Dragon's Teeth by Mercedes Lackey Page B

been when he had first met her—flew over her shoulder in a tumbled tangle. And now he remembered where he had seen that dress before. She had been wearing it as she painted, for she had been—
    “Painting a self-portrait of myself as the Lady of Shallot,” she said, with an expression that he could not read. “Both you and my father conspired together to break me of my nasty artistic habits. ‘Take me out of my dream-world,’ I believe he said. Oh, I can hear you both—” her voice took on a pompous tone, and it took him a moment to realize that she was imitating him, “ ‘don’t worry, sir, once she has a child she’ll have no time for that nonsense—’ And you saw to it that I had no time for it, didn’t you? Scheduling ladies’ teas and endless dinner parties, with women who bored me to death and men who wouldn’t know a Rembrandt from an El Greco! Enrolling me without my knowledge or consent in group after group of other useless women, doing utterly useless things! And when I wanted to do something—anything!—that might serve a useful purpose, you forbade it! Forbade me to work with the Salvation Army, forbade me to help with the Wayward Girls—oh no, your wife couldn’t do that, it wasn’t suitable! Do you know how much I came to hate that word, ‘suitable’? Almost as much as the words ‘my good wife.’ ”
    But I gave you everything —
    “You gave me nothing!” she cried, rising now to her feet. “You gave me jewelry, gowns ordered by you to your specifications, furniture, useless trinkets! You gave me nothing that mattered! No freedom, no authority, no responsibility!”
    Authority? He flushed with guilt when he recalled how he had forbidden the servants to obey her orders without first asking him—how he had ordered her maid to report any out-of-the-ordinary thing she might do. How he had given the cook the monthly budget money, so that she could not buy a cheaper cut of roast and use the savings to buy paint and brushes.
    “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