Phoenix and Ashes Read Free Page B

Eleanor about,” the vicar’s
wife began.
    “Yes,
she used to run wild all about the village, didn’t she, poor
thing,” replied Alison, in a sweetly reasonable tone of voice. “A
firm hand was certainly wanted
there
, to be sure. You’d never
guess to look at them both that she’s the same age as my Carolyn, would
you?”
    Eleanor
saw Mrs.Hinshaw make a startled glance from the elegant Carolyn, revolving in
the arms of a young subaltern, to Eleanor in her plain frock and apron and
ribbon-tied hair, and with a sinking heart, saw herself come off second best.
    “No,
indeed,” murmured Mrs.Sutherland, the doctor’s wife.
    Alison
sighed heavily. “One does one’s poor best at establishing
discipline, but no child is going to care for a tight rein when she’s
been accustomed to no curb at all. Keep her busy, seems to be the best answer.
And of course, with dear Charles gone—”
    The
vicar’s wife cast a look with more sympathy in it at Eleanor, but her
attention was swiftly recaptured by Lauralee, who simpered, “And poor
Mama, not even a proper honeymoon!” which remark utterly turned the tide in
Alison’s favor.
    From
there it was all downhill, with little hints about Eleanor’s supposed
“jealousy” and “sullenness” and refusal to “act
her age”—all uttered in a tone of weary bravery with soft sighs.
    By
the time Alison was finished, there wasn’t a woman there who would have
read her exhaustion and despair as anything other than sulks and pouting.
    The
music jangled in her ears and made her head ache, and by the time the car came
for Alison and her daughters (“
Dear little Eleanor, so practical to
wear things that won’t be hurt by a little wet
!”) and Eleanor
was finished with the cleaning up and could trudge home again, she felt utterly
beaten down. Her aching legs and feet were an agony by the time she reached an
unwelcoming home and unfriendly servants. Alison and the girls held high
celebration in the parlor, their shrill laughter ringing through the house as
they made fun of the very people they had just been socializing with.
    She
got plain bread-and-butter and cooling tea for supper in the kitchen—not
even a single bite of the dainty sandwiches that she had served the
ladies
had she eaten, and of the glorious high tea that the cook had prepared for
Alison and her daughters there was not a scrap to be seen. And by the time she
went up all those stairs to her freezing-cold room, she’d had no strength
for anything except hopeless weeping.
    What
does she want from me
?
The question echoed dully in Eleanor’s
mind, and there seemed no logical answer. She had no doubt that Alison had
married Papa for the money—for all her airs at the tea, there was nothing
in the way that Alison behaved in private that made Eleanor think that her
stepmother found Papa’s absence anything other than a relief. But why did
she seem to take such pleasure in tormenting Eleanor
?
    There
didn’t seem to be an answer.
    Unless
she was hoping that Eleanor would be driven to run away from home.
    Oh,
I would, but how far would I get
?
If that was what Alison was hoping,
the very nature of this area—and, ironically, the very picture that
Alison had painted of her stepdaughter today
!—
would conspire to
thwart her. Eleanor wouldn’t get more than a mile before someone would
recognize her, and after that carefully constructed fiction of a sullen and
rebellious child that Alison had created, that same someone would assume she
was running away and make sure she was caught and brought back
!
    And
if Alison had wanted to be rid of her by
sending
her away, surely she
would have done so by now.
    She’ll
never let me go
, she thought bitterly.
Not when she can make up lies
about me to get more sympathy. And who believes in wicked stepmothers, anyway
?
    She
must have dozed off a little, because the faint, far-off sound of the door
knocker made her start. At the sound of voices below, she glanced out the
window