'I'll not stay,' Kara choked, on the verge of tears.
'You will stay,' Roman told her quietly but firmly, his mouth quirking into a humane smile. 'Come, where is that determined girl with the strong back who works herself like a field hand? Surely that girl with the dirty face and the blistered hands is capable of squaring off with any man!'
'I know my limits, and they simply aren't great enough to allow me to survive in my father's sphere,' Kara rejoined. 'And you are wrong about my father having rights that supersede mine! I am no one's property, man or woman! I will obey no person whom I can't respect! Respect must be earned, even from the lowliest soul, else it has no due! Do you think Guiseppe would work for you if he didn't love, honour and respect you? Would you expect him to thank you if you had him caned, simply because of some imagined slight or disagreement? Would you whip him if he were to move away or seek employment elsewhere? Do you think me any different, simply because I'm female-?'
'Is that why you toil so?' Roman asked her with a look that could have been either serious or gently mocking.
'What? I- that isn't what I meant! I mean . . . that is what I meant, but not . . . it wasn't supposed to come out like that!'
'For a forthright girl with strong opinions, you seem to have tremendous difficulty saying the simplest things,' Roman told her, laughter in his eyes. 'But underneath it all, I think you're telling me that you'd love, honour and obey the sort of man you could care for.'
'I suppose so,' Kara admitted, choosing to take his words at face value, and sighing, shrugged. 'Not that it would make any difference. Men don't like girls like me- at least, not for wives.'
'Oh?' Roman said with a smile. 'What sort of girls do men like?'
Kara reddened and avoided his eye, finding herself unable to say the words, Girls like Camilla. But she said, 'The sort who can't take care of themselves.'
'You're mistaken on that score,' Roman said, taking out and lighting himself one of his small cheroots, rising and going to a nearby hand-crank mechanism and, giving it a few turns, opening a glass louver above them, allowing some of the morning's light cool breeze to enter. 'Women who can't take matters into their own hands now and then do not make good wives. It is a comfort to a man to know that, should anything happen to him, his wife will be able to manage without him. You can't have failed to notice that my dear mother here is a rather formidable woman.'