But Madame and the girls soon found out that if they dared to show any hint of bad temper, Monsieur Rabellet’s cousin would summon the debtors and let them know—and the judge would add another month to their “sentence,” as a punishment for behaving in a fashion that would drive away customers.
Madame’s fair, white hands were now as rough and work-ravaged as Elena’s had ever been, with broken nails and reddened skin. Delphinium was developing quite a set of muscles from lugging pots of hot water for the overnight customers’ baths. And Daphne actually had a figure that did not require winching down the ties of a corset to produce.
Of the three, Daphne seemed to actually be learning a lesson from the situation, Fleur reflected, as the girl brought them their meal. She had stopped weeping most of the time, and was beginning to show a healthy interest in one of the young farmers who frequented the place on market days.
Fleur noted that he was at one of the smaller tables, and that Daphne was stopping there to “make sure he didn’t need anything” far more often than she did for any other customer. And her interest seemed to be reciprocated.
“Hmm,” she said, catching her sister’s attention, and nodding towards the pair.
“Ah, that’s the way the wind blows, does it?” said Blanche, with interest. “Well, I must say, her temper and character have improved enormously. She could do worse.”
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“And so could he,” Fleur agreed. She and Blanche were shameless eavesdroppers on the trio, and she was actually beginning to feel some sympathy for Daphne. The girl was trying. And she seemed to have finally gotten it into her dense little skull that not only was taking things from merchants without paying for them wrong, but that perhaps what they had done to the now-vanished Elena had been cruel. Fleur had heard her telling their master as much. “And we were that mean to her, and no wonder she ran away to take service from someone as would pay her,” she’d said.
“Now that I know what she had to do—well, I hope she’s better off, is all I can say, and good luck to her.”
“No sign of improvement from the others, though,”
Blanche observed, as Madame’s angry voice, berating her daughter for some fault, drifted out from the kitchen.
“That’s their choice.” Fleur shrugged. “And the way they act, if they don’t take a cue from her, they’ll be totting up more months onto their service until they’ll both be old and grey and scrubbing floors here, while Daphne’s off making herself into a proper farmer’s wife.”
“Ha.” Blanche nodded. “It all comes down to what we make of ourselves, eh? The Tradition or no. Who knows?
If she really continues to improve her character, maybe a Fairy Godmother will take pity on Daphne and she’ll find enough gold under a cabbage in the kitchen-garden to buy her freedom and give her a little dowry.”
“Stranger things have happened,” said Fleur, making a note of the thought to pass on to the appropriate party.
“Like—a Godmother wedding a Champion!” She held up The Fairy Godmother
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her glass of wine. “To happy endings, however they come about!”
Blanche clinked glasses with her. “To happy endings, indeed!”
A Q&A with Mercedes Lackey…
What does fantasy mean to you?
Fantasy for me has always gone far beyond the magic rings and castles of the classical fairy tale, although heaven knows I love the classical fairy tales! To write or enjoy fantasy requires an open mind and heart, and the ability to believe that things are not always what they seem.
Why do you think women enjoy reading fantasy?
I think it may be because, as Dorothy L. Sayers once pointed out about the mystery genre, fantasy is one of the last bastions of “moral fiction.” By this she meant that in mystery—and in fantasy—good triumphs over evil, the wrongdoers get their just deserts, and all ends, if not always strictly happily, at least well. This is the definition of “moral fiction”: something that shows the world, perhaps not as it is, but certainly as it could and should be. I think women are, as a whole, a lot less willing to settle for “that’s just the way it is” than men are. You tend to find that the men who read fantasy are idealists, in fact.
What makes you write fantasy over any other subject?
I have greater scope in writing fantasy for my imagination than in any other genre. I can write fantasy romances, fantasy mysteries, heroic fantasy, modern-urban fantasy, historical fantasy, dark (or horror) fantasy, alternate-history fantasy, political fantasy even Western fantasy. There is vir
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tually no genre that I could not use for a fantasy novel, and even if I haven’t gotten around to it, someone surely has, because I can cite examples of every one of those books, either in my own body of work, or someone else’s.
Anything you’d like to say about fantasy or writing, or writing fantasy?
When a reader closes the book with regret, you’ve done your job. What we all strive for is when a reader goes back to the same book again and again and finds equal pleasure in it each time they read it. That’s what every reader is looking for, and every writer is working to accomplish.
And when it comes down to cases, everything written is at least in part a fantasy. Except maybe for the national budget.
That’s horror.
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Mercedes Lackey’s DAW books
The Heralds of Valdemar
Arrow of the Queen
Arrow’s Flight
Arrow’s Fall
Exile’s Valor
Exile’s Honor
Take a Thief
Vows & Honor
The Oathbound
Oathbreakers
Oathblood
The Last Herald Mage Trilogy
Magic’s Pawn
Magic’s Promise
Magic’s Price
The Mage Winds Trilogy
Winds of Fate
Winds of Change
Winds of Fury
By the Sword
The Mage Wars
Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon
The Black Gryphon
The White Gryphon
The Silver Gryphon
The Fairy Godmother
483
Mercedes Lackey’s DAW books
The Mage Storms Trilogy
Storm Warning
Storm Rising
Storm Breaking
The Owl Mage Trilogy
Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon
Owlflight
Owlsight
Owlknight
Brightly Burning
Non-Valdemar Books From DAW
The Dragon-Jousters
Joust
Rediscovery (1993)
by Marion Zimmer Bradley & Mercedes Lackey Edwardian Fairy Tales
The Elemental Masters
The Gates of Sleep
The Serpent’s Shadow
The Black Swan
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Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes Lackey’s Baen titles
Bard’s Tale
Castle of Deception
by Mercedes Lackey & Josepha Sherman Fortress of Frost and Fire
by Ru Emerson & Mercedes Lackey
Prison of Souls
by Mercedes Lackey & Mark Shepherd Bardic Voices
Lark and the Wren
The Robin & the Kestrel
The Eagle and the Nightingales
Four and Twenty Blackbirds
Bardic Choices
A Cast of Corbies
by Mercedes Lackey & Josepha Sherman The Ship Who Searched
by Mercedes Lackey & Anne McCaffrey Bedlam Bards
Bedlam’s Bard (omnibus)
by Ellen Guon & Mercedes Lackey
Knight of Ghosts and Shadows
by Ellen Guon & Mercedes Lackey
Summoned to Tourney
by Ellen Guon & Mercedes Lackey
The Fairy Godmother
485
Spirits White as Lightning
by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edgehill Beyond World’s End
by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edgehill Mad Maudlin
by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edgehill 486
Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes Lackey’s Baen titles
The Serrated Edge
* Born To Run
by Larry Dixon & Mercedes Lackey
* Chrome Circle
by Larry Dixon & Mercedes Lackey
† Wheels of Fire
by Mercedes Lackey & Mark Shepherd
† When the Bough Breaks
by Mercedes Lackey & Holly Lisle
*collected as THE CHROME BORNE †collected as THE OTHERWORLD
Fire Rose
Reap the Whirlwind
by C. J. Cherryh & Mercedes Lackey Doubled Edge, Elizabethan Magic
This Scepter’d Isle
by Mercedes Lackey & Roberta Gellis Heirs of Alexandria: Alternate History The Shadow of the Lion
by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint & Dave Freer This Rough Magic
by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint & Dave Freer Wing Commander: Science Fiction
Freedom Flight
by Ellen Guon & Mercedes Lackey
If I Pay Thee Not In Gold
by Mercedes Lackey & Piers Anthony The Fairy Godmother
487
Mercedes Lackey’s Tor titles
Halfblood Chronicles
by Mercedes Lackey & Andre Norton The Elvenbane
Elvenblood
Elvenborn
The Shadow Mountain Trilogy
by Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory The Outstretched Shadow
Firebird
Diana Tregarde/Jenny Talldeer
Burning Water
Children of the Night
Jinx High
Sacred Ground
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Mercedes Lackey’s Avonova title
Tiger Burning Bright
by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton & Mercedes Lackey
Mercedes Lackey’s Silhouette Books title Counting Crows in Charmed Destinies
THE FAIRY GODMOTHER
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6199-4
Copyright © 2004 by Mercedes Lackey
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Worldwide Library, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book please contact us at [email protected].
® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license.
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Document Outline
Praise
Title Page
Dedication Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
A Q&A with Mercedes Lackey�
Copyright Page
The Fairy Godmother Page 41