“Did you think I didn’t know?” she snarled, her eyes ablaze with anger as she leaned over the table. “Did you think I wasn’t aware that I was a prisoner in my own home? And the law supported you, Aaron! I was well aware of that, thanks to the little amount of work I did before you forbade it on the grounds of ‘suitability.’ One woman told me I should be grateful that you didn’t beat me, for the law permits that as well!”
He was only doing it for her own good. . . .
“You were only doing it to be the master, Aaron,” she spat. “What I wanted did not matter. You proved that by your lovemaking, such as it was.”
Now he flushed so fiercely that he felt as if he had just stuck his head in a fire. How could she be so—
“Indelicate? Oh I was more than indelicate, Aaron, I was passionate! And you killed that passion, just as you broke my spirit, with your cruelty, your indifference to me. What should have been joyful was shameful, and you made it that way. You hurt me, constantly, and never once apologized. Sometimes I wondered if you made me wear those damned gowns just to hide the bruises from the world!”
All at once, her fury ran out, and she sagged back down into her chair. She pulled the hair back from her temples with both hands, and gathered it in a thick bunch behind her head for a moment. Aaron was still flushing from the last onslaught. He hadn’t known—
“You didn’t care,” she said, bluntly. “You knew; you knew it every time you saw my face fall when you broke another promise, every time you forbade me to dispose my leisure time where it would do some good. You knew. But all of that, I could have forgiven, if you had simply let Rebecca alone.”
This time, indignation overcame every other feeling. How could she say something like that? When he had given the child everything a girl could want?
“Because you gave her nothing that she wanted, Aaron. You never forgave her for not being a boy. Every time she brought something to you—a good grade, a school prize, a picture she had done—you belittled her instead of giving her the praise her soul thirsted for!” Elizabeth’s eyes darkened, and the expression on her face was positively demonic.
“Nothing she did was good enough—or was as good as a boy would have done.”
But children needed correction—
“Children need direction. But that wasn’t all, oh no. You played the same trick on her that you did on me. She wanted a pony, and riding lessons. But that wasn’t suitable; she got a piano and piano lessons. Then, when her teacher told you she had real talent, and could become a concert artist, you took both away, and substituted French lessons!” Again, she stood up, her magnificent hair flowing free, looking like some kind of ancient Celtic goddess from one of her old paintings, paintings that had been filled with such pagan images that he had been proud to have weaned her away from art and back to the path of a true Christian woman. She stood over him with the firelight gleaming on her face, and her lips twisted with disgust. “You still don’t see, do you? Or rather, you are so sure, so certain that you could know better than any foolish woman what is best for her, that you still think you were right in crushing my soul, and trying to do the same to my daughter!”
He expected her to launch into another diatribe, but instead, she smiled. And for some reason, that smile sent cold chills down his back.
“You didn’t even guess that all this was my idea, did you?” she asked, silkily. “You had no idea that I had been touching your mind, prodding you toward this moment. You forgot what your grandmother told you, because I made you forget—that the dumb feast puts the living in the power of the dead.”
She moved around the end of the table, and stood beside him. He would have shrunk away from her if he could have—but he still could not move a single muscle. “There is a gas leak in this room, Aaron,” she said, in the sweet, conversational tone he remembered so well. “You never could smell it, because you have no sense of smell. What those awful cigars of yours didn’t ruin, the port you drank after dinner killed. I must have told you about the leak a hundred times, but you never listened. I was only a woman, how could I know about such things?”
But why hadn’t someone else noticed it?
“It was right at the lamp, so it never mattered as long as you kept the gaslights lit; since you wouldn’t believe me and I didn’t want the house to explode, I kept them lit day and night, all winter long. Remember? I told you I was afraid of the dark, and you laughed, and permitted me my little indulgence. And of course, in the summer, the windows were open. But you turned the lights off for this dumb feast, didn’t you, Aaron. You sealed the room, just as the old woman told you. And the room has been filling with gas, slowly, all night.”
Was she joking? No, one look into her eyes convinced him that she was not. Frantic now, he tried to break the hold she had over his body, and found that he still could not move.
“In a few minutes, there will be enough gas in this room for the candles to set it off—or perhaps the chafing dish—or even the fire. There will be a terrible explosion. And Rebecca will be free—free to follow her dream and become a concert pianist. Oh, Aaron, I managed to thwart you in that much. The French teacher and the piano teacher are very dear friends. The lessons continued, even though you tried to stop them. And you never guessed.” She looked up, as if at an unseen signal, and smiled. And now he smelled the gas.
“It will be a terrible tragedy—but I expect Rebecca will get over her grief in a remarkably short time. The young are so resilient.” The smell of gas was stronger now.
She wiggled her fingers at him, like a child. “Goodbye, Aaron,” she said, cheerfully. “Merry Christmas. See you soon—”
Dance Track
Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon
This story was for one of Mike Resnick’s “Alternate” anthologies, Alternate Celebrities, I believe. The wonderful thing about the alternate-history books is that you can take someone in history that you really like but who may not have . . . made some of the wisest choices in the world . . . and make him (or her) into something a little better.
Since Larry and I decided to do this one together, we combined our two passions—his for cars and mine for dance. Although . . . I am coming to share that passion for cars, and even took a High-Performance Racing school at Stevens Racing at Hallet Raceway (enjoying it very much, thank you). That, by the way, is the same track Mark Shepherd and I set Wheels of Fire at. We’re currently thinking about getting a Catterham Seven, which is a new old Lotus Seven, and doing vintage racing and autocross—but I digress.
In this case, we took the Mother of Modern Dance, Isadora Duncan, and gave her a little more common sense. We also had her born about 25 years later than she actually was, so that she participated in World War Two rather than World War One. But yes, in WWI, she did drive an ambulance for the Allies. As for her protege Jimmy, well, we made his fate a lot kinder, too.
Dora blew her hair out of her eyes with an impatient snort and wiped sweat off her forehead. And simultaneously adjusted the timing on the engine, yelled a correction on tire selection to her tire man, and took a quick look out of the corner of her eye for her driver.
He wasn’t late—yet. He liked to give her these little heart attacks by showing up literally at the last possible moment. She would, of course, give him hell, trying to sound like the crew chief that she was, and not like his mother, which she was old enough to be—