Shadows and Light Read Online Free PDF

wrong with those things, Liam. But I’m not talking about children. I’m talking about grown women, independent women who are as capable of thinking for themselves and making choices about their lives as any man, who are now being forced back into being as dependent as a child. I don’t think a strong, healthy community can exist with that kind of forced dependence, but it’s my gender that is vulnerable. You, being a man, may see things differently.”
    Liam shook his head. “You’ve misunderstood something.”
    “No, I think I understand perfectly what is at stake. I don’t think the eastern barons care about healthycommunities anymore,” Elinore said. “I don’t think they care about anything but having domination over women, over the land, over life.” She paused, then added bitterly, “But I will not stand by and let it happen here.”
    “It would never happen here, so it’s a moot point.” Liam angrily circled the room.
    “Won’t it? Your father was going to make the same decree, forbidding girls to receive more than three years of formal education. He was also going to follow the example of some of the eastern barons and forbid women of any age to read anything that wasn’t approved of by the male head of the household. And he was quite pleased to inform me that the barons were considering a new decree that would prevent a woman from owning property in her own name, or running a business, or even having an independent income.”
    “But that would mean —”
    “That your father would have had control over my income. He could have spent it as he pleased, and I wouldn’t have seen another copper from it except what he chose to dole out to me.”
    Liam shook his head. His father had made some dark hints about changes in the wind, but this?
    “Even if he wasn’t just baiting you for some cruel reason,” Liam said slowly, “it still has nothing to do with the witches.”
    “It has everything to do with them!” Elinore’s hands clenched. “Don’t you see? These troubles all have the same root. The witches were the first to be destroyed in the east. Once they were gone, other things began happening to the rest of the women. It’s not that far a step from killing one kind of woman to enslaving the rest.”
    “That’s nonsense, and you know it!” Liam shouted. “Why are you pushing this?”
    “Because I’m afraid!” Elinore’s breath hitched. It took several seconds for her to regain control. “I’m afraid for myself, but I’m more afraid for Brooke because I don’twant her to live in fear that any thought she has, any comment she makes, anything she does might give a man an excuse to brutalize her. If these decrees are passed, fear and pain are the only things she’ll know.”
    “You’re jumping at shadows, Mother, and I’ve heard quite enough of this.” Realizing he still held the glass of whiskey, he drank it.
    Spinning around, Elinore rushed to the work basket next to the chair near the windows. She pushed aside the needlework, pulled something out of the bottom of the basket, strode back to the sofa, and tossed two objects on the cushions.
    Liam studied the strips of leather that had brass buckles and were connected to what looked like a leather tongue. Harness of some kind, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what animal a harness like that would fit.
    “It’s a scold’s bridle,” Elinore said, her voice deliberate and cold. “A tool and a punishment to teach females never to speak unless their words are pleasing to a man’s ears. You don’t like what you’ve heard? You don’t like the feelings and opinions I’ve expressed? That’s your answer, Baron Liam. You’re bigger than I am, and you’re stronger. Will you force me down to the floor and shove that leather tongue into my mouth and buckle that bridle around my head? Will you use your fists to subdue me when I fight you so that when you order me to open my mouth to be bridled I’m too