Mercedes Lackey - Fiddler Fair (anthology)

“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—”

Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon

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—

—And most certainly not like an aging lover, which half the Bugatti team and every other team assumed she was.

The fact that they weren’t had no bearing on the situation. Dora had been well aware from the moment she joined Bugatti at the end of the war that her position in this part of Man’s World would always be difficult. That was all right; when had she ever had an easy life?

“All right!” She pulled clear of the engine compartment, hands up and in plain sight, as she had taught all her mechanics to do. Too many men in Grand Prix racing had missing fingers from being caught in the wrong place when an engine started—but not on her team. The powerful Bugatti engine roared to life; she nodded to the mechanic in Jimmy’s seat, and he floored the pedal.

She cocked her head to one side, frowning a little; then grinned and gave the mech a thumbs-up. He killed the engine, answering her grin, and popped out of the cockpit—just as Jimmy himself came swaggering up through the chaotic tangle of men and machines in the pits.

She knew he was there by the way the men’s eyes suddenly moved to a point just behind and to one side of her. They never learned—or else, they never guessed how they gave themselves away. Probably the latter; they were mostly Italian, steeped in generations of presumed male superiority, and they would never even think that a woman could be more observant than they, no matter how often she proved it to them.

She pivoted before Jimmy could slap her butt, and gave him The Look. She didn’t even have to say anything, it was all there in The Look.

He stopped, standing hip-shot as if he were posing for one of his famous publicity shots, his born-charmer grin countering her Look. The blue eyes that made millions of teenage girls suffer heart-palpitations peered cheerfully at Dora through his unruly blond hair. He’d grown a thatch over his eyes for his last movie, and hadn’t cut it yet. He probably wouldn’t, Dora reflected. His image as a rebel wasn’t just an image, it was the real Jimmy.

She pulled her eyes away from his, and The Look turned to a real frown as she took in the dark ankle-length trenchcoat and the flamboyant, long silk scarf he wore.