s wife or merchant’s wife would want, which tended to either the dull or the flamboyant.

There was, however, a wonderful soft brown wool plush that Marina could see Margherita had fallen in love with. She resolved the moment that her aunt’s back was turned to purchase it and hide it in the back of the cart. In the colors that she preferred, there was a green velvet that was both utterly impractical and far too expensive, a pale green linen that was too light for a winter suit and an olive green wool that had too much yellow in it. She was about to give up, when Margherita said, “But what about gray? Something soft, though, like that brown plush. Something with a firm hand, but a soft texture.”

“I do have some gray woolens like that; I ordered them thinking that I might convince some of the ladies to commission me to tailor some little boys’ suits, but nothing came of it,” the seamstress replied, and went to the rear of her establishment.

Of the three choices, there was a woolen in a dove gray that Marina loved the moment she touched it. It was soft and weighty, a little like fine sueded leather. “Oh, that’s merino, that is,” the woman said. “Lovely stuff. Too dear for Holsworthy, though; if a lady of this town is going to spend that sort of money on a suit for her little boy, she’ll go up a bit and have it done in velvet. Not as much difference in price, you see, when you’re only using two yards or so.”

“And how ‘dear’ would that be?” Margherita asked, settling in for a shrewd session of bargaining—Christmas present or no, she had never bought anything without a stiff bargaining session, and she clearly wasn’t about to break that habit.

In the end, by pointing out a couple of odd places where a moth had gotten to the fabric, and making the case that since the lady was getting not only the price of the fabric but the commission to make it up, Margherita got her price. Then it was time to pick the design. Out came the pattern-books and sketches, and now Margherita excused herself. “I am not going to attempt to influence your choice, my dear,” she said with a smile. “I want you to pick what you want, not what you think I think you should have. And I know I’ll try to influence you, so I’ll return in an hour or so.”

And with that, she picked up her gloves and donned her cloak, and left Marina alone with the seamstress.

“And what do you want, miss?” the seamstress asked, with hint both of humor and just a little apprehension.

“Oh,” Marina paused. “Lady Hastings, a friend of ours, had the most Beautiful suit with a trumpet-skirt and a train—”

She saw the apprehension growing, and knew that her aunt had been right; this seamstress in a small town was not at all confident of her ability to replicate something that a person like Lady Hastings could purchase.

“And I thought, something like that, but much simpler,” she finished. She looked through the first few pages of “walking suits” and “resort dresses” and suddenly her eye alighted on a design that was precisely what she wanted, a jacket fastening to the side instead of down the middle. “Like this!” she said, laying her finger on it, “But without the trimming.”

It was labeled as a “walking suit” as well; it had a lappet collar and a double skirt, and in the sketch, was trimmed quite elegantly and elaborately. But the lines were simple and very tailored, the skirt less of a train than Elizabeth’s, and so a little old-fashioned, but to Marina’s eyes it looked a little more graceful.

“Without the trimming…” The apprehension was replaced by relief, as Marina watched the woman mentally removing soutache and lace, pin tucks and ribbon. “Yes, indeed, miss; that’s a very good choice, and if you don’t mind my saying so, it will look very well on you.” She marked the sketch and laid the book aside with the fabric. “Now, let’s get you measured.”

It wasn’t quite that simple. First, Marina had to be laced into the new-style corset that the suit required. And she had gone un-corseted for so long that the only one she’d had up to this point had been bought when she was fourteen and still looked brand new. She hadn’t worn it more than once or twice, and both times she had needed help to get into it.

It was something of an ordeal, although the modiste helpfully taught her how to manage on her own. So at least when she got it home, she’d be able to get into it!

“I hope you aren’t wanting a fifteen-inch waist, miss,” the seamstress said frankly, looking from the corset in her hands to Marina in drawers and camisole and back again. “You’ll never get it.”

“I’m wanting to be able to move and breathe,” Marina replied feeling a certain amount of dread at the sight of the thing, all steel boning and bootlaces. “My aunt doesn’t believe in tight lacing, and neither do I. I just want to look right in this new dress.”

“Oh! Well, then you’ll do all right,” the woman laughed. She unhooked the basque and handed the garment to Marina, who put it on, hooked the front back up again, one little steel hook at a time, and turned her back so that the seamstress could tighten the laces. “You’ll be doing this with the wall-hook I told you about, miss,” the modiste said, deftly pulling the laces tight, but not uncomfortably so. “Just have someone put one into a beam, and you won’t need a lady’s maid.”

When the woman was done, it felt rather like she’d been encased in a hard shell, or was wearing armor. It wasn’t uncomfortable, in fact, it made her back feel quite nicely supported, but she definitely wouldn’t be able to run in a garment like this. But a glance at the mirror showed a gratifyingly slim figure, and if she didn’t have a fifteen-inch waist, she didn’t particularly want to look like a wasp, either.

The seamstress, measuring tape and notebook in hand, went to work.

She was very thorough. She measured everything three times, presumably to make sure she got the measurement right, and it seemed as if she measured every part of Marina’s body. Wrists, the widest part of the forearm, biceps, shoulder-joint, neck. From shoulder to shoulder across the back and across the front. Bust, under the bust, waist, hips, just below the hips. From nape to center of the back. From nape of the neck to the ground. She even measured each calf, each thigh, and each ankle, though Marina couldn’t imagine how she’d use those measurements, and said so.

“It all goes in my book, my dear,” the woman told her. “Some day you might want a cycling costume, for instance, and I’ll have the measurements right here.”

Marina couldn’t think of anything less likely, but held her peace as the seamstress unlaced her corset and helped her out of it. For the first time she realized just how very comfortable her aunt’s gowns were.

But she still wanted that suit. Already in her mind, she was planning the trimming that she and her aunt would put on it. Black, of course—black would look wonderful on the gray wool.

She paid for the brown wool herself, out of the pocket-money her parents had sent before they went to Italy. After a quick survey of the street to make sure that Margherita was not on the way, she hurried across to the inn and hid her purchase under the old rugs they kept in the pony cart in case it became too cold. Then she hurried back to the seamstress, and was looking over sketches of garden-party dresses when her aunt returned.

“Well, how did it go?” Margherita asked.

“I’m finished,” Marina said, with triumph. “Look, this is what I picked—without the trimming. I have some ideas—”

“Hmm! And so do I! That’s a fine choice of design. Well done, poppet!” Marina beamed in Margherita’s approval. “When should we return for the fitting?” she asked, turning to the seamstress.

“Not sooner than a week,” the woman replied promptly. “Now, that suit rightly needs a shirtwaist—did you have anything in mind for that?”

“This, I think,” Margherita told her, turning back to the shirtwaists and pointing out a simple, but elegant design with a high collar and a lace jabot that could be tied in many ways, or left off altogether. “Two in white cambric, and one in dove-gray silk, and we’ll want enough extra fabric to make three jabots for each.”

Marina stared. “But—Aunt—I thought my old shirtwaists—”

“Nonsense, a new suit demands new shirtwaists.” Margherita bargained again, but with the unexpected sale of the brown wool plush, the seamstress was feeling generous, and let her have her way after only a token struggle.

They left the shop arm-in-arm and headed up the street. “Luncheon first, I think,” Margherita said, steering Mari in the direction of a teashop. “It’s our day out, and I think we’ll spend it like ladies. A proper lady’s luncheon, and none of those thick ham-and-butter sandwiches your uncles want!”

Marina giggled, but wasn’t going to argue. She could count the number of times she’d eaten in a teashop on the fingers of one hand; it was a rare treat, and she was bound to enjoy it.

“Well, Mari, are you happy with your present?” Margherita asked, when they were settled, with porcelain cups of tea steaming in front of them, and a tempting selection of dainty little sandwiches arranged on a three-tiered plate between them.

“Oh, Aunt—” Marina sighed. “I can’t tell you how much!”

Margherita just smiled. “Well, in that case, I think we should complete the job. What do you say to a new hat, gloves, and shoes to go with it all? Your mother sent a real surprise, but I’ve hidden it, and you’ll just have to wait.”

Marina had no thoughts for future surprises in the face of present generosity. “But—Aunt Margherita—isn’t all that—expensive?” she faltered.

Margherita laughed. “All right, I’ll confess. This year I finally convinced your mother to entrust the purchase of at least some of your Christmas presents to me. Oh, don’t worry, you’ll be able to give your Uncle Sebastian his usual largesse of painting supplies, but I pointed out, providentially it seems, that you were getting older and probably would start to need a more extensive wardrobe than I could produce. And that your mother, not being here, could hardly be expected to purchase anything for you that would actually fit. So although some of this is from us, the rest will be from Alanna and Hugh.”

“Ah.” She nibbled the corner off a potted-shrimp sandwich, much relieved. “In that case—”

Margherita laughed. “I know that look! And I knew very well that you would be more tempted by the bookstore than the seamstress!”

She flushed. “But I would like a hat. And gloves. And shoes.”

Then recklessly, “And silk stockings and corset-covers and all new underthings!”

“And you shall have them,” Margherita promised merrily. “But I am very glad that your uncles are off on their own errands, because by the time this day is out, they would have perished of ennui!”

Chapter Seven

BOXING Day was one of Marina’s favorite days of the Christmas season, second only to Christmas itself. Perhaps this was because she really enjoyed giving gifts—not quite as much as receiving them, but she did take a great deal of pleasure from seeing the enjoyment that her gifts gave.

Traditionally, Boxing Day, December 26, was the day when those who were better off than others boxed up their old clothing and other things and distributed them to the poor—or at least, to their servants or the tenants on their property. But the inhabitants of Blackbird Cottage had a kindlier version of that tradition. No secondhand, worn-out things were ever packed up in the boxes they put together; instead, in odd moments throughout the year, they all had projects a-making that were intended to make those who weren’t likely to get anything on Christmas a little happier on Boxing Day.

Uncle Thomas carved kitchen implements and other useful objects of wood and horn, as well as wooden boats, trains, tops, and dolls. Uncle Sebastian painted the toys, constructed wonderful kites, and used his skill at stretching canvas to stretch parchment and rawhide scraped paper-thin over frames to be mounted in open windows. Not as transparent as glass, perhaps, but tougher, and his frames were actually identical to the old medieval “windows” that had been in use by the well-to-do in ancient times. They kept the winter wind out of a poor man’s cottage better than wooden shutters, and at least permitted some light to shine within during the day. Aunt Margherita knitted scarves, shawls, and stockings with the ends of her skeins of wool. And it was Marina’s pleasure to clothe the dolls, rig sails to the boats, and stitch female underthings and baby’s clothing. There were always babies to be clothed, for the one thing that the poor never lacked was mouths to feed and bodies to clothe.

As for the underthings—well, she considered that a form of comfort for the heart, if not the body. She knew how much better it could make a girl feel, even if she was wearing second-hand garments, to have brand new underthings with an embroidered forget—me—knot border to make them special. Many a village girl had gone into service with a set or two of Marina’s gifts proudly folded in her little clothing-box, knowing that she would have something none of the other maids she would serve with would have—unless, of course, they were from Killatree as well. And many a poor (but proud) village bride had gone to a laborer-husband with a carefully hoarded set of those dainty things in her dower-chest, or worn beneath her Sunday dress (if she had one) to serve as the “something new” on her wedding-day.

Small things, perhaps, but they were new. Not secondhand, not worn threadbare, not out of the attic or torn, stained, or ill-made. For no few of the parish poor, this was the only time in their lives they ever got anything new.

So, on Boxing Day, Marina and Margherita drove down to the village with the pony-cart full of bundles of stockings and gloves, scarves and shawls, useful things and toys, heading down to the Parson, who would see that their gifts were distributed to those who needed them for another year. This year, Uncle Thomas had added something to his carvings; Hired John’s son had expressed an interest in learning carpentry, and the uncles had put him to making stools and boot-jacks. If the legs were a trifle uneven, that was quickly remedied; and those of his efforts that he didn’t care to keep—and how many people could actually use twenty stools and boot-jacks?—went into the cart as well.

Marina wore the “secret” present from her mother and father—a magnificent beaver cape, warm and soft, like nothing she’d ever had for winter before. She needed it; the temperature had plummeted just before Christmas, and it had snowed. Christmas Eve had resembled a storybook illustration, with snow lying thickly on the ground and along the limbs of the evergreens. The snow remained, softening the landscape, but making life even harder for the poor, if that was possible.

Marina yawned behind her glove, while Margherita drove. She had a faint headache as well as feeling fatigue-fogged and a little dull, but she was determined not to let it spoil the day for her. The cold air did wake her up a little, but it hadn’t eased the headache as she had hoped.

Well, Uncle Sebastian’s gone for the day. When we get home again, perhaps I’ll try taking a nap, since he won’t need me to pose.

For the past several nights, she hadn’t slept at all well. At first she’d put it down to pre-Christmas nerves; now she wasn’t certain what it was. She was certainly tired enough when it came time to go to bed, and she fell asleep without any trouble at all. But she just couldn’t stay asleep; she half-woke a dozen times a night.

It was nothing even as concrete as that dream she’d had of waking in the middle of the night—just a sense that something was awry, or something was about to go wrong, and that she should be able to decipher what was wrong and set it right if only she knew how. She would fall asleep perfectly content, and the feeling would ooze through her dreams all night, making them anything but restful.

It will all stop when Elizabeth comes back, she told herself, stifling yet another yawn. And I will not let this ruin the day. And then her aunt turned to look at her, she managed to smile with real pleasure.

The parson was supposed to be the one distributing all of the largesse of Boxing Day, but over the years the poor children of the village and the farm-cottages had come to learn just who it was that made those marvelous toys and came to see to their own distribution of Blackbird Cottage’s contribution to the Boxing Day spoils.

Life had never been easy for the poor, but it seemed to Marina that in these latter days, it had become nearly impossible. Certainly in all of the volumes of history and social commentary she’d read over the years (and in certain liberal-minded newspapers that occasionally made their way into the house) the authors had said things that agreed with her assessment. The poor these days were poorer; their conditions harder, their diet worse, their options fewer, their hours of work longer for less return.

It had probably begun in the days of the Corn Laws and the Enclosure Act—every village used to have its common, and anyone who lived there had a right to graze a sheep, a goat, a cow, or even geese there. Villagers used to have the right to run a pig or two in the local gentry’s forest, fattening on whatever it could forage. They had rights to gather fallen wood for their fires, fallen nuts for their larders, glean grain left behind after harvest. With that, and with their cottage gardens, common laborers on the gentry’s farms could have enough extra—meat from fowl or beast, eggs, perhaps milk and butter and cheese, and the garden vegetables—so that meager wages could be stretched to make a decent living. But one by one, the commons were enclosed, leaving cottagers with nothing to feed their geese and hens, their sheep or single cow. Then the swine were chased from the now-fenced forests in favor of deer and rabbits that the lord of the manor valued more than the well-being of humans. With the forests fenced and guarded by gamekeepers, you couldn’t gather fallen sticks or nuts without being accused of poaching, and the penalty for poaching was prison. Mechanical reapers replaced men with scythes and rakes who cared about leaving a bit behind for a widow or old man. And wages stayed the same… but somehow, the cottage rent crept upwards though the cottages themselves weren’t usually improved. And heaven help you if the breadwinner took sick or was hurt too badly to work—as happened far too often among farm laborers. Rights to live in a farm cottage were only good so long as someone in the family actually worked on the farm. If the husband died or became disabled and you didn’t have an unmarried son old enough to take his father’s place, you lost your home as well as your income. Then what were your options? Parishes used to have a few cottages for those who’d been thrown on the charity of the parish, but more and more those were replaced with workhouses where families were broken up and forced to live in male and female dormitories, and both sexes were put to backbreaking work to “repay” the parish for their hard beds and scanty food.

Things were not much better if, say, the breadwinner worked on the railway as a laborer. The wages were higher, but the work was more dangerous—and yes, there were railway workers’ cottages, but if your man lost his job or was too sick or hurt to keep it—like the farm laborer, you lost your home as well as your income.

As for other sorts of laborers, well, they didn’t even have cottage-rights.

There was no factory nearby, but Marina had read plenty about them—those “dark, satanic mills” vilified by William Blake, where men, women, and children worked twelve hour shifts in dangerous conditions for a pittance. Entire families had to labor just to earn enough for rent, food, and a little clothing. Yet more and more country folk were having to turn to factory and mill-work in the cities just to survive. The owners of great estates were finding it more profitable to turn their tenant-farmers out and farm their own property with the help of the new machines—there were more hands to work the land than there were jobs to give them.

Or so Marina surmised from what she had read; she only had experience of country folk and country poverty, which was certainly harsh enough. There wasn’t anything to spare in the budget of a cottager for toys for the kiddies. Small wonder there was a crowd waiting at the parsonage, and a cheer went up at the sight of their pony-cart.

When the pony came up alongside the front gate of the parsonage and Marina and her aunt climbed down off the seat, the children surrounded them, voices piping shrill greetings. And very blunt greetings as well—children, especially young ones, not being noted for patience or tact. “Merry Chrissmuss, mum!” vied with “Gie’ us a present, mum?”

For all their pinched faces and threadbare clothing, their lack of familiarity with soap and water, they were remarkably good about not grabbing. They waited for Marina and Margherita to throw back the blanket covering the toys, waited their turns, though they crowded around with pleading in their eyes. Margherita took the little girls, and Marina the boys—Margherita allowed the girls to cluster around her, but the boys were rowdier, and soon began elbowing each other in an effort to get closer to get the choicest goods.

Marina fixed them with a stern glance, which quelled some of the shoving. “You’ve all done this before,” she said sternly. “I shouldn’t have to tell you the rules, now, should I?”

One cheeky little fellow grinned, and piped up. “No, miss. We gotter line up. Littlest first.”

“Well, if you know, why aren’t you doing it?” she retorted—and like magic (actually, not like magic, for order came immediately and without effort on her part) they had formed the prerequisite line. Marina gave the cheeky lad a smile and a broad wink, and reached for a wooden horse with wheels for the youngest in line. She paid most attention, not to the boy to whom she was giving a toy, but to the ones behind him. Eyes would light up when a particularly coveted object appeared, and she tried to match child to toy. All the children got kites except for the very smallest who couldn’t have managed one even by spring; Sebastian had done very well this year in the kite department. That meant that each child got two toys this year, instead of just one, so this was going to be quite a banner year so far as they were concerned. Boys also got a pair of mittens each, fastened to each other by a braided string so that they couldn’t lose one of the pair unless they cut the string. Boys being boys, they usually didn’t bother to put them on, either.

Truly small children, toddlers too young to talk, were usually in the charge of an older sister. It sometimes made her worry to see girls not even ten with a baby bundled in a shawl on their backs, but what could be done? If their mothers weren’t working, they were probably taking care of an infant, and someone had to watch the next-youngest.

In general, these toddlers were too young even for wooden dolls, but based on the number of babies in the previous year, Marina usually had enough soft cloth dollies (for the girls) and lambs (for the boys) to satisfy everyone.

Boys got their toys and ran off shouting with greed and glee; over on Margherita’s side of the pony-cart, Marina’s aunt was doing her own distribution. Besides the dolls and kites, girls each got woolen scarves that they could use as shawls; they seemed to cherish the bright colors and the warmth as much as the playthings.

It didn’t take long to give out the toys, and when there were no more children waiting, there were still some toys left, which was a fine thing. There were probably kiddies too far from the village to get here afoot, especially through the snow; the parson would know who they were, and see to it that they got playthings, too. He wouldn’t be as careful about matching toy to child as Marina and her aunt were, but he was a kindly soul, and he would see that the farthest-flung members of his flock were cared for.

Only when the children were gone did the parson come out and collect the boxes, with a broad smile for both of them. Marina suspected that he took note of the decided lack of secondhand and much-worn articles in their offerings, and respected and appreciated their sensitivity. “My favorite artists!” he exclaimed, hefting a box of kitchen implements, and nodding to the hired man to take up a stack of window-panels. “As ever, thank you. You ladies and our gentlemen are generous to a fault.”

“As ever, it was a pleasure,” Margherita replied, with a cheerful smile. “With Marina all grown up, we would miss the fun of seeing children with new toys if not for this.”

“Happy hearts and warm hands; you do a fine job of tending to both ends of the child,” said parson’s wife, who came trundling up, a bundle of shawls, to take in a box of stockings.

“And we leave their souls in your capable hands,” Marina laughed.

The parson caught sight of the stack of stools, and grinned. “Well, well. Have you managed to persuade John Parkin the Younger to contribute as well?”

“It wasn’t a matter of persuading,” Marina said, laughing, each laugh coming out in a puff of white on the still air. “We told him that if he supplied the materials when Uncle Thomas promised to teach him joinery, he could keep what he made—but if we supplied it, what he made would be going out on Boxing Day!”

“Now,” Margherita smiled. “Don’t make him sound so ungenerous. I think he quite liked the idea. He certainly wasn’t averse to it.”

“And he’ll have a trade when he’s through, which is more than his father has,” the parson’s wife pointed out, in that no-nonsense way that village parson’s wives, accustomed to a lifetime of making do on the meager proceeds of their husband’s livings, often seemed to acquire. “I don’t see where he has anything to complain of!”

When the cart was unloaded, they declined the invitation to tea—the parson’s resources were strained enough as it was—and took their places in the cart again. The pony was pleased to turn around, and made brisk time back to Blackbird Cottage.

But without warning, just as they passed the halfway point between the village and the cottage, something—happened.

Marina gasped, as she reeled back in her seat beneath the unexpected impact of a mental and emotional blow.

It was like nothing she had ever felt before; a sickening plunging of her heart, disorientation, nausea, and an overwhelming feeling of doom that she could not explain.

She clutched suddenly at her aunt’s arm, fought down a surge of panic, and invoked her strongest shields.

To no effect. In fact, if anything, the sensation of dread increased tenfold.

“What’s wrong?” Margherita exclaimed, startled.

“I don’t know—” Marina choked out. “But something is. Something is horribly, horribly wrong—”

The feeling didn’t pass; if anything, it deepened, and she closed her eyes to fight against the awful plummeting feeling in her stomach, the rising panic.

“Hold on—I’ll get you home,” Margherita said, and slapped the reins on the pony’s back, cracking the whip above its ears and startling it into a trot. Marina clung to her aunt as to a rock in a flood, struggling against fear, and completely unable to think past it.

“Oh no,” the phrase, loaded with dismay, that burst from her Aunt’s lips, made her open her eyes again. They were nearly home—they had rounded the corner and the wall and gate of Blackbird Cottage were in sight—But there were strangers there.

A huge black coach drawn by a pair of expensive carriage horses stood before the gate. And the sight of the strange carriage made her throat close with a panic worse than anything she had ever felt before.

In the space of a single hour, Marina had been plunged into a nightmare. The problem was, she was awake.

She sat on the sofa in the once-familiar parlor that had seemed a haven of familiar contentment, between Aunt Margherita and Uncle Thomas.

But in the last hour, every vestige of what she had thought was familiar had been ripped away from her.

She sat, every muscle rigid, every nerve paralyzed, her stomach knot and her heart a cold lump in the middle of her chest.

On three chairs across from them sat four strangers, three of them in near-identical black suits, all three of them with the same stern, cold faces, the same expressionless eyes. They could have been poured from the same mold. They were lawyers, they said. They had come here because of her. They were lawyers who, from this moment on, were in charge of her—and her parents’ estate.

Estate.

For her parents, it seemed, had made their last trip to Tuscany. There had been a dreadful accident, which at the moment, mattered not at all to her. She couldn’t think of that; it meant nothing to her.

What mattered was that the people she had called aunt and uncle all her life were nothing more than family friends—who, because they had no ties of blood, had absolutely no rights whatsoever with regard to her, and never mind that they had raised her.

She was being taken from the only home and people she had ever known, to go to a place she had only seen in her uncle’s sketches. Oakhurst. Where total strangers would be in charge of her, telling her what to do, controlling her for the next three years. And she had no choice.

“The law,” said the tallest and thinnest of the three, “Is not to be trifled with.”

Her rigidity and paralysis broke in a storm of emotion. “But I don’t understand!” Marina wailed, clinging to her Aunt’s arm. “Why can’t I stay? I’ve lived here all my life! I’m happy here! You can’t—you can’t make me go away! I won’t go! I won’t!”

Her face was streaked now with the tears that poured from her eyes; her eyes blurred and burned, and she wanted to get the pony-whip and beat these horrible men out of the house, out of her house, and drive them back to whatever clerkly hell they had come from. For surely no one who could say things like they had to her could come from anywhere other than hell. She was not trifling with anything—they were the ones who were trifling with her, treating her like a goose that could be bundled up in a basket and taken wherever they cared to take her and set down in a new place and never notice!

“I won’t go!” she repeated, hysterically, turning to the fourth stranger in the room, and the only one standing. “I won’t! You can’t make me!”

The policeman from Holsworthy looked uncomfortable; he inserted a finger in the collar of his tunic and tugged at it, as if it was too tight. The three lawyers, however, were utterly unmoved. They could have been waxwork figures for all the emotion they displayed.

“We have explained that, miss, several times,” the one who did all the talking—the tallest, thinnest, and coldest—said yet again. He spoke to her in tones that one would use with the feebleminded. “With your parents dead intestate, that is, without leaving a will, and your nearest relative perfectly willing and able to assume guardianship, you cannot legally remain with—these people.” He looked down his long nose at Margherita and Thomas. “They have no blood ties with you, and no legal standing. Whatever your parents may have meant by boarding you with them, it doesn’t matter to the law. Your legal aunt is not only prepared to assume responsibility for you, she has sued to do so, and the court has agreed. That is the law, and you must obey it. This policeman is here to see that you do.”

It was very clear from his expression that he did not approve of her current situation; that he did not approve of artists in general, and her aunt and uncle in particular. That, in fact, he considered artists to be only a little above actors and thieves in social standing.

Marina searched her aunt and uncle’s faces, and saw nothing there but grief and resignation—and fear. There was no hope for her from them.

If she had allowed her body to do what her mind screamed at her to do, she’d have been beating those horrible, horrible men with a broom—or jumping up and running, running off to hide in the orchard until she froze to death or they went away without her.

Her heart pounded with panic, and her throat was so choked with tears she could hardly get any words out.

I’ll call up magic! I’ll call up Undines and Sylphs and I’ll drive them away!

Oh yes; she’d call up magic—call up Undines that could not function out of water and Sylphs they could not see. And do what? If these—these lawyers had been mages, perhaps she could have frightened them—if they had been the least bit sensitive, perhaps she could have influenced their minds and made them go away. But it would not be for long. The next time there would be more lawyers, and more policemen. And there would be a next time. The law was not to be trifled with.

It was all so impossible—In a single moment, her life had been turned completely upside down, and no one was doing anything to help her. This couldn’t be right! This just couldn’t!

Her parents were dead.

How could it have happened? It seemed like something out of a Gothic novel—there had been a horrible accident in Italy—a boating accident, the lawyers said. They’d drowned. Oh, they were definitely dead, their bodies had washed up on the beach within a day, and there were dozens of people to identify them.

They hadn’t left a will. How could they not have left a will? Aunt Margherita seemed stunned, too stunned even to think; she hadn’t said a dozen words since the lawyers broke the news. But there was no will, and her guardians were not her legal guardians.

Somewhere in the jumble of lawyers, estate managers, and men of business had been someone who had known where she was, and when her real aunt—someone she had never even heard of until now—had been told of the accident, had been told that Marina was living here, she had taken charge of everything. She—Arachne Chamberten—had sent these lawyers to take her away.

Now this person that Marina had never heard of, never seen, and never wanted to see, was legally in charge of her, her property, her very life until she turned twenty-one.

And this person decreed that she must leave Blackbird Cottage and go to Oakhurst. Immediately. With no argument or opposition to be tolerated.

Aunt Margherita and Uncle Thomas sat there like a pair of stunned sheep. Of course they were in shock—it had always been clear to Marina that her aunt and uncles considered her real mother and father to be their dearest friends, even though they only had contact with them through letters anymore—but Hugh and Alanna were dead, and Marina needed them now!

And they might just as well have been waxwork figures for all the help they were giving her!

“I don’t want to leave!” she wailed, looking desperately at the policeman, fixing on him as the only possible person that might be moved by an appeal.

“Sorry, miss,” he mumbled, turning very red. “I know you’re upset-like. I mean, know it’s a shock, to lose your parents like this—”

I don’t care about that! she screamed inside. Don’t you understand? My real parents are here, and you’re trying to take me away from them!

But—she couldn’t say that, much less scream it.

“Miss, it’s for your own good,” the policeman said desperately. “These gennelmun know their business, and it’s for your own good. You oughtn’t to be with them as isn’t your own flesh and blood, not now. And it’s the law, miss. It’s the law.”

Her throat closed up entirely, and she felt the jaws of a terrible trap closing on her; she understood how the rabbit felt in the snare, the mouse as the talons of an owl descended on it. if only Uncle Sebastian was here! He would do something, surely—But Sebastian was off in Plymouth and wasn’t expected back until tomorrow—

There could not have been a better time for them to arrive, or a worse time for her. Her chest ached, and black despair closed down around her.

The lawyers had made it abundantly clear that they were not going to wait that long—that in fact, if Marina balked at going, the policeman that they had brought with them was perfectly prepared tuff her into their carriage by force. She saw that in their eyes—

—and in his. He would apologize, he would regret having to manhandle her, but he’d do it all the same.

No escape—no escape—

They couldn’t have gotten the Killatree constable to go along with this—kidnapping! she thought frantically. Which was probably why they had brought one from Holsworthy. A Holsworthy man wouldn’t know them. A Holsworthy man wouldn’t have to answer to all of Killatree tomorrow for helping strangers tear her away from Blackbird Cottage and her guardians.

“Pack the girl’s things,” said the second lawyer coldly—the first words he’d spoken so far—looking over Margherita’s shoulder at Sarah and Jenny. “And hurry up about it. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

“Ma’am?” Sarah said, looking not at the lawyer, but at Margherita.

“Do it,” the third lawyer snapped, “Unless you’d care to cool your heels in gaol for obstructing us in our duty, woman.”

Shocked, angry, Sarah’s gaze snapped to the policeman, who turned redder still, but nodded, affirming what the lawyer had said.

Sarah made a choking noise, and Jenny turned white.

“But—” Marina’s spirit failed her utterly, and she slid to the floor, sobbing, her heart breaking.

She remained dissolved in tears while Sarah and Jenny packed for her, huddled against the seat of the sofa. Margherita just held her, speechlessly, and Uncle Thomas sat, white-faced, as if someone had shot him and he hadn’t quite realized that he was dead yet.

She sobbed uncontrollably while Hired John grudgingly loaded the trunks and boxes on the top of the waiting carriage. She wept and clung to Margherita, until the policeman actually pried her fingers off of her aunt’s arm, and pulled her away, wrapping her cape around her, ushering her into the carriage, almost shoving her inside.

There was nothing in her mind now but grief and despair. She continued to weep, inconsolable, tears pouring down her cheeks in the icy air as the carriage rolled away, leaning out of the window to wave, hoping for a miracle to save her.

But no miracle came, and the horses continued to carry her away—away—

She continued to wave, for as long as she could see her aunt and uncle standing stiff and still in the middle of the road, until the road took a turning and they vanished from view.

Then her strength left her. She collapsed back into the corner of her seat and sobbed, sobbed until her throat was sore and her eyes blurred, sobbed until her eyes were dry, and her cheeks raw with burning tears.

Through it all, two of the three detestable lawyers sat across from her, the third next to her, with folded arms, and stony faces. If they felt anything, it certainly didn’t show. They were the waxworks, with their cold faces and hearts of straw.

They might claim that they were lawyers—but they were more and less than that. As much as that policemen, they had been sent to make sure she didn’t escape, to make sure she was delivered into captivity, a prisoner of her parents’ lack of foresight and the implacable will of a woman who was a complete stranger.

And so she wept, as darkness fell, and the carriage rolled on, and her captors, her jailers, watched her with the cold eyes of serpents in the night.

Chapter Eight

THE carriage rolled on through the night, long past even the most fashionable of supper-hours; evidently the Unholy Trinity were taking no chances on Marina making a bolt for freedom. The carriage rattled over roads not improved by the snow, swaying when it hit ruts, which would have thrown her against her unwelcome seat-mate if Marina hadn’t wedged herself into place. She continued to huddle in her corner, as far as possible from them, back to them, her face turned into the corner where the seat met the side of the carriage, aching legs jammed against the floorboards to hold herself there. By the time darkness fell, she was no longer weeping and sobbing hysterically, but only because she was too exhausted for further emoting. Instead, she stared dull-eyed at the few inches of window curtain in front of her nose while slow, hot tears continued to burn down her raw cheeks. After sunset, she could no longer see even the curtains. The lawyers didn’t bother trying to talk to her; leaning forward to put their heads together, they whispered among themselves in disapproving tones, but said nothing aloud. Apparently it was enough for them that they had her in keeping.

They can’t keep me from writing, can they? They can’t stop me from sending letters—

Well, actually, they could, or rather, her Aunt Arachne could just by refusing to allow her pocket money for postage. It was very clear from the Trinity’s attitude that they had been completely appalled by the household that they had found her in. Evidently Margherita, Thomas, and Sebastian were considered disreputable at best, and immoral at worst.

The Trinity would not have come as they had and acted as they had done if her new guardian had any intention of allowing her contact with the old ones, that much was blindingly clear from the way she had been handled—or, rather, manhandled. Whatever they had expected when they arrived, her situation had evidently fed right into their prejudices and preconceptions. They had expected to find a loose, disreputable, eccentric household quite beyond the pale of polite society, and that was exactly what they’d seen. Which probably contributed to the speed with which they bundled her out of there… their narrow little minds must have been near to splitting, and they must have been frantic to get her away.

And if Aunt Arachne ever finds out I was posing for Uncle Sebastian, she’ll use that as a further weapon against my family.

Given how quickly she’d been hustled away, she could well picture the absolute opposition to any attempt on her part to return. She could see no way that she could win back home—not until she was of age and could do what she wanted.

Horrible little respectable minds!

Three years—it seemed an eternity. She stared into the blackness in front of her nose and tried to think. What to do? Was there, in fact, anything that she could do?

No. And imprisoning me is going to be “for my own good.” How can you possibly argue with that? Worse, everyone, absolutely everyone, would agree with them! Taking me away from “corrupting and decadent influences,” because everyone knows what artists are like.

More tears flowed down her face, and her throat and chest were so tight she had trouble breathing.

It took her a moment to realize that the carriage was slowing; moment later, it came to a stop. A hand tapped her elbow peremptorily.

“Miss Roeswood, we have paused for a moment at a post-tavern,” a cold voice said distantly, its tone one of complete indifference. “Have you any—ah—urgent requirements? Do you need food or drink?”

She shook her head, refusing to turn to look at him.

“Then each of us will take it in turn to remain to keep you company while the others refresh themselves,” the lawyer said, and settled back into his seat next to her, springs creaking, while the other two clambered out of the coach. Since she was wedged into the corner furthest from the door, and facing away from it, all that she saw was the reflection of a little lamplight on the curtains as the door opened. There was a little, a very little, sound of voices from the tavern itself, then the door shut again. She might have been alone, but for the breathing of her unwelcome companion.

She wondered what they would have done if she had needed to use a water closet. Probably escorted me to the door and locked me inside, she thought bitterly.

Her guard was shortly replaced by one of the other two, who had brought food and drink with him by the smell of it. She wasn’t interested in anything like eating; in fact, the strong aromas of onion and cold, greasy beef from his side of the carriage made her feel ill and faint. He ate and drank with much champing of jaws and without offering her any, which (even though she had refused to move and had indicated she had no needs) was hardly gentlemanly.

Her stomach turned over, and she put one hand to her throat to loosen the collar of her cape. Her head ached; her eyes were sore, her cheeks and nose felt as if the skin on them was burned or raw. She shut her eyes and tried to shut her ears to the sound of stolid jaws chewing away at a Ploughman’s lunch and a knife cutting bits off the onion and turnip that were part of it.

They were not going to stop for long, it seemed. The second lawyer returned to the carriage as well in a few moments, and then, hard on his heels the third joined his compatriots. Once he was inside, the third banged on the roof of the conveyance by way of telling the unseen coachman to move on, and the carriage lurched back into motion again. They really weren’t wasting any time in getting her away.

She rested her burning forehead on the side of the carriage and pulled her warm cloak tighter around her shoulders, not against the chill of the night, but against the emotional chill within the walls of the carriage. Were they going to travel all night?

Evidently, they were.

The next stop, a few hours later, brought the same inquiry, which she answered with the same headshake. It also brought a change of horses, as if this carriage was a mail coach. No expense was being spared, it seemed, to make sure she was brought directly into the control of her new guardian.

I hope she’s paying these horrible men next to nothing. From the type of food they’d brought into the carriage—the cheapest sort of provender, a Ploughman’s lunch of bread, pickle, onion, a raw turnip, and a bit of greasy beef or strong cheese—it seemed that might be the case.

I hope it turns to live eels in their stomachs. I hope the carriage makes them sick. She wondered, at that moment, if there was something she could do magically to make them ill, or at least uncomfortable. But she hadn’t been taught anything like that—probably because Elizabeth wouldn’t approve of doing something that unkind even to automatons like these three.

Her spirits sank even further, if that was possible, when she realized that she couldn’t even use magic to communicate with her former guardians. She hadn’t been taught the direct means. There were indirect means, messages sent via Elemental creatures, but hers weren’t theirs. The Undines, in particular, wouldn’t approach Uncle Sebastian—theirs was the antagonist Element.

But—what about Elizabeth?

Surely she could send to Elizabeth for help, with the Undines as intermediaries—

But not until spring. Not until the water thawed again. The Sylphs might move in winter, but not the Water Elementals, or at least, not the ones she knew. And she couldn’t count on the Sylphs—in fact, she hadn’t even seen any since that odd nightmare. She could call them, but they wouldn’t necessarily come.

Hope died again, and she stopped even trying to think. She simply stared at the darkness, endured the pain of her aching head, and braced herself against the pitching and swaying of the carriage.

Eventually, snoring from the opposite side told her that somehow at least two of her captors had managed to fall asleep. She hoped, viciously, that the coach would hit a particularly nasty pothole and send them all to the floor, or knock their heads together.

But in keeping with the rest of the day, nothing of the sort happened.

Hours later, they changed horses again. By this time she was in a complete fog of grief and fatigue, and couldn’t have put a coherent thought together no matter how hard she tried. And she didn’t try very hard. In all that time she hadn’t eaten, drunk, or slept, but this time when the rude tap on her shoulder came, she asked for something to drink.

One of them handed her a flask, and she drank the contents without thinking. It tasted like cold tea, heavily creamed and sugared—but it wasn’t very long before she realized that there had been something else in that flask besides tea. Her muscles went slack; foggy as her mind had been, it went almost blank, and she felt herself slipping over sideways in her seat to be caught by one of the repellent lawyers.

Horribly, whatever it was didn’t put her to sleep, or not entirely. It just made her lose all conscious control over her body. She could still hear, and if she’d been able to get her eyes open, she’d have been able to see. But sensation was at one remove, and as she went limp and was picked up and laid out on the carriage seat, she heard the Unholy Trinity talking openly, but as if they were in the far distance. And although she could hear the words, she couldn’t make sense of them.

She heard the crowing of roosters in farmyards that they passed, and knew that it must be near dawn. And shortly after that, the carriage made a right-angle turn, and the sound of the wheels changed.

Then it stopped.

The lawyers got out.

She fought to open her eyes, to no avail.

Someone else entered the carriage, and picked her up as if she weighed nothing. She heard the sound of gravel under heavy boots, then the same boots walking on stone. It felt as if the person carrying her was going up a set of stairs, but though she tried once again to regain control of her body, or at least open her eyes, her head lolled against his shoulder—definitely a he—and she could do nothing.

A door opened in front of them, and closed behind them. “She drank it all?” asked a cool, female voice.

“Yes, mum,” replied a male voice, equally dispassionate. One of the Trinity. Not the person who was carrying her, who remained silent.

“Good. Come, James, follow me.”

The sound of light footsteps preceding them. Another set of stairs, a landing, more stairs. Another door.

She might not even be able to open her eyes, but there was nothing wrong with her nose. And by the scent of a fire with fircones in it, of beeswax candles and lavender, she was in a bedchamber now. “This is the young Miss Roeswood, Mary Anne,” said the female voice. “She’s ill with grief, and she’s drunk medicine that will make her sleep. Undress her and put her to bed.”

The man carrying her stooped—her head lolled back—and laid her on a soft, but very large bed, with a muffled grunt.

The light footsteps and the heavy went away; the door opened and closed again. Someone began taking off her clothing, as if she was an over-large doll, and redressed her in a nightgown. The same someone—who must have been very strong—rolled her to one side, pulled the covers back, rolled her back in place, and covered her over.

Then, more footsteps receding. The door opening and closing again. Silence.

The state she drifted into then was not exactly sleep, and not precisely waking. She seemed to drift in a fog in which she could see and hear nothing, and nothing she did affected it. There were others in this fog—she could hear them in the distance, but she could never find them, and when she called out to them, her voice was swallowed up by the endless mist.

It was, to be truthful, a horrible experience. Not at all restful. A deadly fatigue weighed her down, a malaise invaded her spirit, and despair filled her heart.

Finally, true sleep came, bringing oblivion, and with it, relief from her aching heart, at least for a time.

She woke with a start, the very feel of the bed telling her that yesterday’s nightmare had been no thing of dreams, but of reality, even before she opened her eyes. And when she did open them, it was to find that she was staring up into the ochre velvet canopy of a huge, curtained bed. She sat up.

The room in which she found herself was as large as any four of the bedrooms in Blackbird Cottage put together. It had been furnished in the French style of a King Louis—she couldn’t think of which one—all ornate baroque curlicues and spindly-legged chairs. The paper on the wall was watered silk in yellow, the cushions and coverlet more of the ochre velvet. There was a fireplace with a yellow marble mantle and hearth directly across from the foot of the bed, and a woman with brown hair tucked under a lace cap, a thin-faced creature in a crisp black-and-white maid’s uniform and a cool manner, sitting in a chair beside it, reading. When Marina sat up, she put her book down, and stood up.

“Awake, miss?” she asked, with no inflection whatsoever.

No, I’m sleepwalking, Marina thought with irritation. The headache of yesterday in her temples had been joined by one at the back of her head, and whatever vile nastiness had been in the tea had left her with a foul taste in her mouth. But she answered the question civilly enough. “Yes, I am now. How long have I been asleep?”

The maid allowed a superior smile to cross her lips. “You’ve slept the clock around, miss. It’s midmorning, two days after Boxing Day. But it’s just as well you were asleep,” the woman continued, turning and going to a wardrobe painted dark ochre, and ornamented with gilded scrollwork. “Madam has had her modiste here to make you some clothing fit to wear, and she only finished the first few items and delivered them an hour ago. You’re in mourning, after all, and you need mourning frocks. And those things you brought with you—well, they weren’t suitable.” A sniff relegated her entire wardrobe to something not worth using as rags, much less being fit to wear.

But the maid’s words could only lead Marina to one horrified conclusion. “You didn’t throw them out!” she exclaimed. “Not my clothes!”

The maid did not trouble to answer. Out of the wardrobe came a black velvet skirt, severely cut with a slight train, and a heavy black silk blouse, high-necked, and trimmed at wrists and neck with narrow black lace. Out of the drawers of a chest next to it came white silk underthings, black stockings, a corset, black satin slippers. All these were laid out at the end of the bed, and no sooner had Marina turned back the coverlet and stood up, then the maid pounced on her.

There could be no other description. Before Marina could make a move to reach for anything herself, the nightdress was whisked over her head, leaving her naked and shivering, and the maid was holding up the drawers for her to step into.

Marina had always wondered what it was like to be dressed by a lady’s maid, and now she was finding out with a vengeance. It was exactly like being a doll, and the maid was just as impersonal about the job as a woman in a toy-shop clothing one of the toys for display. In fact, the maid was ruthlessly efficient; before Marina had time to blink, the corset was on her, she had been turned to face the bed, and the woman was pulling at the laces with her knee in the small of Marina’s back! And she was pulling tightly, much more tightly than the dressmaker in Holsworthy.

“Stop!” Marina protested, as her waist was squeezed into a circumference two sizes smaller than it had ever endured before. “I can’t breathe!”

“You’ve never been properly corseted, miss,” sniffed the maid, tugging harder. “Or you’d know that a lady doesn’t need to puff and wheeze like a farm wench in a field. Shallow breaths, miss. A lady looks as if she isn’t breathing at all.”

Giving a final tug, the maid allowed Marina to stand straight up again—indeed, the corset hardly allowed any other posture. The laces were tied; three stiff petticoats, the last one of rustling black silk, came next. Then a chemise. And finally, the shirtwaist and skirt.

Feeling faint from lack of air, Marina was steered to a chair beside a dressing table with a mirror above it, both painted in dark ocher and ornamented with those baroque gold curlicues. The maid deftly unbraided her hair, brushed it out just as ruthlessly as she had done everything else and with a fine disregard for any pain caused when she encountered tangles, and proceeded to put it up in one of the pompadour hair styles that Marina had seen only in newspaper sketches. She had always longed to see her own hair like this—the arrangements looked so soft, and so very smart.

She’d had no idea that getting her hair done up in the fashionable style would involve being stuck so full of sharp-pointed hairpins that she thought her scalp was bleeding from a dozen places before the maid was through.

The maid fastened a jet cameo at her throat, and a matching jet locket on a slender chain around her neck. “There,” she said at last, implying now you’re fit to be seen.

The person staring back at Marina from the mirror was no one she recognized. The face was drawn and very white, and huge violet eyes stared back at her, with faint blue rings beneath them. Her pallor was only accentuated by the black silk of her blouse. Her hair had been arranged in the upswept style most favored by the PBs, with their delicate heart-shaped faces. It didn’t suit Marina Roeswood.

“I’ll take you down to meet your aunt now, miss,” said the maid. “I am Mary Anne, and I will be your personal servant here from now on.”

Giving her no choice in the matter, apparently. Personal maid—or watchdog for her aunt?

My own personal maid. Why does it seem as if she’s higher in consequence than I am?

Perhaps, in this household, Mary Anne was.

“What happened to my things?” she asked, in a small voice, cowed by the icy correctness of the maid’s manner. “My clothing—my books, my instruments, and my music—”

Another of those superior sniffs, and the maid looked down her long nose at Marina. “Miss could not possibly expect to wear those—frocks—in public,” Mary Anne replied. “Madam said explicitly that they would not do, they would not do at all. Not the sort of thing miss would wish to encounter Madam’s friends while wearing. However, the rest of your things have been put away in your private parlor.” She waved her hand vaguely in the direction of the door. “Now, if you will please follow me, Madam wishes to speak with you.”

As if she had a choice.

She followed the maid, who led her through that door and into a sitting room furnished in opulent reds, with a Turkey carpet on the floor, the whole done up in the style of the early part of Queen Victoria’s reign. Quite frankly, Marina couldn’t think of a pair of rooms less likely to make a Water Master comfortable. The bedroom produced a heavy feeling, the parlor made her feel horribly warm. Together they made her feel stifled, smothered. The ceilings in these rooms were high, they must have been twelve feet or more, and yet she still felt closed in and overheated. And there wasn’t a chance that she’d be allowed to redecorate, either. She longed for her wonderful little room in Blackbird Cottage with an aching heart.

They walked for a good five minutes, going down a floor and all the way across a series of ever-more-opulent rooms. At the other end of the enormous house waited Arachne Chamberten, her new guardian.

Mary Anne opened a final door and motioned to Marina to enter as she stood aside. Still breathless, still feeling that her high collar was much too tight, Marina went in, and the door closed behind her.

In the center of a (relatively) small red room, in the exact middle of a carpet figured in red and black that looked to Marina’s frightened eyes like a bed of hot coals, was a large, highly-polished wooden desk of ebony. Behind that desk sat a stunningly beautiful woman. Her hair was as black and as glossy as the heavy black silk-satin of her gown. Her skin was as white and translucent as porcelain. When she looked up, her black eyes stared right through Marina, her red lips smiled, but the smile didn’t seem to reach beyond those lips.

She stood, and held out both hands. “Ah, my niece Marina, at last!” she said, in a sultry voice, warm as velvet laid before a fire. “You cannot know how deeply I regret the rift your parents saw fit to make with me; I saw you only once, at your christening, and never again. You have certainly changed greatly since that time.”

Marina felt her lips move stiffly into a parody of a polite smile as she walked forward. She extended one hand, intending only to offer a mere handshake to her aunt, but Arachne drew her forward, captured the other hand before Marina could snatch it out of reach and guided her to a chair beside her own behind the desk. Having both her cold hands, with skin roughened by the work she did in the kitchen and around the house, imprisoned in Arachne’s warm milk-smooth ones, felt distinctly uncomfortable. She tried to stiffen her own spine, and confronted Arachne’s knowing eyes. “What do you mean when you say ‘the rift my parents saw fit to make with you?’ I never heard of any rift,” she protested.

“And you never heard a word of me, did you?” Arachne countered. “That is precisely what I meant. Your father, who was my brother, and your Roeswood grandparents who were our father and mother, chose to cut me off from the family because of my marriage to Allan Chamberten. Perhaps it would be more charitable to say that it was my—our—parents’ fault, and poor Hugh, child that he was at the time, simply followed their example. So I bear him no ill will; I only wish that I had managed a reconciliation before this. But who could have foreseen that he and Alanna would come to such a tragic end?”

For a moment, Marina thought that she would reach for the black silk handkerchief tucked into the waistband of her skirt in what could only be a feigned show of grief. For if she had been so totally estranged from Hugh and Alanna, how could any grief she felt be anything but feigned?

But she did nothing of the sort. She only, sighed, and smiled, and squeezed Marina’s hands. “Well, you and I shall be remedying that wrong, will we not? I take my responsibility as your guardian quite seriously, you may be sure of that.”

“But I had guardians!” Marina burst out, angrily. “I was very happy there! Why did you send those horrible men—and policemen!—to kidnap me away from them? They were the people my parents chose to take care of me, not you!” She tried to wrench her hands away, but Arachne’s grip was so strong it couldn’t be broken.

Arachne bestowed the kind of pitying look on Marina that might be given a naughty child who had no notion of what she was saying. “My dear child, please. You are—at last—old enough to understand just how foolish your parents were—and how selfish.” She shook her head. “Just listen to me for a moment, please, and don’t interrupt. Are you under the impression that I don’t know what they did with you? Do you think that I am not aware that they simply deposited you in that hive of artists and left you there? That they never, not once, attempted to see you? That they never troubled to see to it that you received the kind of upbringing someone of your wealth and social position should have had? And why do you think that happened?”

Since those very questions had passed through her mind more than once (though not, perhaps, phrased in quite that way), Marina was held dumb, hypnotized by the questions, and by Arachne’s eyes. She shook her head slightly.

“Now, I do not know, not for certain,” Arachne said. “I know only what my inquiries have brought to light. Alanna is—was—sensitive. Overly so, perhaps. Certainly she was of a very nervous disposition, and your birth was hard on her—very, very hard. Something happened then that terrified her; I have been unable to discover what it was, but whatever the cause was, you, a mere infant at the time, were at the heart of it, and she sent you away, as far away from her as she could manage among her acquaintances.” Arachne shrugged, and the silk of her skirt rustled as she shifted in her chair. “I know that Hugh considered your artists to be friends, which was… something of a mistake, a social faux pas, in my opinion. I know that they were visiting at the time of Alanna’s fright, and I suspect that when the emergency occurred, your father would have given you into the keeping of whomsoever volunteered to take you. I do know you were literally shoved into Margherita Tarrant’s arms and sent away with whatever could be bundled up quickly into the cart that brought them here. I know this, because I have found witnesses among the servants who saw it happen. Presumably they were the only ones among the group that was visiting that were willing to accept the responsibility of an infant. For whatever reason, Alanna Roeswood could not bear the sight of you, and my brother chose his wife’s welfare over that of his daughter.”

The words struck her as hard as a rain of blows from a cane Marina could only sit with her hands limply in Arachne’s. Her head spun; this made altogether too much sense.

But what about those letters? All those letters?

“He should have found someone to care for you more in keeping with your rank and station, but he didn’t.” Arachne’s lips thinned. “I am not one to speak ill of the dead, but my brother, I fear, must have been weak of will. He allowed our parents to override him in the matter of myself, and he allowed his wife to dictate to him in the matter of you. I am sorry, my dear, but he could not have chosen a worse set of people to care for you. Oh, I know that they were fond of you—I know they did their best for you! But they have allowed you to run wild, they never sent you to a proper finishing school nor got you a governess to teach you, and they exposed you to all manner of improper persons and impossible manners. In the matter of your wardrobe alone—” Her lips thinned even more with disapproval “—well, the less said about that, the better. Except that those so-called ‘artistic reform tea-gowns’ might have been the mode—in a certain circle—years ago, but they most certainly are not now, and the mere wearing of them would expose you to the utmost ridicule.”

Marina dropped her eyes, her ears burning with embarrassment, torn between an instinctive urge to protest and the fear that her aunt was right. No matter what Elizabeth had said.

“Fortunately, by the standards of society, you are still a child, and your reputation has not suffered the irredeemable damage it would have if you were only a year older,” Arachne continued. “I hope that my brother had the sense to realize that; I more than hope, I know—indeed, some of the things among his papers informed me that he had laid plans to bring you home before your eighteenth birthday. And certainly, by now even poor Alanna must have realized her fears, her terrors, could not be attached to a grown young woman. So, in order to carry out his wishes, I merely brought them forward—realizing as I did, once his men of business told me where you had been deposited, that you could not be left there a moment longer without terrible damage to your reputation.” Once again, she squeezed Marina’s hands as Marina stared down at them. Marina raised her eyes to meet her aunt’s again, and Arachne smiled as she had before. “I knew you would, you must object to this removal. I knew that the Tarrants would object as well—they could not be expected to see why they were so unsuitable, poor things. That was why I proceeded as I did, why I moved to obtain legal custody of your person, why I sent people to remove you so quickly, and why I did it in the rather—authoritarian—manner that I chose.”

Authoritarian? That’s a mild term for kidnapping and drugging!

“But I did it for your own good, dear,” Arachne concluded, as Marina had known she would. “I have been in society; you have not. Your former guardians may believe that it is possible to live above or beyond the social laws, but it is not. Not unless you wish to live a lonely and miserable existence, estranged from your peers, shunned by your equals, despised by your superiors. If you don’t object to living here as a hermit on this estate for the rest of your life, well and good—but I should think that you would far rather find doors opening to you in welcome.”

She couldn’t help it; for years now, Marina had read the social pages in the newspaper, drunk in the descriptions of the glittering parties, the events, the receptions. She had pored over the sketches and photographs, and wished that her sketch or photograph could be among them… not that she aspired to the status of a PB, but the exciting round of the social scene beckoned so beguilingly.

Arachne chuckled, as if she could read Marina’s thoughts. “Well, niece, your parents might have shunned my company, but I can assure you that no one else looks askance at the source of my wealth. The day, thank heaven, is long past when those who were born to rank and wealth can sneer down their noses at those who merely acquired it through hard work. And let me put one more possible fear of yours to rest—I have no interest in your inheritance. I am probably worth twice what you are; I own three pottery manufactories outright, and am partner in a fourth. I am also accepted in the best company; and I have every intention of seeing that you are accepted there as well. But first—” she sighed theatrically “—it is just as well that you are in mourning and cannot be expected to appear in public for the next year, because you will need to work very hard before you are ready for that society.”

Oh, really? Anger flared at her aunt’s assumptions, and Marina felt her chin jut out stubbornly. “I know Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and German, ma’am,” she objected, anger making her speak in a formal and stilted manner. “I am familiar with a wide spectrum of literature and enough science to satisfy a university examiner. I have read every London paper published for the past five years. I am hardly ignorant.”

“Do you know how to properly address a duke, a countess, or a bishop?” Arachne countered, sharpness coming into her voice for the first time. “I am painfully aware that you do not know how to dress—do you know what to do at a formal dinner? Could you eat ortolan or escargot or lobster without disgracing yourself? Can you compose the appropriate invitations for a garden party, a masquerade ball, and a formal dinner? Do you know when it is appropriate and when it is inappropriate to discuss politics? Could you sit at dinner with the Archbishop of Canterbury on your left and a professional beauty on your right, and entertain both with your conversation?” As Marina sat there, eyes wide, Arachne continued ruthlessly. “How much is it appropriate to leave as a tip for the servants of your host at a shooting party? Do you know how to decide which invitations to decline and which to accept, and how to do both in such a way that your would-be hostess is neither left feeling that you are fawning on her nor insulting her? You may have a great deal of knowledge, child, but you have no learning’ And you have a great deal to learn.”

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.”

Reggie laughed again. “Perhaps that was why they sent her away in the first place. You know, you were right—it was useful to get that university degree in a science. Applying principles of science to magic, I can think of any number of theoretical things that could have been done to your curse. It occurred to me, for instance, that some sort of dampening or draining effect could account for the failure of the curse, and it might affect everything around her. You know, she might actually function as a kind of grounding wire draining the magic of those around her.”

Arachne studied him for a moment; sometimes he threw things out as a red herring, just to see if she pursued them into dead ends he’d already foreseen, but this time she thought he was offering something genuine. “An interesting thought. But then, why would other Elemental Masters be willing to take her in, if she’d be a drain on their power?”

“It depends entirely on how much they used their magic,” he replied, steepling his fingers over his chest. “Not every Elemental Master cares about magic; some seem to be content to be merely the custodians of it.”

She tapped her cheek with one long finger. “True. And the more deeply buried in rustication, the less they seem to care.”

“Such as the artists in question,” Reggie nodded. “My guess is, they used magic very little, not enough to miss its loss, considering that their real energy goes into art.” He looked sideways at her, shrewdly. “And it also depends on how powerful they were to begin with. If the answer is, ‘not very,’ then they were losing very little to gain a great deal. I have no doubt that Hugh compensated them well to care for his daughter.”

“Not as well as I would have thought,” Arachne replied, thoughtfully. “Not nearly as well as I would have thought, according to the accounts. Unless he disguised extra payments in some way.”

“Perhaps he did—or perhaps it was paid in gifts, or in favors, instead—clients for paintings, for instance. Or perhaps the Tarrants are merely good Christians.” The sneer in his voice made her smile—”And they considered it their Christian duty to raise the poor child, afflicted as she was with a terrible curse.”

“Considering that the girl and the Tarrant woman were out on a Boxing Day delivery to the local padre when my men came for her, that may well be the case,” Arachne admitted. “Until we’re sure, though, that there is no such effect around her, we had better do our work well away from her.”

That, of course, was so easily done that Reggie didn’t even trouble to comment on it. They hadn’t even begun to set up a workspace here at Oakhurst, and at the moment, it was probably wiser not to bother.

“I liked that little speech about your properties, by the way, mater,” Reggie continued, watching her with hooded eyes. “It was all the better for having the ring of sincerity.”

She had to laugh herself at that. “Well of course, it was sincere. I don’t want or need Oakhurst. But you—”

“Which brings me to the next question, Mother Dear. Are we taking the marriage option?” There was a gleam in his heavy-lidded eyes that indicated he didn’t find this at all displeasing.

“I think we should pursue it,” she replied firmly. “There is nothing in any of our other plans that would interfere with it, or be interfered with by it. But it does depend on you exerting yourself to be charming, my sweet.” She reached out to touch his hand with one extended index finger. He caught the hand and pressed a kiss on the back of it.

“Now that I’ve seen the wench, I’m not averse,” he responded readily enough. “She’s not a bad looking little filly, and as I said, once your people have trained her, she’ll be quite comely. So long as there’s nothing going on with her in that area of magic that physical congress could complicate, once wedded and bedded, we’ll have absolute control over her.” He looked at his watch. “Speaking of which—”

“Indeed,” Arachne said warmly. “It is your turn, isn’t it? Well, run along, dear; take the gig and the fast horses, and try to be back by dawn.”

Reggie stood up, kissed his mother’s hand again, and saluted her as he straightened. “I go, but to return. This little play, I fancy, is going to prove utterly fascinating.”

Arachne studied the graceful line of his back as he strode away, and felt her lips curve in a slight smile. He was so very like her—it was a good thing he was her son, and not her mate.

Because if she had been married to him or had been his lover—well, he was so like her that she would have felt forced, eventually to kill him. And that would have been a great pity.

Marina had never felt so lost and alone in her life. Nor so utterly off balance. Luncheon was an ordeal. And it was just as well that Marina had no appetite at all, because she would have been half sick before she actually got to eat anything.

The maid—or rather, keeper—led her to a huge room with a long, polished table in it that would easily have seated a hundred. It was covered at a single place with a snowy linen tablecloth, and she saw as she neared that there was a single place setting laid out there.

But such a place setting! There was so much silverware that she could have furnished everyone at a meal at Blackbird Cottage with a knife, fork, and spoon! There were six differently shaped glasses, and many different sizes of plates, some of which were stacked three high immediately in front of the chair. With the maid standing over her, and a manservant to pull out the chair, she seated herself carefully, finding the corset binding under her breasts and under her arms as she did so.

And the first thing the footman did when she was seated was to take away the plates that had been immediately in front of her.

After some fussing at a sideboard behind her—and she only surmised it was a sideboard, because she thought she heard some subdued china—and—cutlery sounds—he returned, and placed a shallow bowl of broth resting on a larger plate in front of her. At least, she thought it was broth. There was no discernible aroma, and it looked like water that oak leaves had been steeping in for a very short time.

If this is what rich people eat—I’m not impressed. She picked up a spoon at random.

But before she could even get it near the bowl, the maid coughed in clear disapproval. Marina winced.

Arachne had hammered her with questions about “could she properly eat” all manner of things that she had never heard of. It seemed that meals were going to be part of her education.

She picked up another spoon. Another cough.

At this rate, she thought, looking at the other five spoons beside the plated soup, I’ll never get any of this into my mouth…

The third try, though, was evidently the right one. Her triumph was short-lived, however. She leaned forward.

Another cough sent her bolt upright, as if she’d had a board strapped to her back. The cough warned her that a full spoon was also de trap. Evidently only a few drops in the bottom of the bowl of the spoon were appropriate, which was just as well, since she was evidently required to sit straight-spined and look directly ahead and not at what she was doing, as she raised the nearly empty spoon to her lips to sip—not drink—the soup. The spoon was not to go into the mouth; only the rim was to touch the lips. The broth, by now cold, tasted faintly of the spirit of the beef that had made it. And it was going to take forever to finish it.

Except that after only six or seven spoonfuls, the footman took it away, and returned with something else—

She blinked at it. Was it a salad? Perhaps—there seemed to be beet root involved in it somehow.

A cough recalled her to her task—for it was a task, and not a meal—and she sorted through silverware again until she found the right combinations. And this time, coughs directed her through a complicated salute of knife and fork before she was cutting a tiny portion correctly.

Two mouthfuls, and again the food was removed, to be replaced by something else.

In the end, luncheon, an affair that usually took no more than a quarter of an hour at home, had devoured an hour and a half of her time—perhaps two hours—and had left her feeling limp with nervous exhaustion. She had gotten something like a meal, though hardly as full a meal as a real luncheon would have been, but the waste of food was nothing short of appalling! And there had been nothing, nothing there that would have satisfied the appetite of a healthy, hungry person. There was a great deal of sauce, of garnish, of fripperies of hothouse lettuce and cress, but it all tasted utterly pale, bland, and insipid. The bread had no more flavor than a piece of pasteboard; the cheese was an afterthought. Even the chicken—at least, she thought it was chicken—was a limp, overcooked ghost of a proper bird.

No wonder Aunt Arachne is so pale, she thought wearily, as the silent footman removed her chair so she could leave the table, if she’s eating nothing but food like this.

Her headache had returned, and all she wanted was to go back to that stifling room and lie down—but evidently that was not in the program for the afternoon.

“Miss will be coming with me to the library,” Mary Anne said, sounding servile enough, but it was very clear to Marina that there was going to be no argument about it. “Madam wishes me to show her to her desk, where she is to study.”

Oh yes… study. After that interview with Aunt Arachne, Marina thought she had a pretty good idea just what it was that her aunt wanted her to study, and indeed, she was right.

Her keeper took her to the Oakhurst library; the house itself was Georgian, and this was a typical Georgian library, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on all the walls, and extra bookshelves placed at intervals within the room. There were three small desks and many comfortable-looking Windsor chairs and two sofas arrayed about the room, and a fine carpet on the floor. There were not one, but two fireplaces, both going, which kept an otherwise chilly room remarkably warm and comfortable. Someone cleaned in here regularly; there was no musty smell, just the scent of leather with a hint of wood smoke. Placed at a library window for the best light was one of the desks; this was the one Mary Anne brought her to. On a stand beside it were several books that included Burke’s Peerage and another on Graceful Correspondence; on the desk itself were a pen, ink, and several sorts of stationery. And list. She supposed that it was in Arachne’s hand.

She sat down at the desk; the maid—definitely keeper—sat on one of the library sofas. Evidently Mary Anne was not deemed knowledgeable enough to pass judgment on the documents that Marina was expected to produce. She picked up the list.

Invitations to various sorts of soirees to a variety of people. Responses to invitations issued (in theory) to her. Thank you notes for gifts, for invitations, after an event; polite little notes about nothing. Notes of congratulation or condolence, of farewell or welcome. Longer letters—subjects included—to specific persons of consequence. Nothing, she noticed, to anyone who was actually supposed to be a friend… but perhaps people like Arachne didn’t have friends.

As soon as she picked up the slim volumes on correspondence, she realized that there literally was not enough information here to perform this particular task correctly. And that was when she began to get angry. Like luncheon, Arachne had arranged for defeat and failure. And she’d done it on purpose, because she already knew that Marina didn’t have training in the nuances of society, no more than any simple, middle-class working girl.

But—but—Marina knew what that simple, middle-class working girl didn’t. She knew how to find the information she needed. For this was a library, and a very big one which might very well contain other books on etiquette. Marina knew that her father’s library had been cataloged, and recently, because Alanna had written about some of the old books uncovered during the process, and how they’d had to be moved under lock and key. So instead of sitting there in despair, or looking frantically for somewhere to start, leafing through stationery or Burke’s, she got up.

Mary Anne looked up from her own reading, startled, but evidently had no direct orders this time about what Marina was supposed to do in here, other than remain in the room. When Marina moved to the great book on the center table—the catalog—she went back to her own reading, with a little sneer on her face.

Huh! So you don’t know everything, do you? Marina thought with satisfaction.

Just as she had thought, because the person who had cataloged the library was very thorough, he had cataloged every book in the house and moved them here. This included an entire set of books, described and cataloged as “juvenalia, foxed, defaced, poor condition” filed away in a book cupboard among other similar items. No true book lover would ever throw a book out without express orders. Besides, every true book lover knows that in three hundred years, what was “defaced” becomes “historical.”

Presumably young Elizabeth Tudor’s governess had boxed her ear for defacing that window at Hatfield House with her diamond ring. Now no amount of money could replace it.

So, from the catalog, Marina went to the book cupboard where less-than-desirable volumes were hidden away from critical eyes in the farthest corner of the library. The cupboard was crammed full, floor-to-ceiling, with worn-out books, from baby picturebooks to some quite impressive student volumes of Latin and Greek and literature in several languages.

She stared at the books for a moment; and in that moment, she realized that she was so surrounded by familiar auras that she almost wept.

These were the books that Aunt Margherita, Uncle Thomas, and Uncle Sebastian had been taught from! And her parents, of course. If she closed her eyes and opened her mind and widened her shields enough to include the books, she could see them, younger, oh much younger than they were now, bent over desks, puzzled or triumphant or merely enjoying themselves, listening, learning.

A tear oozed from beneath her closed eyelid, and almost, almost, she pulled her shields in—

But no! These ghosts of the past could help her in the present. She opened her eyes. Show me what I need, she told the wisps of memory, silently, and began brushing her hand slowly along the spines of books on the shelves, the worn, cracked spines, thin leather peeling away, fabric worn to illegibility. She didn’t even bother to read the titles, as she concentrated on the task she had before her, and the feel of the books under her fingertips.

Which suddenly stuck to a book, as if they’d encountered glue.

There!

She pulled the book off the shelf and set it at her feet, then went back to her perusal. She didn’t neglect even the sections that seemed to have only picturebooks, for you never knew what might have been shoved in where there was room.

When she’d finished with the entire cupboard, she had a pile at her feet of perhaps a dozen books, none of them very large, that she picked up and carried back to her desk. Mary Anne looked up, clearly puzzled, but remained where she was sitting.

Good. Because these, the long-forgotten, slim volumes of instruction designed to guide very young ladies through the intricacies of society at its most baroque, were precisely what she needed.

That, and a fertile imagination coupled with a good memory of Jane Austen’s novels, and other works of fiction. Perhaps her replies would seem formal, even stilted, and certainly old-fashioned, but that was far better than being wrong.

Her handwriting was as good, if not better, than Arachne’s; there would be nothing to fault in her copperplate. And she decided to cheat, just a little. Instead of actually leafing through the books to look up what she needed to know, she followed the same “divination” that had directed her to these books in the first place. She ran her hand along the book spines until her fingers “stuck,” then took up that volume and turned pages until they “stuck” again.

After that, it was a matter of verifying titles with Burke’s, and virtually copying out the correspondence from the etiquette books—with creative additions, as her whimsy took her. Not too creative though; she mostly adopted “personalities” from the books she had read for the various people she was supposed to be writing to.

When she was done, after a good four hours of work, she had an aching hand, but a feeling of triumph, only tempered by the fact that sitting for four straight hours in a tightly laced corset left her feeling half-strangled and longing for release.

She glanced over to her keeper, and saw that Mary Anne was still immersed in her novel. Her lips thinned.

I don’t believe I’m going to reveal the secret of my success, she decided, and picking up her books, went back to the rear of the library.

But instead of putting the books back in the cupboard in which she’d found them—because it occurred to her that she might need them again—she concealed them among a shelf of geography books. Then she returned to the cupboard and sought out further books of instruction in manners, and did the same with them. In particular, she found a little book with pictures designed to lead a child through the maze of cutlery at a formal dinner that she actually hid inside another book, for retrieval later. She suspected that she would still have to learn these arcane rituals by doing them, but at least this way she would make fewer mistakes.

Only then did she select a novel herself from the shelves and retire demurely to her desk. And just at sunset, Arachne appeared.

When she saw that Marina was reading, her lips hinted at a smile. At least, Marina thought they did. But when she saw the neatly stacked and addressed envelopes in the tray, she definitely frowned.

One at a time, she picked them up, studied the address, opened the envelope and read what was contained inside, then discarded envelope and missive in the wastepaper basket beside the desk, saying nothing. Finally, she finished the last, dropped it on the top of the pile of discards, and turned a frosty smile on Marina.

“Well done,” she said, in a tone that suggested—nothing. Neither approval, nor disapproval. “But I thought you were not aware of the rules of polite address? When I questioned you earlier, you gave me the impression that you had been raised—quite rustically.”

Marina licked her lips. “I have—read a good many novels of society, Aunt,” she said carefully. “And the books that you left with me guided me in the exercise that you set me.”

Carefully chosen truth—provided that “the books left” included the entire library.

“Novels.” Arachne gave her a penetrating look, tempered with veiled disbelief. “A clever use of fiction, niece, but you should be aware that the authors of these books are not always careful in their research. And most, if not all of them, are not or never were members of polite society.”

“Yes, Aunt,” Marina replied, bowing her head so that Arachne would not see her eyes.

“And now you must dress for dinner. Mary Anne?” Arachne swept out of the room, the train of her black silk skirt trailing on the floor behind her with a soft hiss. She was gone before the maid even responded to her peremptory summons.

Dress for dinner. Well, Marina had an idea what that meant. Novels were full of it. Apparently her aunt expected that even when there were only the two of them, dinner would be completely formal.

She followed the maid back to her room—through the oppressive sitting room, through the stifling bedroom, but the woman beckoned her onward, through a door on the opposite side of the room that she had not noticed.

Past that door was a dressing room and a bathroom. A surprising bathroom, the like of which, frankly, Marina had never seen before. It had been done up in the style of a Roman bath, as designed by a modern artist. And it was the first room in the house in which she could draw a free breath.

The bathroom was plumbed in the most modern fashion. There was a huge bathtub, a flushing water closet, and even a shower-bath in one corner. Mary Anne went to the bathtub and immediately began drawing a hot bath. Hot water came out of the bronze, fish-shaped spigot, which meant there was a boiler somewhere nearby.

The bathroom itself was decorated in Marina’s colors, greens and aquas! Green muslin curtains hung at the windows, green mosaics of shells and seaweed decorated the walls and floor, even the tub was painted green, and the fixtures were green-patinaed bronze. Mary Anne stripped her of her clothing as she stared wide-eyed around her; the moment the corset came off and she could take a deep breath, she did so, feeling free for the first time that day.

When Mary Anne left, she quickly adjusted the temperature of the bath—the maid had run it too hot for comfort—and got into it before her keeper could return. The tub was enormous, far bigger than the baths they used in winter in Blackbird Cottage. She wanted to lay back at her ease in her own element, but if she did, the odious maid would probably insist on bathing her, or washing her hair for her.

So she began her own scrub, so that Mary Anne would not be tempted to lend a hand. And to avoid the rough-handed maid’s “caresses” to her head, she let down her hair and washed it first, pinning it up atop her head, wet, when she was finished. Mary Anne hurried in when she heard the splashing, too late to interfere with the hair-washing; she frowned, perhaps because she’d been thwarted, but possibly because her mistress had given her no orders about what to do if Marina managed to act on her own.

“I wouldn’t have washed my hair, miss,” she said with unconcealed disapproval. “It being so near dinnertime and all.”

But it wasn’t—it wasn’t even six o’clock, and formal dinner was never until eight. “I’ll dry it in front of the fire,” Marina said. “It dries very fast.” And with that, she arose from the tub, donned the loose—thankfully loose!—dressing gown that Mary Anne hastily held out, took a brush from the dressing table and sat on a stool in front of the fire in the bedroom.

This is an Earth bedroom. Could it have been Mother’s? She thought not; but—the sitting room was reds… Fire? Could it have been Thomas’? There was another room on the other side of the sitting room—if that one was a Fire room, it would make sense that the uncles would have been near to each other when they lived here. And Uncle Thomas wouldn’t have minded a sitting room in Fire colors.

There was no trace of Thomas now, but just thinking that the room might have been his made it seem less stifling. She brushed out her hair herself, carefully working through the knots and tangles, and used a tiny touch of magic to drive the water out of it. She had no desire to incur Arachne’s further disapproval by appearing at dinner with damp hair.

With a full hour remaining before dinner, somewhat to Mary Anne’s astonishment, her hair was dry and ready to be dressed, and so was she.

Her hour of freedom was over. It was time to be laced back into her imprisoning corsets.

Black again, of course; this time a satin skirt with a train, a black silk blouse with the same high neck as before, but this time a quantity of black jet bead trimming. Mary Anne pinned her hair up in a more formal style, with a set of black jet combs ornamenting it. Pinned was the word; once again, Marina wondered that there wasn’t blood trickling down her scalp.

But Mary Anne did not conduct her to dinner when the gong rang; instead, she excused herself, leaving Marina to find her own way down. Which she did; it wasn’t that difficult. Georgian houses like Oakhurst weren’t the kind of insane mazes that houses that had been built up over hundreds of years turned into.

Dinner was not quite as difficult as luncheon, although it was just as uncomfortable. Arachne was already there, although she hadn’t been waiting long. The footman seated Marina; Arachne was served first, Marina second. Arachne sat at the head of the table, Marina down the side, some distance away from her aunt. At least Mary Anne with her disapproving coughs was not in attendance.

When the footman served the first course, before she reached for a utensil, she heard a discreet sound from him, more of a clearing of his throat, hardly loud enough to hear. And before the footman took the tureen away, she noticed that he was pointing at one of the spoons with his little finger.

She took it up, glanced at him; he smiled, only for a second and very faintly. Then his face resumed its proper mask, and he retreated to the sideboard.

She had an ally!

She watched his hands through the rest of the meal, aware that her aunt was waiting until she picked up an implement before reaching for the appropriate bit of silverware herself. And as they moved through the courses, and her aunt began to develop a tiny crease between her brows, it suddenly occurred to her that if she didn’t want Arachne to guess that she was being coached and had a friend here, she’d better make a mistake.

So she did—the next course was fish, and even though she actually knew what the fish-knife and fish-fork looked like, she reached for the ones she’d used for the salad.

“Marina,” Arachne said dryly, “If you don’t want to be thought a bumpkin, you had better use these tools for the fish course in future.” She held up the proper implements.

“Yes, Aunt,” Marina said subserviently, reaching for the right silverware, with a sidelong glance at the footman and a very quick wink when Arachne’s eyes dropped to her plate. The footman winked back.

The food was still pallid stuff. And there was still an appalling waste of it. But at least at this meal, Marina got hot food warm, and cold food cool. And despite a general lack of appetite, enough of it to serve.

And the fruit and cheese at the end were actually rather good. Arachne regarded her over the rim of her wineglass.

“After dinner, when there is company, in general the company gathers in the sitting room or the card room for conversation or games. Perhaps music—I believe you brought instruments?” This time she only raised her brows a trifle, and not as if she found this fact an evidence of her rustication.

“Yes, Aunt,” she said. “I play Elizabethan music, mostly.”

“Pity; that’s not anything considered entertaining for one’s guests these days,” Arachne said, dismissively. “I don’t suppose you have much in the way of conversation, either.”

Marina kept her thoughts to herself; in any case, Arachne didn’t wait for an answer. “I will be teaching you polite conversation, later, when I have your affairs in hand. I don’t suppose you can ride.”

“Actually, I had use of one of the local hunt master’s jumpers, Aunt.” It gave her a little feeling of triumph to see the surprise on Arachne’s face. “I didn’t hunt often, and mostly only when he needed someone to keep an eye on an unsteady lady guest, but he kept his favorite old cob retired on our land.”

“Well.” Arachne coughed, to cover her surprise. “In that case… my modiste is coming with more garments for you tomorrow. I’ll order proper riding attire for you; your father’s stable isn’t stunning, but it’s adequate. I’m sure you’ll find something there you can mount.” Her expression turned thoughtful. “Actually, riding and hunting are two elements of proper conversation you can make use of at nearly any time; keep that in mind. And books, but they mustn’t be controversial or too modern or too old-fashioned—unless, of course, you are speaking to an older lady or gentleman, in which case they will be pleased that you are reading the books of their youth. Tomorrow you will meet my son, Reginald. I have instructed him to see that you are not left at loose ends.”

I would like very much to be left at loose ends, thank you, she thought, but she answered with an appreciative murmur.

“I’m pleased to see that you are no longer hysterical; I hope you realize how childish your reaction was to being removed from what you must see was an unsuitable situation,” Arachne concluded, putting her glass down.

“Yes, Aunt.”

“And I hope you are properly grateful.”

“Yes, Aunt.” I’m grateful that I haven’t lost my temper with you yet.

“Excellent. I believe that we have reached a good understanding.” Arachne rose; the slight tug on her chair by the footman warned Marina that she should do the same. “As I said, I have tasks to complete; I suggest that you improve your mind with a book in your sitting room before bed. I will see you at breakfast, Marina.”

“Yes, Aunt,” she replied obediently, and Arachne flowed off in the direction of the office in which Marina had first found her, leaving Marina to her own devices.

Chapter Ten

WITHIN an hour, Marina learned that she had more than one ally among the staff.

The second one appeared once the formidable Mary Anne had undressed her with the same ruthless efficiency she showed when getting her dressed, and left her, dressing-gowned and night-gowned for the night, with her hair in a comfortable braid, and instructions to ring for one of the downstairs maids “if you need anything.” The tone implied that there was nothing she should need, and her attitude was quite intimidating, except for one thing. Apparently, Mary Anne was above being summoned once her mistress was put to bed for the night, and on the whole, at this point Marina was inclined to take her chances with anyone that Mary Anne considered an inferior.

Once Mary Anne was gone, Marina moved into the sitting room, with a single book of poetry she had found on a table there for company, until the corridor beyond the door was very quiet indeed. Then, barefoot (because the slippers that had been supplied to her had very hard leather soles that would have clattered on the parquet floor) she tiptoed down to the library, ascertained that there was no one there, and retrieved those books of etiquette that she had hidden there. And as an afterthought, collected some real reading material, as well as some duller books that she could use to hide her studies in. Somewhere in her rooms were the books she had brought with her; when she’d arranged these on the shelves, she’d look for her own things, and with any luck, there’d be enough books there to make looking through them too tedious for the very superior Mary Anne.

Moving silently, her feet freezing, she quickly made her way back to her rooms, where she put her finds on the shelves in the sitting room. She worked quietly among the ornaments she found on the shelves, putting the books up without disarranging them, in the hopes of making it appear that the books had always been there. She guessed that no one in Arachne’s household realized that all the books had been collected in the library; Mary Anne had seen her using books there this afternoon, she would assume that the books were still there and not look for them here. She was still setting back vases and figurines when the sound of the door opening made her jump and turn quickly, guiltily.

But the person in the door wasn’t her aunt, nor the supercilious Mary Anne; it was a young woman in a very much plainer version of Mary Anne’s uniform—the black skirt, but of plain wool, the black shirtwaist, unadorned—and a neat white apron, rather than the black silk that Mary Anne sported. A perfectly ordinary maid—with a round, pretty, farm girl’s face, and wary eyes.

“I come to see if you needed anything, miss,” the girl whispered, as if she was not quite sure of her welcome.

In a response that Marina could not have controlled if she’d tried, her stomach growled. Audibly.

And the little maidservant broke into an involuntary grin, which she quickly hid behind her hand.

“I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to ask for something to eat,” Marina said, wistfully assuming the negative. “I don’t want you to get in any trouble with the cook or the—the housekeeper? I guess there’s a housekeeper here, isn’t there?” She sighed. From what she’d heard from old Sarah, the housekeepers in great houses held the keys to the pantry and kept strict tally of every morsel that entered and left, and woe betide the staff if the accounting did not match.

The girl dropped her hand and winked. “Just you wait, miss,” she said warmly, and whisked out the door.

Marina finished shelving her books, hiding the ones she didn’t want anyone to find. By the time the maid returned, she was in a chair by the fireplace with a book in her hands, having mended the fire and built it up herself, warming her half-frozen feet. The girl seemed much nicer than Mary Anne, but there was no telling if she was just another spy for her aunt. Let her think that Marina had only been looking for something to read.

The girl had left the door open just about an inch, and on her return, pushed it open with her foot. She carried with her a laden tray, which she brought over to Marina and set down on the little table beside her. Marina stared at the contents with astonishment.

“Mister Reginald, he likes a bit to eat around midnight, so the pantry’s not locked up,” the girl said cheerfully. “My Peter, he told us downstairs about your luncheon. And supper. And Madam’s special cook—” she made a face. “Miss, we don’t think much of that special cook. Only person that likes his cooking is Madam; it isn’t even the kind of thing that Mister Reginald likes, so he’s always eating a midnight supper. So I thought, and Peter thought, you mightn’t like that cooking much either, even if you hadn’t got more than a few bites of it.”

“You were right,” Marina said with relief at the sight of a pot of hot chocolate, a plate of sliced ham and real, honest cheese—none of that sad, pale stuff that Arachne had served—a nice chunk of hearty cottage loaf—and a fine Cox’s Orange Pippin apple. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in two days!”

“Well, miss, I don’t much know about yesterday, but according to my Peter, you haven’t had more than a few mouthfuls today at luncheon and dinner, and no breakfast at all. Just you tuck into that! I’ll wait and take the plates away.” She winked conspiratorially. “We’ll let that housekeeper think that Mister Reginald’s eating a bit more than usual.”

Since Marina was already tucking in, wasting no time at all in filling her poor, empty stomach, the little maid beamed with pleasure. “If you really don’t mind waiting,” Marina said, taking just long enough from her food to gulp down a lovely cup of chocolate, “You ought to at least sit down.” She paused a moment, and added, “I’m sure I oughtn’t to invite you, according to Aunt Arachne.”

“Madam is very conscious of what is proper,” the maid said, her mouth going prim. But Marina noticed that she sat right down anyway. She considered Marina for a moment more, then asked, “Miss, how early are you like to be awake?”

Oh no—surely Madam wakes up before dawn, and I’m supposed to be, too, she thought, already falling into the habit of thinking of her aunt as “Madam”—”Oh—late, if I’m given the choice,” she admitted, shamefacedly. “No earlier than full sun, seven, even eight.”

“You think that late?” the maid stifled a giggle. “That Mary Anne, she won’t bestir herself before ten, earliest, and Madam keeps city hours herself. We—ell, miss, what do you say to a spot of conspiracy between us? Just us Devon folk—for we can’t be letting Mister Hugh—” and here she faltered, before catching herself, and continuing resolutely. “We can’t be letting Mister Hugh’s daughter fade away to naught. I’ll be bringing you a proper breakfast sevenish, and a bit of proper supper after that Mary Anne has took herself off of a night. So you won’t go hungry, even if that Mary Anne has got a bee in her bonnet that you ought to be scrawny.”

Marina was overwhelmed, and couldn’t help herself; this was the first open kindness she’d had since she’d been kidnapped—was it only yesterday? She began to cry.

“Oh miss—there now, miss—” The maid plied her with a napkin, then ran into the bedroom and fetched out handkerchiefs from somewhere, and dabbed at Marina’s cheeks with them. Very fine cambric they were too, her aunt certainly wasn’t stinting her in the matter of wardrobe. “Now miss, you mustn’t cry—Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna wouldn’t like that—”

For a moment, Marina was tempted to tell her the truth, all of it; but no, this girl would never understand. “I’m—alone—” she managed, as the maid soothed her, sitting beside her and patting her hand. That was true—true enough. Not the whole truth, but true enough.

She didn’t cry herself sick this time, and perhaps it was the best thing she could have done, though it was entirely involuntary, for by the time that she cried herself out, she knew that she had friends here, after all. She also knew, if not everything there was to know about the “downstairs” household, at least a very great deal. She knew that the maid was Sally, she was going to marry the footman Peter one day, that Arachne had dismissed the upper servants—the chief cook (replaced by her “chef”), the housekeeper and butler, her own personal maidservant, the valet.

Of course, the maidservant and the valet were still stranded in Italy, poor things. The other servants weren’t even sure they would be able to get home, for Arachne had left orders that Marina’s parents were to be buried in Italy where they had died.

“‘Where they so loved to live,’ that was what Madam Arachne said. And it isn’t my place to say,” Sally continued, in a doubtful whisper, “But it did seem to me that Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna loved it here. This is where the family was all buried, and I know Mister Hugh felt strong about his family.”

But Arachne couldn’t replace all the servants—trained city servants weren’t very willing to move to the country, not without a substantial rise in wages. So a substantial number of the lower servants were the same as had served Marina’s parents, and they remembered their kind master and mistress. Although they knew nothing about Hugh’s sister, except that she’d fallen out with her parents over her choice of husband, that counted more against her than her blood counted for her.

And although they were very circumspect with regard to Arachne and her son, they were all very sympathetic to Marina, especially after seeing the ordeals she was undergoing at the hands of Arachne and Mary Anne. She was Devon-bred as well as born, almost one of them, even if she did come from over near to the border with Cornwall. If they didn’t know why she’d been sent away, at least she hadn’t been sent far; she wasn’t a foreigner, and she didn’t have any airs.

And one and all, these downstairs servants hated Mary Anne.

“Fancies herself a superior lady’s maid, she does,” Sally sniffed. “Too good to eat with us, has her meals with the butler and housekeeper, if you please. And it isn’t as if Madam Arachne doesn’t have her own maid, for she does, a French woman. Well, things have changed for us.” She sighed pensively. “But miss, we’ll take care of you, don’t you worry. If Madam Arachne wants you to be made a lady like her, we’ll help you out, till there isn’t nothing you don’t know. There’s Peter, he served with Lord Bridgeworth, and he knows all the right things—and it wasn’t as if Mister Hugh and Missus Alanna weren’t gentry. We’ll help you, for you’re ours, and we won’t ever forget that!”

Marina swallowed down another lump in her throat and a spate of hastily suppressed tears with her hot chocolate.

“Thank you,” she said, hoping she put the gratitude she felt into those simple words.

By the warm smile on Sally’s face, she did.

Morning brought Sally with a proper breakfast tray—the kind of hearty breakfast Marina was used to getting at home—from thick country bacon to hot, buttered toast. There was only one thing missing, oat porridge, which was just as well, since she would have felt homesick on seeing it, guilty if she hadn’t eaten it, and miserable if she did. Sally waited while she ate, and whisked the tray away, leaving her to go back to sleep again if she chose.

Which was a confirmation this was all being done in secret, abetted by a conspiracy among the lower servants, the ones who remembered her parents.

For some reason, they did not trust her aunt to treat her properly. Why? She couldn’t think of any reason why Arachne would mistreat her on purpose—she was clearly a very cold woman, but she seemed determined to do her duty to Marina. Even if her idea of her duty was not what Marina would have chosen for herself. She wasn’t stinting on wardrobe, that was sure. The clothing that she’d had made for Marina was of first quality and highest workmanship.

But servants saw and heard everything. Probably they were only worried that she was so unhappy and was being bullied. In any case, life was going to be much easier with the kind of help they had already offered, and she was not going to betray them by any carelessness on her part.

So she made sure that there was no sign that anyone had been in her rooms, and tucked herself back up in her bed, dozing until the odious Mary Anne appeared to wake her by pulling back the curtains and making a great clattering of noise with the breakfast-tray that she had brought.

It was breakfast for an invalid. A nauseated invalid. Or someone afraid of getting fat. Weak tea, and four pieces of cold toast.

With a silent prayer of thanks for Sally’s foresight, Marina drank a cup of the tea, but before she could eat more than a single piece of the toast, Mary Anne insistently dragged her out of bed and into her clothing. “Madam’s modiste is here, and miss must be measured again and select fabrics and patterns,” the maid ordered. “Madam is also selecting clothing, and miss must not monopolize the modiste’s time, nor keep her waiting.”

This was said as Mary Anne was lacing up her corset, and as Marina suddenly remembered a trick that one of the ponies used to employ, of blowing himself up so that his girth couldn’t be tightened. And it occurred to her at that moment that if she could just manage the same trick, herself—

So she secretly took in the deepest breath that she could, and instead of trying to draw herself up, hunched herself over, sticking her stomach out as far as she could manage and obstinately tensing the muscles of her midsection against the tightening of the corset-laces. Mary Anne tugged and pulled, but to no avail; when she gave up and tied the laces off, tying a modest bustle on the back of the corset and pulling the first of the three petticoats over Marina’s head, Marina was able to straighten up without feeling as if she was going to faint from lack of air. Her corsets were only a little tighter than she would have tied them herself. Not as comfortable as no corset at all but not a torture either.

There was nothing to show that Mary Anne had been doing any rummaging about among the books that Marina had put on the shelves last night, but that was not to say that she wouldn’t later. For now, the modiste was waiting in the sitting room, a patient little woman with sad eyes and gray hair, done up in a severe, but impeccably tailored, gray wool suit and matching hat, modestly ornamented with a ribbon cockade. She had swatches of fabric piled up beside her on one side of the couch, and pattern books on the other. Her eyes brightened at the sight of Marina; perhaps she had expected another martinet like Madam, or someone so countrified as to be impossible to outfit, with freckles, gap-teeth, and enormous feet that had never seen anything other than boots. In the midst of this florid room, the modiste looked like a little pile of ashes.

For that matter, I probably look like an unburned bit of coal.

“I will leave you with Miss Eldergast,” said Mary Anne loftily, and turned to the modiste. “Miss Eldergast, you have your instructions upon what is suitable for the young lady from Madam, so I will return for you in one hour.”

Both of them looked reflexively at the clock upon the mantelpiece, which was just showing half past ten. Then, as Mary Anne sailed out of the room with a self-important air, Marina smiled at the modiste.

“Why don’t you show me what is suitable for the young lady, Miss Eldergast,” Marina said, with some humor, “And we’ll pick something or other out.”

“Well, you’re in deep mourning, of course,” the dressmaker said hesitantly, “So these are the samples I brought—”

“Black, black, and black, of course.” Marina sighed, picked up the stack of swatches, and sat down next to Miss Eldergast, putting them in her lap. She added bitterly, “And it matters not at all that I never knew my parents; the sensibilities of society must not be outraged.”

Of course, I could be in mourning for the happy life I had in Killatree.

Miss Eldergast hesitated, somewhat taken aback. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said hastily, clearly trying and failing to find some polite response to Marina’s bald statement. “Now, if you could choose from among these for a riding habit and walking skirts—”

It didn’t take very long to make her selections; although the choice of fabric was wider and the number of patterns Miss Eldergast was able to execute much larger than the dressmaker in Holsworthy was able to offer, there were only a limited number of ways in which to dress in “black, black, and black.” What was suitable for the young lady, at least according to Madam Arachne, was the strictest possible interpretation of mourning, without even the touch of mauve, lavender or violet that as a young unmarried woman she should have been able to don without offending anyone.

I shall look like Queen Victoria before this is over. Or one of those melancholy women who are would-be Gothic poetesses.

Still, there was no doubt that Madam was equipping Marina generously, and in the height of fashion, the only exception being that everything suitable had high necks and high collars. Not that this would be too onerous in the winter, but when summer came, black and high collars were going to be difficult to bear.

Time enough to worry about that when the time comes, she told herself. For now, heavy silk blouses and shirtwaists, unlike the very plain things that she’d been dressed in so far, were going to be made exactly to her measure and ornamented lavishly with lace, ribbon, and flounces. Beautifully soft skirts and jackets were getting braid, tucking, ruffles, beading—

It would have taken a harder heart than Marina had not to be enchanted by the clothing that the dressmaker had planned for her. Madam Arachne had only given orders as to the color and general design, not to the specifics, nor to the amount to be spent. So the modiste was going to create garments similar to the kind that Madam Arachne herself wore—lavish, and stylish.

And I hope that Madam doesn’t contradict that plan.

“Have you any preferences as to what I deliver first, miss?” the modiste asked at last, packing up their selections with care.

“Unless Madam says differently, the riding habit, please,” Marina begged. “I’m dying for some exercise.”

The dressmaker smiled wanly. “Indeed, miss?” she responded, just as Mary Anne returned. The maid gathered the poor little woman in without a single word, polite or otherwise, to Marina, and took her off, leaving Marina alone.

This was her chance; she walked across the room to a door she had noticed behind a swag of ornamental drapery, and tried the knob. The door swung open easily.

The room revealed was, indeed, another bedroom, this one with all the furnishings under sheets. But the sheets didn’t hide the carpet, walls, or the curtains on the bed, which were even more flamboyantly scarlet than in Marina’s sitting room. Not a feminine decorating scheme, either; this was a distinctly masculine room. And now that she thought about it, the sitting room and her own room had been given ruffles and flourishes that, taken away, also left a distinctly masculine appearance in the room.

This single glance told her what she had wanted to know. If ever there was a room utterly suited to a young male Fire Master, this was it. So these rooms must have once been the home of her uncles Sebastian and Thomas!

She closed the door, and let the swag of drapery fall back to hide it with a feeling of satisfaction. And if the surroundings she found herself in were at odds with her own preferences and her Element—now she no longer felt so stifled and overheated by them. How could she? Here, more than anywhere else (unless she discovered her Aunt Margherita’s room) she was closer to the people she’d known than she had been since she’d been taken away from them.

Until, that is, I see if Sally can manage to smuggle letters out for me. With friends among the lower servants, what had seemed impossible yesterday was no longer. There was still the matter of obtaining postage, but if she got her hands on some money…

Well, meanwhile, she needed to make concerted efforts to please Madam Arachne; the sooner it appeared to her new guardian that Marina was settling in and being obedient, the sooner opportunities to act on her own would appear.

After some hunting, she found her instruments, her music, her needlework, and her books tucked away in a cupboard in the sitting room, no longer in the boxes or baskets that they had been packed into. While she waited for the odious Mary Anne to come fetch her for another luncheon ordeal, she began shelving her books among the ones she had purloined from the library.

As she did so, she couldn’t help but notice that some books she would have expected to have with her were not there.

The missing books were an odd assortment; Greek and Latin philosophers, essays by some of the Suffragrists that Elizabeth admired, and some weighty history books. The problem was, since Marina had not seen these books packed, she could not say for certain that she’d actually had them with her—Jenny and Sarah had been overwrought, and there was no telling what they had and had not packed. The books had been in her room and should have been boxed—but those horrid lawyers had been in a great hurry, and they might not have waited for everything.

Still… novels and poetry were there, including the scandalous poetry of Byron and sensational books by other notorious authors, and some rather daring, if frivolous, works in French. What was missing were books that were—well—serious in tone.

She didn’t quite know what to make of that. Why take away serious literature and leave the frivolous, even the demi-scandalous?

On the other hand, it wasn’t as if there was anything among them, except the essays, that she probably couldn’t find in the Oakhurst library.

Still, if someone had gone through her books, discarding some just as her entire wardrobe had been discarded, it was very likely that someone would continue to monitor her reading. Which meant that perhaps she had better hide her etiquette books a little better. Maybe no one would take them—but Mary Anne seemed determined to see her humiliated.

Why? Well, there was a very obvious reason—as long as Marina remained a naive and socially inept bumpkin, Mary Anne was guaranteed a position. Trained as a lady’s maid she might be, but Marina could not imagine any real lady putting up with the woman’s airs for very long. If novels were to be believed, a proper lady’s maid was silent, invisible, and kept any opinions she might have to herself.

If Marina ever got to the point where Madam Arachne was satisfied with her, Mary Anne would probably find herself out of a position.

And she certainly will when I am twenty-one!

Unless, of course, she could sufficiently cow her charge to make her think that Mary Anne could not possibly be dispensed with.

So—the removal of the “serious” books might be on Madam’s orders, to ensure that Marina concentrated on learning social graces and didn’t bury her nose in a book. But Mary Anne would find it in her best interests to remove anything that would help Marina do without her. Having confiscated books once, she certainly wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.

Definitely, Marina had better hide her latest acquisitions.

Where? Not in among her clothing—Mary Anne would be sure to find them there. And the first place anyone would look for hidden treasures would be under the bed or the mattress.

In my room—

The thought was parent to the deed; within a moment, she had gathered up her purloined books and whisked them into Sebastian’s old room. She shoved them under the mattress, smoothed over the dust-cloth, and hurried back to the sitting room. When Mary Anne returned, she was putting her instruments and music away.

“Do you suppose there would be a music stand I could have here?” she asked the maid diffidently.

“You should practice in the music room, miss,” Mary Anne replied with a frown. “That’s what it’s for. You wouldn’t want to disturb people with your practicing.”

So, music practice was among the permitted activities—though who she was going to disturb was a mystery, since she hadn’t seen anyone but servants except Madam since she arrived, and this wasn’t the servants’ wing.

Well, perhaps Madam was planning to entertain soon, which would put guests in this wing. Hmm. She must have taken my parents’ suite. It would, of course, be the largest and best-appointed. Somehow she couldn’t imagine Madam settling for anything less.

And I certainly wouldn’t want that suite. This is cavernous enough for me, thank you.

“Yes, but changing temperatures are very bad for lutes,” Marina replied. “The necks crack very easily. It shouldn’t be in a room that doesn’t have a constant fire in it in winter.” This, of course, was not true—but Mary Anne wouldn’t know that.

The maid sniffed. “I’ll have someone find a stand,” she said, as if conferring a great favor. “In the meantime, miss, it’s time for luncheon.”

Marina followed the maid to the dining room again; she was glad to see Peter there, but even happier that she’d had a chance to study one of those etiquette books last night. The number of supercilious coughs was far fewer, and if the food was just as bland and tasteless as before, at least she got a bit more of it this time.

Madam joined her at luncheon as well; Marina could only watch her covertly, marveling that she actually seemed to enjoy what was set before her—as much as Madam Arachne ever appeared to enjoy anything.

Halfway through, Madam cleared her throat delicately, “I should like you to meet my son Reginald this afternoon,” she said, as Marina looked up quickly. “He can help immeasurably in instructing you in polite conversation. And as we have a grama-phone, he can also teach you to dance properly. I am assuming you have never learned?”

She shook her head. “Only country dances, Madam,” she replied truthfully. “And not often.”

“Well, you’re not completely ungraceful; I think he can manage,” Madam Arachne said coolly. “Mary Anne, please show miss to the music room when luncheon is over.”

“Of course, Madam,” the maid said, with a servility she had not demonstrated until this moment.

Luncheon was very soon deemed to be over, with the arrival of a blancmange; since Marina detested blancmange, she toyed with her portion and was not displeased to have it taken away when Madam rose and left to go back to whatever it was that she was doing. Work, presumably. Something to do with the estate, perhaps. Accounts. Whoever reigned over Oakhurst would have to be an estate manager as well as the head of the household; there were the tenant farms to manage as well as the home farm, and the household accounts to run.

Or perhaps she was dealing with her own businesses—after all, hadn’t she said that she had three pottery manufactories? Or was it four? Marina could not imagine Madam leaving the details of her businesses to anyone other than herself.

Another trek through the house brought them to the door of the music room, which had a fire in the fireplace, but which, by the chill still in the air, had not had one there for long. There was a harp, shrouded in a cover and probably out of tune, and a piano in the corner, a grouping of sofas and chairs about the fireplace, and an expanse of clear floor for dancing. There was also, more prominently, an expensive gramophone on a table of its own, and records shelved beside it.

Mary Anne simply left her there to her own devices; she thought about examining the recordings for the gramophone, but if the device was Reginald’s rather than belonging to the house, the young man might resent her touching it. So instead, she examined the harp. As she had expected, it had been de-tuned, but by the amount of wear on it, someone had been used to playing it often.

Mother, probably. Marina didn’t really remember if Uncle Thomas had ever said anything about her mother playing the harp, but it was the instrument of choice for young women of her mother’s generation.

“Not a bad instrument, but I’d rather play the gramophone,” said a careless-sounding male voice from the door. She turned.

And there he was, leaning indolently against the doorframe. Posed, in fact. There was no doubt that Reginald was Madam Arachne’s son; he had her pale coloring, black hair, and finely chiseled features—but where it was impossible to decide what Madam Arachne felt about anything, Reginald wore a look of sardonic amusement and an air of general superiority as casually as he wore his impeccably tailored suit. “Hello, cuz,” he continued, sauntering across the room and holding out his hand. “I’m Reggie.”

“Marina,” she replied, not particularly wanting to offer her hand, but constrained to by politeness. He’s going to kiss it instead of shaking it, she thought grimly. He’ll make a flourish out of it, to impress me with how Continental he is.

And he did exactly that, taking the half-extended hand and kissing the back of it, letting it go with a mocking little click of bootheels.

“So, the mater thinks we ought to have a turn or two around the ballroom,” he continued. “I understand you don’t dance?”

“Only country dances,” she repeated reluctantly, as he cranked the gramophone and selected a recording, then mounted it on the machine, dropped the needle in the groove, and held out his hand to her imperiously as a waltz sounded from the horn.

“You don’t dance,” he repeated, dismissively. “Well, I’m reckoned handy at it; you need have no fear, fair cuz. Just do what I do, only opposite and backwards.” His eyebrow raised, drawing her attention to his cleverness.

Annoyingly enough, he was a good dancer, and didn’t make her feel as if she had no more grace than a young calf. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the not-altogether-hidden smirk of superiority he wore, she might have enjoyed herself. He was not only a good dancer, he was a good instructor. She was good at country dances, and her skill carried over into the popular and ballroom dances that he showed her.

Fortunately, the other half of the program—that polite conversation he was supposed to be teaching her—didn’t require much on her part except to listen attentively and murmur vague agreement while he talked.

And how he talked—she had to wonder how much of it was true and how much boasting.

Not that it mattered much; whichever it was, so far as she was concerned, his general attitude was so detestable that she was hard put to conceal it from him—and she did so in the only way she could think of. She stared fixedly at him as if she hung on his every word, while all the time trying to work out how she could get away from him.

In the end, she didn’t have to; Mary Anne arrived to announce the advent of teatime, and Reggie sprang to his feet with an oath that wasn’t quite muffled enough.

“You won’t catch me sipping that cursed stuff!” he laughed rudely. “Well, cuz, I’ll be off; I’ll have my tea down in the village pub. I expect this will be a regular meeting for us from now on. Mater wants you to be ready for the gay old social whirl as soon as you’re out of mourning, don’t you know. So, I’ll be giving you my coaching for a while.” He laughed. “Now, don’t you go pretending you haven’t learned anything just so you can keep the lessons going! The mater isn’t fooled that easily.”

She dropped her eyes to hide the contempt she felt for his assumption that she would do anything just to be in his company. “I won’t,” she murmured.

“There’s a good gel,” he said, patting the back of her hand. “Well then, I’ll be pushing off, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And as Marina followed Mary Anne to wherever her aunt was holding court among the teapots, she found herself resolving to learn these new dances in record time. The sooner she learned them, the sooner she’d be rid of Reggie, and by her way of thinking that could not possibly be soon enough.

Chapter Eleven

MADAM Arachne, I’ll be going to church tomorrow,” Marina announced over dinner, as the soup was cleared away. By the second day, she had begun calling her aunt by that name, and since the woman didn’t object—

I can’t call her Aunt, I just can’t. Aunts were nothing like this cold woman, who held the household at Oakhurst in such an iron grip that the servants leaped to obey her. Aunts were warm and loving, and were more likely to indulge a niece than correct her.

“I suppose I’ll need a carriage? It seems rather far to walk—I could, easily enough, but it’s an hour to the village at least. I don’t suppose I could ride—I’d have to stable the horse, and I’m not sure where in the village I could do that…” The riding-habit had just been delivered today, too late for her to go out for a ride. So far, she’d been out of the house itself only twice, both times for a walk in the gardens. She supposed that they were lovely—and she certainly detected the now-fading magic of an Earth Master in the robust health of all of the plantings. But the gardens weren’t her half-wild orchard, and the only water in them was a tame—and at the moment, inactive—fountain. It was all very lush, but very planned and mannered—reflective of the woman of all those letters.

None of this was much like Margherita; Margherita’s magic was cozier, more domestic, and at the same time, wilder—Alanna’s broad and wide, and controlled. Marina could only compare her mother’s magic to that of the goddess Demeter, a thing of ordered, rich harvests and settled fields.

And her own? She didn’t know—except that it wasn’t tame.

She wasn’t sure why, but she felt very uneasy about using any magic of her own here at Oakhurst.

What was it about this place here, Oakhurst, that made her so afraid—yes, afraid—and made her hide her power behind those masking shields that Elizabeth had taught her?

She glanced at Arachne from under her lashes, waiting for a response to her announcement, and realized that it wasn’t Oakhurst that made her feel as if she dared not work magic—after all, it was plain enough that magic had been worked in plenty here. No, her unease was centered around using magic near her aunt. Not that Arachne showed any signs of magic herself, nor did Reggie, nor the supercilious Mary Anne. But Elizabeth had taught her when to trust her instincts, and her instincts told her that any magic use should be kept under heavy shields and never, ever, where Arachne or her people were.

Which was everywhere, it seemed, within the walls of Oakhurst.

Tonight, not only was Madam Arachne present at dinner, so was Reginald. At Marina’s announcement, which he evidently found surprising, his eyebrows rose.

“It is too far to walk, and it would be in poor taste to display yourself at a church service in a riding habit,” Madam admitted, without betraying any expression. “But is this really necessary?”

Marina’s chin rose, and she looked her aunt directly in the eyes. A confrontation of sorts—a testing. “Yes, Madam, it is,” she said, and did not elaborate on why. Let Arachne assume it was because she was religious. That might even confuse her a bit, for she surely wouldn’t expect a religious upbringing out of pack of wild artists!

It was just an excuse to get out of the house and grounds, and she knew it, although in Killatree she and the other inhabitants of Blackbird Cottage had been regulars at the village church, except when the weather was particularly foul. She was curious about the village from which Oakhurst took its name; as much to the point, the people of the village were probably curious about her, the daughter that no one had ever seen. She might as well go to church where they could look their fill at her. It would be better and more comfortable to have her first encounter with them in the church than in the village street. And besides—there was one inhabitant of the village that Madam could not possibly object to. The vicar was the one man in a village whose position allowed him to cross class lines. He was as welcome a guest at dinner in a great house as he was at tea in the smallest, lowliest farmer’s cottage. Once Marina actually introduced herself to him, he would have to pay a visit. And at the moment, she didn’t care if he was the most boring old snob imaginable, he would at least keep Madam’s corrections to a minimum just by his presence.

“Well, you might as well go if you really want to, and let all the gossips and clatter-tongues look their fill at you,” said Madam dismissively, in an unconscious echo of Marina’s own reasoning. “At least they will know that you haven’t got two heads, or devil’s hooves, or any of the other nonsense that has probably been mooted about in the teashop and the pub. I will order the carriage for you.”

“Thank you, Madam,” Marina said, lowering her eyes to her plate—which was promptly whisked away. Not that she minded; this course looked like chopped pasteboard and mayonnaise, and tasted about the same. She had figured out by now that there were no more than two or three dishes in a meal that she found palatable, and she took care to get exactly the right implements for them and to eat them quickly when they appeared. Usually she got at least half of the portions set in front of her that she wanted to eat, if she managed to maneuver bites around Madam’s mandatory polite conversation.

That, and her hearty breakfasts and midnight feasts supplied by Sally, kept her from feeling as if she was going to starve to death any time soon. Perhaps when spring and summer arrived, she could convince her aunt to let her have picnic luncheons or teas out of doors.

But I suppose that will only happen if they’re in fashion.

“What was that telegraph about, that you ran off so quickly today?” Arachne asked her son, who was eating his portion of the next course with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

“Another one of the paintresses left the Okehampton works—or, as their foreman said, ‘disappeared,’“ he said, setting his fork aside. “That’s two this week, and there’s been some talk that somehow we’re responsible for the disappearances. The manager reckoned I’d better come deal with the talk before it got out of hand. He was right; not only did I have to talk to the girls—all of them, not just the paintresses—but every one of the shop foremen cornered me before I left. They all wanted to know if there was any truth to the talk that for some reason we’d gotten rid of her and hushed it up.”

“Talk?” Arachne said sharply. “We’re the ones who’ve been injured! Doesn’t it occur to those people that it takes time to train a paintress? Why would we want to be rid of trained ones? It costs us time and money when one of the little ingrates decides to try her prospects elsewhere.”

“That’s what I told them,” Reggie replied with a shrug. “And eventually they all admitted what I’d already known—” He gave a sharp glance at Marina, who was pretending great interest in her plate. “Once those girls start the easy life of a paintress, they start getting airs. You know what I mean, Mater.”

Arachne laughed, and actually looked fully at her niece. “This, Marina, is not considered polite conversation. For one thing, it is about the inner workings of our business, and it is not polite to discuss these things in front of those who are not involved in the business themselves. For another—well, the petty lives of little factory girls with money to spend who find that they have become interesting to men are not appropriate subjects for conversation at any time.”

“Yes, Madam,” Marina murmured.

“However, this is something that Reginald and I must discuss, so—well, remember that this sort of thing is not to be brought up in public.”

“Yes, Madam,” Marina agreed, softly.

She turned back to Reggie. “Now, there has to be some reason why these foremen were convinced we had anything to do with these girls running off,” Arachne continued, fixing her son with a cool gaze. “You might as well tell me what it is.”

Reggie groaned. “Never could get anything by you, Mater, could I? Some pesky Suffragists brought in their pet female doctor and commenced whinging about the entire painting room, especially about the paints and glazes, saying we’re poisoning the girls and that’s why they disappear. Some of the men were daft enough to listen to her.”

“Suffragists!” Arachne’s voice rose incredulously. “What possible quarrel can they have with me? Am I not a woman? Have I not, by my own hard work and despite the machinations of men who would see me fail, turned my single manufactory into four? Do I not employ women? And at good wages, too!”

Reggie just shrugged. “How should I know? They’re mad, that’s all. They say the lead in the glazes—the woman doctor says that the lead in the glazes—poisons the girls, makes them go mad, and we know all about it. So when they start becoming unhinged we have them taken away.”

“Pfft!” said Arachne. “A little lead is what makes them so pretty—just like arsenic does, everyone knows that. I’ve never heard that a little lead ever did more than clear up their complexions, but now some ill-trained woman doctor says it is dangerous and—” She shrugged. “Who gave her this medical degree? No university in England, I am sure! No university in England would be so foolish as to grant a woman a medical degree!”

“I don’t know, Mater—”

She fixed him with an icy stare. “I trust you made it very clear to the men that these accusations are groundless and that this so-called doctor is a quack and a fraud.”

“I made it very clear to the men that it is easy enough to replace them if they stir up trouble and spread tales, Mater,” Reggie told her, with that smirk that so annoyed Marina.

“Well done.” Arachne thawed a trifle, and smiled. “Now we have disposed of the impolite conversation, perhaps we can discuss other things.” With no more warning than that, she turned to her niece. “Well, Marina? What shall we discuss?”

Her mind went blank. She couldn’t remember the topics that Arachne had indicated were appropriate. “Why shouldn’t a woman be a doctor, Madam?” she asked, the first question that came into her head.

But Arachne raised an admonitory eyebrow. “Not appropriate, child,” she replied. “That particular question comes under any number of inappropriate topics, from politics to religion. Polite conversation, if you please.”

“Um—” She pummeled her brain frantically. “The concerts in Bath? The London opera season?”

“Ah. The London opera season. That will do nicely.” Arachne smiled graciously. “Now, since you have never been to London, and in any case, you cannot go to the opera until you are out of mourning, what could you possibly say about the London opera season?”

“I could—say that—ask the opinion of whomever I was with,” she said, groping after further conversation. “About the opera selections—the tenors—”

“Very good. It is not wise to ask a gentleman about the sopranos, my dear. The gentleman in question might have an interest in one of them that has nothing to do with their vocal abilities.” She turned to Reggie. “So, what do you think of our London Faust this year? Shall I trouble to see it?”

That gained her a respite, as mother and son discussed music—or rather, discussed the people who had come to see the music, and be seen there. Marina had only to make the occasional “yes” or “no” that agreed with their opinions. And when mother and son disagreed—she sided always with the mother.

It seemed politic.

The carriage rolled away from the gates of Oakhurst with Marina in it, but not alone. Mary Anne was with her, all starch and sour looks, sitting stiffly on the seat across from Marina. Just to make the maid’s day complete, Marina had taken care to get in first, so as to have the forward-facing seat, leaving Mary Anne the rearward-facing one.

I should have expected that I wouldn’t be allowed out without my leashholder, she thought, doing her best to ignore the maid’s disgruntled glances, watching the manicured landscape roll by outside the carriage window.

Mary Anne had not been the least little bit pleased about going to church. She didn’t even have a prayerbook—but last night, a quick raid of the schoolbook cupboard in the library had supplied a pair of not too badly abused specimens, which she presented to the seriously annoyed woman for choice. Marina, of course, had her own, with her other books, a childhood present from Sebastian, with wonderful little pen-and-ink illuminations of fish, ocean creatures, and water plants. And had it turned up missing, there would have been a confrontation…

So here she was, everything about her in soberest black except that magnificent beaver cloak. She’d no doubt that even the cloak would have been black, had her aunt thought about it in advance, and considered that she might actually want to show her face in the village this Sunday.

Saint Peter’s was nothing particularly outstanding in the way of ecclesiastical architecture—but it wasn’t hideously ugly or a jumble of added-on styles, either. And it was substantial, not a boxy little chapel with no graces and no beauty, but a good medieval church in the Perpendicular style with a square tower and a fine peal of bells, which were sounding as they drove up. It was a pity that the interior had been stripped by Cromwell’s Puritans during the Reformation, but there—the number of churches that hadn’t been could be counted on one hand, if that. It had nice vaulting, though, and though it was cold, at least she had that lovely warm beaver cape to keep her comfortable during the service. The poor young vicar looked a little blue about the nose and fingertips.

The Roeswoods were not an old enough family to have a family pew, but Marina was shown straight up to the front and seated there, giving everyone who had already arrived a good look at her as she walked up the aisle with Mary Anne trailing behind. And of course, the entire village could regard the back of her head at their leisure all through the service.

For the first time, Marina’s keeper was at a complete loss. Mary Anne appeared not to have set foot in a church since early childhood. Somewhat to Marina’s bemusement, she made heavy work of the service, fumbling the responses, not even knowing the tunes of the hymns. Marina could not imagine what was wrong with the girl—unless, of course, she was chapel and not church—or even of some odd sect or other like Quakers or Methodists. And Marina had the feeling that, given Arachne’s autocratic attitudes, it wouldn’t have mattered if the maid had been a devotee of the Norse god Odin and utterly opposed to setting foot in a Christian church—if Mary Anne wanted to keep her place, to church she would go every time that Marina went.

I hope—oh, I hope she can’t ride! If she can’t ride—and I can avoid Reggie—I might be able to ride alone. Or if not alone, at least with someone who won’t be looking for my mistakes all the time.

She even went so far as to insert that hope into her prayers.

After the service—the organist was tolerably good, and the choir cheerful and in tune, if not outstanding—Marina remained in the pew while Mary Anne sat beside her and fumed. If the maid had been given a choice, she would have gone charging straight down the aisle the moment the first note of the recessional sounded, Marina suspected. Mary Anne had made an abortive attempt to rise, but when Marina didn’t move, she’d sat back down perching impatiently on the very edge of the pew, which couldn’t have been comfortable.

Having gone to this sort of church all her life, however, Marina knew very well that it was no good thinking that you could get out quickly if you were in the first pew. Not a chance… not with most of the village, including all of the littlest children and the oldest of the elderly, between you and the exit. Today, with Marina Roeswood present—well, all of those people would be lingering for more long looks at the mysterious daughter of the great house.

So she sat and waited for the aisle to clear, and only when a quick glance over her shoulder showed her that there were just a few folk left, lingering around the door, did she rise and make her leisurely way toward the rear of the church.

And once at the door, it was time, as she had known, for another delay, which clearly infuriated Mary Anne. But it was a delay that Marina was not, under any circumstances, going to forego or cut short.

“And you must be the young Miss Roeswood,” said the vicar—sandy-haired, bare-headed—stationed at the door to greet his parishioners as they left. He reached for her black-gloved hand, as she held it out to him. “I wish that we had gotten this first meeting under better circumstances,” he continued, fixing his brown eyes on her face in a way that suggested to her that he was slightly short-sighted. “My name is Davies, Clifton Davies.”

“The Reverend Clifton Davies, I assume,” Marina put in, with a hint of a smile. Cornish or Welsh father, I suspect, but born on the Devon side of the border. He doesn’t have quite the lilt nor the accent.

“Yes, yes, of course,” the vicar laughed deprecatingly. “I’m rather new in my position, and not used to being the ‘Reverend’ Davies—but the village has welcomed me beyond my expectation.”

“So both of us are new to Oakhurst—I shan’t feel so completely the stranger,” Marina replied, and as Mary Anne smoldered, continued to make conversation with the young Mr. Davies. In no time at all she had learned that he was as fond of chess as she was—”And you must come to the vicarage to play!”—passionate about music—”Although I cannot play a note, sadly”—and unmarried. Which accounted for the amused glances of the parishioners lingering purposefully about the door. Well, those were for the most part older parishioners. She rather thought that if any of the young and unmarried women had been lingering, she wouldn’t have been getting amused glances. They would think her a rival, and a rival with advantages they would never have. If she told them that she was not, they would never believe her.

But she was delighted to discover that Mr. Davies was well-spoken, friendly, intelligent. And the more that Marina spoke with the young vicar, the better she liked him.

Finally Mary Anne had had enough. “Excuse me, Miss Marina, but I think I had better fetch the carriage,” the woman said, interrupting the vicar in midsentence, then pushing past her charge as the young man looked after her with a bemused glance.

“I suppose I’ve monopolized your time unforgivably—” he began with a blush.

“You have done no such thing,” Marina replied with warmth, then seized her chance. “Mr. Davies, I should like very much to visit you, and play for your enjoyment or have a chess game with you, but my Aunt Arachne has some very strict notions about my behavior. Please send me or us actual invitations for specific days and times, so that she cannot put me off and must either be rude and decline, or gracious and accept. Please come up to Oakhurst Manor to visit—teatime would be ideal!”

“Forgive me, but you sound rather desperate,” the vicar said hesitantly, warily.

“I am—for intelligent company, and conversation that isn’t confined to the few topics considered appropriate among the fashionable elite!” she said, allowing him a brief glimpse of her frustration.

Just a flash—but Clifton Davies was not at all stupid, and very, very intuitive. She saw something like understanding in his eyes, a conspiratorial smile, and he gave her a quick nod.

“In that case, I believe I am overdue to make a call upon your aunt—and you,” he said, with a little bow over her hand. Then he released it, and stepped back, and turned to another of his flock. It was all perfectly timed, and she turned away, hiding a smile of satisfaction, to make her way up the path to the waiting carriage and the fuming Mary Anne. Now she would have a reason to come to the village; now there would be an outsider in Oakhurst to free her from the endless round of supervision and etiquette lessons.

And she just might start to get a decent tea now and again, with the vicar coming to call.

“And how did you find the little vicar?” Arachne asked over luncheon—how could anyone make roast beef so bland?—with a very slight smile.

Mary Anne told her how long I stayed talking to him, she realized at once. “I found him polite and well-spoken, who composes an intelligent sermon and delivers it admirably,” she replied casually. “And although he did not know my mother and father well, he wished to properly express his condolences and asked me to convey them to you as well, Madam. He intends to pay a call here soon, to impart them in person, and tender his respect to you and welcome you here.”

“Ah.” Arachne gave her a measuring look. “And did he say anything else?”

“That he plays chess and hopes that one of us will indulge him in a game,” she said truthfully. And added, “I expect that he will want one or both of us to help in church charity work. That is what my mother used to do, all the time. She used to write to me about it, pages and pages.”

There was a spark of something in Arachne’s eyes. “Really? That surprises me. I would not have expected Hugh’s wife to be so closely concerned with village life.”

“She enjoyed doing it; she enjoyed being able to help people,” Marina replied. “I suppose—I should do something too, but—I don’t know what. There’s an obligation, you see, responsibilities between the house and the village. We’re responsible for a great deal of parish charity, either directly, or indirectly.” Since Arachne had not interrupted her, she assumed that this must be appropriate conversation and continued. “I’m not good with sick people—my mother used to take food and other comforts to sick people. Perhaps you should, Madam.”

“I think that there are better uses of our time,” Arachne said, dismissively. “We can send one of the servants with such things, if the vicar wishes the custom to continue. Still… if it is the custom…”

Marina actually got to finish her course in peace, as Arachne pondered this sudden revelation of the linking of house and village. Evidently it had not occurred to her that there could be such a thing.

“You, I think, will be taking the responsibility of our obligation to the village,” Arachne said into the silence. “I am sure Mr. Davies will know what is best for you to do. It will give you something constructive to do with your time.”

Since that was exactly what Marina had been hoping she would say, she simply nodded. Another reason to be out of the manor!

“You will, of course, direct the servants to do as much as possible in your stead,” Arachne added. “The responsibility of directing them will be good for you.”

She stifled a sigh. Oh well—I’ll still have some chances to get away from here, if not as many as I had hoped for.

Still—still! She had gotten away, if only for the duration of the church service. She had made a friend of the vicar, and now there would be an outsider coming here. The bars of the cage were loosening, ever so slightly.

When Arachne was finished with luncheon, she did not immediately leave. Instead, she fixed Marina with an oddly penetrating look, and said, “Come with me, please, to the drawing room.” She smiled; it did not change the expression of her eyes. “We haven’t spoken of your parents, and I think it is time that we did so.”

Obediently, Marina rose when Arachne did, and followed her to the drawing room, which was between the library and the smoking room and connected with both. She knew the plan of the house now; she was in the north wing and Arachne and Reginald were in the south; in between lay the central portion of the house which contained the entry hall and the other important rooms. Most of the servants were also quartered in the north wing, all except for Madam’s personal maid, Reggie’s valet, and Mary Anne.

Like most of the house, this was a finely appointed, but comfortable room—not one designed for a particular Elemental Mage, either, so at least Marina didn’t feel stifled. The furnishings were from the middle of the last century, she suspected; they didn’t have the ornate quality of those more recently in vogue. Arachne took a couch with its back to the window, which perforce made Marina take a chair that faced it. With the light behind her aunt, she could not easily see Arachne’s face.

“How often did your mother write to you, child?” Arachne asked, as Marina settled uneasily into her chair.

“Once a week or so, except when she and my father were in Italy; less often then,” Marina replied, trying to keep her tone light and conversational. “She told me what she was doing, about the books she had read, the friends who had visited. Not when I was a child, of course,” she amended. “Then she told me mostly about her garden, and made up stories to amuse me. At least, I think she made them up, although they could have been stories from the fairy tale books she read as a child.”

“What sort of stories?” Arachne asked, leaning forward.

I wonder why she’s so interested?

“Oh, fairy tales and myths, about little creatures that were supposed to live in her garden, gnomes and fauns and the like,” she replied with a slight laugh. “Entirely whimsical, and perhaps that was the problem, why I never cared much for them. I was not a child much given to whimsy.”

She thought that Arachne smiled. “No?”

“No. I preferred the myths of Greece and Rome—and later, the stories about Arthur and his knights and court and the legends of Wales and Cornwall,” she said firmly. “And serious things; real history, Shakespeare and adult books. And poetry, which I suppose, given that I lived with artists, was inevitable, but the poetry I read was mostly Elizabethan. I was a serious child, and mother didn’t seem to understand that.” She chose her words with care. “Oh, just for instance, she seemed to think that since I lived with the Tarrants, I should be a painter, when my real interest is music. She would send me expensive paints and brushes, and I would just give them to Sebastian Tarrant—and he would buy me music.”

“An equitable arrangement. How very businesslike of you.” Arachne chuckled dryly, a tinkling sound like broken bits of china rubbing together. “And when you were older, what did your mother write about then?”

“What I’ve told you—mostly about her everyday life. Her letters were very like journal entries, and I tried to write the same to her, but it was difficult for me.” She shrugged. “I think, perhaps, that she was trying to—to bring us together again. To make us less than strangers.”

“I believe you could be right.” Arachne shook her head. “Poor Alanna; I knew her even less than you, for I did not even have the benefit of letters, but all I have gleaned since I arrived here makes me think that she must have been a seriously troubled young woman. I begin to wonder if the estrangement between my brother and myself might have been due in part to her.”

“Surely you don’t believe that my mother would have wanted to come between a brother and sister!” Marina exclaimed indignantly. “That doesn’t sound anything like her!”

“No, nothing of the sort,” Arachne replied, unruffled by the outburst. “No—but I must wonder if—if my brother was afraid that if I saw her, I would—” She shook her head again. “No, surely not. But if I saw that he had bound himself to someone who was—not stable—well, he must have realized that I would urge him to—”

“It puzzles me, but that I really did not know them,” Marina said, sitting up straighter. “If you have any guesses that would explain why I was sent away, I would be interested to hear them, and I assure you, I am adult enough to deal with them in a mature manner.”

Oh, very pompous, Marina. On the other hand—I’m tired of being treated like I’m still in the nursery.

Arachne paused. “You know that I told you how your mother seemed to have a—a breakdown of her nerves following your birth. Now, when you tell me of these letters of hers, well—what if she was not telling you whimsical tales as a child? What if she actually thought she saw these creatures in her garden?”

Marina for a moment could not believe what her aunt was trying to tell her. “Are you suggesting that she lost her wits?” Her voice squeaked on the last word, making her exclamation a little less than impressive.