"Sharon Green - [ebel 01 - Rebel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Green Sharon)

hand on her arm already hurrying her along. “If you were mine it would have happened a lot sooner, but
the duke makes a more gentle parent than I would. Used to make. You finally put him in a position where
he can’t afford to be gentle anymore, and that will turn out for the best. For both of you.”
The satisfaction in Zinder’s voice was too obvious to be missed, but Adair still didn’t say anything.
Arguing with the man would have been a waste of time, especially with her father waiting. Adair’s
discussion with him would certainly contain all the arguing anyone could possibly want.
It was the small study Zinder dragged her to, a cozy little room where her father worked when he didn’t
want to be bothered by the presence of others. The walls were all covered with bookshelves, the desk
was on the small side, and there was only a single chair in front of that desk. Adair’s father now sat
behind the desk with a cup of tea in front of him, and when Zinder pushed her into the room and closed
the door behind her, her father looked at her the way he sometimes looked at those who worked for him.
“I want to know right now what idiotic thoughts were in that black-haired head of yours when you ran
away,” he said, his light gaze locked to her face. “Did you think I was joking when I said a royal
command was involved? When the king issues commands, a duke obeys just like everyone else.”
“Since I’m not a duke, it wasn’t something I had to worry about,” Adair pointed out, making no effort to
sit in the chair in front of his desk. “And I didn’t run away, I simply left the way I’d been planning to do
for quite some time. You had no right to drag me back here, and I demand to be released to go my own
way again.”
“Go your own way,” he echoed, shaking his head as he leaned back. “You have no more than a limited
amount of gold and silver, took two changes of clothes, and one horse. If you were running away with a
man I could at least understand the effort, but you went alone. Where did you intend to go, and what did
you expect to be able to do to support yourself when you got there? Do you have any idea?”
“Where I go and what I do is mine to decide,” Adair stated, still refusing to be put on the defensive. “I
certainly don’t fit in here, something that was pointed out to me more than once during my life. If I want
to go looking for a place where I do fit in you have no right to stop me.”
“There is no such place,” her father countered, the words slow and deliberate to match his stare.
“Women are required to be and do certain things in this life, and you’ve refused to be and do any of
them. All you’ll find elsewhere is the same things you claim to dislike here, and when that happens, then
what? Will you run away again, starve because you’ve run out of gold and silver and don’t know how to
earn any more, or simply end up taken to please some lout of an outlaw? What will you do, Adair?”
Letting the demanding questions simply slide past wasn’t easy for Adair, but somehow she managed it.
She’d already asked herself the same exact questions, but the answers she’d come up with weren’t
something she cared to share with her father.
“I can’t ignore a royal command, Adair, and neither can you,” her father said after taking a deep breath.
He’d used her silence to calm himself, just the way he usually did. “Every duke in this kingdom has been
commanded to send a daughter of marriageable age to the palace, and you’re the only daughter I have. If
I sent one of your brothers instead, I think the king and his sons would notice.”
“Since I don’t ever intend to marry, what would be the point in my going?” Adair put, tired of waiting for
the threats to start. “Both you and the king can issue commands until you’re blue in the face, and that still
won’t mean I have to agree. You can have me executed, but you can’t force me to agree.”
“Whether or not you mean to marry has nothing to do with the matter,” her father returned, still much too
far from losing his temper. “There are six dukes in this realm, and not all of them are as content with their
place in life as I am. Some of them want a more active say in the ruling of the kingdom, and the way they
hope to get that say is by having one of their daughters married to one of the king’s three sons. Since we
don’t yet know which of the three princes will be named heir, those discontented dukes are willing to
gamble that the prince who marries their daughter will ultimately rule the kingdom.”
“But the king refused to simply order his sons to marry,” Adair added, letting her tone show how bored
she was with hearing something she already knew. “He also refused to allow just the dukes who want
more power to send daughters. He ordered all the dukes to send daughters, and now the princes get to
choose who they’ll marry. It would have been more interesting, not to mention more fair, if the daughters