It was the wordobeythat set off alarm signals really loudly this time. Brittany stiffened and tried to move off him to a distance more appropriate for a discussion she didn’t think she was going to like. But she was held firmly in place. A subtle reminder that if someone refused to obey, she could be forced to?
Chapter 47
BRITTANY TRIED TO GIVE DALDEN THE BENEFIT OF THEdoubt, she really did. She allowed that she was overreacting to one simple word. Granted, it was a word that went against the grain for an independent woman who’d been making all her own decisions since she left home. But all she had to do, really, was give the word a less offensive meaning. After all, she hadn’t been “obeying,” and said so to answer his question.
“I didn’t see it as an order, but a suggestion.”
“Had it been an order?”
“Then it would have required thought on my part,” she replied.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like orders. They are demeaning, suggesting I lack intelligence. That’s why I didn’t join the military. I wouldn’t have been able to handle hearing nothing but orders. And don’t look so surprised; women can be soldiers where I come from. Wasn’t it the same where your mother comes from?”
“I will allow that the technology of these other worlds make such possible, if you will allow that in a society where the weapons are only swords and strength, a woman cannot hope to compete.”
That caused an image in her mind of her trying to wield a four-foot sword that she could barely lift against one of these barbarian giants. It was an absurd image that caused her to grin, then chuckle.
“Good point,” she said.
Again he looked surprised, probably because he’d expected an argument. “You agree?”
“Sure, but that still doesn’t mean I’m going to jump when you say jump.”
“Even if an order is given for your own good?” Dalden persisted.
She gave that some thought, then allowed, “Some orders are acceptable, certainly, but you aren’t my boss with power over my job, or my government, or the law. You’re the man I live with in a mutual relationship. Why would you even want to order me around?”
“It is not a matter of want, but of necessity,” he told her. “It is my right to protect you. No one else has this right more than I—even you. This is not something that normally needs explaining. Our women are taught from birth what they can and cannot do, and who they must obey in all things—and why. A warrior needs the assurance that if he finds his woman in danger, and must instruct her to remove her from that danger, she will not stop to argue about it. If he cannot have this assurance, then he would restrict her more than is needful, and neither would be pleased.”
“Okay, I see where you’re coming from. If your women have been trained from birth to literally jump when you say jump, then you men probably take it for granted that they’ll do just that. But you have to take into account that I wasn’t trained that way, so instead of getting an old horse to follow new tricks, how about just keeping in mind that I’m not one of your women and so need to be treated differently?”
“Do you tell me you did not follow the rules of your father?” he said.
She frowned. “Not just my father, my parents. Both. Rules mutually decided on. Yes, when I lived with them I obeyed their rules, but it was with full knowledge that when I left home I’d be living by my own rules. Do you see the difference? Those were temporary rules, the rules for a child. Our children grow up knowing that eventually they’ll be on their own, with no one but government and laws telling them what they can and can’t do. You, on the other hand, are telling me that your people continue to treat your women like children even after they’re adults. I’m twenty-eight years old, Dalden, in case that hasn’t been mentioned yet. I amnota child.”
His hands suddenly cupped her breasts fully, heat searing through the thin material of thechauri. “I do not see you as a child.”
She blushed. He couldn’t miss it this time with the gaali stone lighting the inside of the tent with daylight brightness. He smiled. She scowled.
“Don’t sidestep the issue,” she said. “I wasn’t talking about sex, but general overall treatment. I’ve heard the ridiculous rules you place on your women, that they have to dress a certain way, that they can’t walk out their front door without having their hand held by some man. Has it even occurred to you how demeaning I would find such rules?”
Now he frowned. “You were told the rules but not why there are such rules?”
“Martha didn’t want to discuss them at all, probably because she finds them as offensive as I do.”
“They are not meant to offend, but to protect.”
“If your town was a civilized town, then I could walk its streets without fear of being bothered. Are you going to tell me it’s not civilized?”
“How many times were you told that Sha-Ka’an is viewed by modern worlds as a barbaric world? Did you truly think you would find equality between men and women here?”
The blush was back. Shehadbeen forgetting that. Not that it meant much when this was all make-believe anyway, but if she was going to go along with the program—or at least accept the possibility that Dalden really did believe all this—then she needed to keep in mind that nothing here was going to be what she would call normal. Why was she even fighting it? What she needed to figure out was if she could live with it—at least until the “program” was over.
“All right, so you’re barbarians—I’m sorry, I know you don’t like that word, but you brought it up. And you say these rules that I object to are for my own protection. Why? What happens if I don’t follow them?”
“You will be punished.”
