Mercedes Lackey - The Gates of Sleep

Madam hasn’t been there for a year? How could that be possible? That sinkhole didn’t have that sort of capacity, and it must have been tapped off several times in the last year. Could Reggie be tapping it?

Surely not —”Of course, when things happen like kilns blowing up, Mater wants to get right in there; in her nature, you might say.

But the Exeter works are half mine, and she reckoned it was a good place for me to get m’feet wet, get used to running things.” He grinned at her, as pleased as a boy making the winning score at rugby.

Surely not Reggie —

That sort of seething morass couldn’t be handled at a distance—yet Madam couldn’t have tapped it. So if she wasn’t tapping that unhealthy power, who was?

Surely not Reggie. Not possible. No matter what Shakespeare said, that a man could “smile and smile and still be a villain,” evil that profound couldn’t present a surface so—banal.

And besides, there was nothing, not the slightest hint of power, evil or otherwise, about him! Nor, now that she came to think about it, was there anything of the sort about Madam.

She had followed him out of the compartment at his urging as contradictions overwhelmed her and left her confused and uncertain. The touch of his hand on her elbow left her even more uncertain. There was nothing in that touch. No magic, no evil, nothing to alert her to danger. Perfectly, solidly ordinary, and no more odious than the Odious Reggie usually was, in that he took possession of her arm as if he had already taken possession of her entire person and was merely marking his claim to her.

It was so baffling it made her head ache, and she sought comfort in the familiar rituals of teapot and jam jar. Although the teapot was heavy silver, and the jam jar not a jar at all, but a dish of elegant, cut crystal, the tea tasted the same as the China Black from Aunt Margherita’s humble brown ceramic pot with the chipped spout, and the jam not quite as good as the home-made strawberry she’d put up with her own hands. Still, as she poured and one-lump-or-twoed, split scones and spread them with jam, the automatic movements gave her a point of steadiness and familiarity.

“… jolly fine deposit of kaolin clay under the North Pasture,” Reggie was saying, showing almost as much enthusiasm as he’d had for his flirtations with all those strange young women today.

“With Chipping Brook so deep and fast there, we’ve got water-power enough for grinding, mixing, anything else we’d want. Plenty of trees in the copse at the western edge for charcoal to fire the kilns—plenty of workers in the village—the road to the railroad or going up north to the sea for cheap transport—there’s nothing lacking but the works itself!”

Chipping Brook? North Pasture? My North Pasture? Her scattered thoughts suddenly collected as she realized what he’d been babbling about for the past several minutes.

Putting a pottery—another of those poisonous blots—in the North Pasture beside Oakhurst. On her land. Spewing death into her brook, her air—devouring her trees to feed the voracious kilns, turning her verdant meadow into a hideous, barren scrape in the ground.

And taking the villagers, people I know, or their children, offering them jobs and then poisoning them with lead dust and overwork.

“I think I can do without that, Reggie,” she said, attempting to sound smooth and cool, interrupting the stream of plans from her cousin. “Your potteries are astonishing, and surely must be the envy of your peers, but I haven’t the interest or the ability to run one, and I prefer the North Pasture as it is. I certainly have no desire to live next to a noisy factory, which is what I would be doing if you put a pottery in the North Pasture.”

“Well, cuz, obviously you don’t have to live next to it—there are hundreds of places you could live!” Reggie said with a fatuous laugh as the train sped past undulating hills slowly darkening as the light faded. “Why live at Oakhurst, anyway? It’s just an old country manor without gas, much less electricity, and neither are likely to reach the village in the next thirty years, much less get to the manor! A London townhouse—now there’s the ticket!”

She winced inwardly. That much was true, too true. But she wasn’t about to admit to him that she would very much have liked to have the option to modernize within her own lifetime. “Nevertheless, Oakhurst is my inheritance, to order as I choose, and I do not choose to have it turned into a factory, so you can put that notion out of your mind,” she said sharply—so sharply that he was clearly surprised and taken aback.

Oh dear. She softened her posture immediately and smiled winsomely. “Silly man! I haven’t even gotten to know the place, and already you want to change it entirely! Haven’t you come to know me well enough by now to know that given any other choice, I would still live here? I like the countryside, and Oakhurst is particularly beautiful. Surely there are cities enough where you can put another factory without ruining my peace and quiet and my views!”

Reggie regained that superior smirk. “I forgot, cuz, you’re just a little country-cousin at heart,” he said condescendingly.

“I’m afraid so,” she admitted, lowering her gaze and looking up at him through her lashes. “After my trip today, I am only more confirmed in my notions, I must admit. Exeter was exciting but—there were so many people!”

She might have despised herself for being so manipulative; might, except for all that was at stake. She could not, would not allow another diseased blight to take root here. She would fight it to the last cell of her body.

“You’ll change your mind,” he said, dismissing her and her concerns out of hand. “Especially when you’re out, when you’ve had a real London season, when you’re going to parties and balls and the theater—you’ll like cities so much you’ll wonder how you ever thought a pasture worth bothering your pretty head about. Heh—and when you start seeing how much of the ready it takes to buy all those gowns and froofahs and things you ladies are so fond of, you’ll realize just how much good a factory could do your pocket-book. Can’t be seen in the same frock twice, don’t you know. You can’t support a lively Town style on farm rents. It needs a lot of the ready to be in the mode.”

We’ll see about that, she thought grimly. If the choice was between fine feathers and the preservation of this land—she would be willing to make a regular guy of herself in London. She would do without that promised London season! No gown, no string of balls, nothing was worth despoiling Oakhurst, raping the land, poisoning the waters.

The real question was—since she had no direct control of her property, how was she to keep Reggie from plunging ahead with his plan no matter what she wanted? She had no doubt that Madam would be only too happy to give ear to this idea, and Madam was the one who was making the decisions at the moment, where Oakhurst was concerned.

“Oh, Reggie, you can’t want to make me miserable!” she pouted. “That pottery just gave me the awfullest headache, and I just know I’d have nothing but headaches with one of those things right in the next field!”

“But you wouldn’t be here, you’d be in London,” he tried to point out, but she sighed deeply and quivered her lower lip.

“Not all the time! And how can I have house parties with a factory in the next field? People don’t come to house parties to see factories, they come to see views, and to shoot—and oh, everyone around here of any consequence will just hate us, for the shooting will be quite spoilt for miles around!”