Shadows and Light Read Online Free PDF Page A

related to you. But they’re distantly related.”
    “To me,” Elinore replied. “But not so distant to you.” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then looked at him. “The youngest of them is your half sister, one of your father’s bastards. She’s four years younger than you, and she’s not distant, Liam. She is family.”
    “No!” Unable to sit anymore, Liam restlessly prowled the room. As he passed the table, he snatched up the decanter, splashed some whiskey into a glass, and downed it. He poured another two fingers into the glass, but, this time, resisted the urge to gulp it down.
    “No,” he said again as he continued to prowl around the room. “She’s no more family than any of the other bastards my father seeded in the women he seduced. I know you established a fund to help those women and assist thechildren in learning a trade so that they could have a living, but they’ve never been acknowledged as family”
    “No, they never have.” Elinore looked down at her hands. “I’m not proud that I couldn’t find it in my heart to accept the children, but it is, I think, an understandable failing. But Keely is different. She was only fourteen when your father took her, and what he did to her scarred her mind in ways that time has never healed. And with the talk and stories that are starting to be told about witches, your sister —”
    “She’s not my sister!”
    “— is more vulnerable than any of those other children.”
    “If she’s four years my junior, that makes her twentythree,” Liam said. “She’s no longer a child.”
    “Which doesn’t change the fact that she needs your protection.” Elinore stood up. “They all need your protection, Liam. There are troubles in the east. Things are happening there that threaten every woman, not just the witches. My cousin Moira —”
    “Oh, yes, cousin Moira,” Liam said nastily — and then realized he’d used the same tone of voice his father had always used when Moira was mentioned.
    “Did you know that the girls in her village were turned away from school last fall? The baron who rules Pickworth declared that too much learning is unhealthy for females. It makes them unfit for the duties that are beneficial to a man’s family. So now they are permitted to learn how to read and write and do sums to the extent that it is sufficient for them to run a household. By those standards, Brooke should be learning nothing more than how to do fine needlework and write out a menu rather than learning how to think for herself.”
    “You misunderstood what Moira said,” Liam insisted. “Or she exaggerated something sensible, turning it into the ridiculous.”
    “Sensible? Do you call leaving women totally dependent on the men in their families, with no way for them to earn a living on their own, sensible? What about the Widow Kendall? Should she have become little more than a beggar when her husband died instead of running the merchant store and making a good living for herself and her children? Or maybe she should have accepted any man who offered to marry her, whether she cared for him or not, trading the use of her body for sex in exchange for food and lodging for herself and the children. It isn’t sensible, Liam. All it does is turn women into unpaid domestic help and legal whores.”
    “What?”
    “If a woman is controlled by the male head of her household until she marries, performing whatever duties are required to provide him with a comfortable, well-run home, and then has to spread her legs when she does marry in order to earn her food and lodging, what would you call it?”
    He said nothing for a moment, staggered by the crudeness of her words. “What’s wrong with a man taking care of his family?” he finally asked. “What is so wrong with him making decisions for his children or younger siblings since they would be too inexperienced to always make good decisions for themselves?”
    Elinore sighed. “There’s nothing