Carson, evidently sober as a stone, tipped more bourbon into his tumbler. Gamely she held out her glass. Very gently, he closed his hand around it and pushed it to the table.
”Point one: you’re drunk and don’t have the sense to quit. I will not ride herd on a greenhorn trying to prove a point to the whole world.” Margo flushed. “Point two: the role of women down time, just about anywhere or anywhen you might land, is …less than what we’d consider socially respected. And women’s mobility in many societies was severely limited. Then there’s the problem of fashion.”
Margo had thought all this through and had a counter argument ready, but Carson wasn’t slowing down long enough to voice it. She sat and listened helplessly while the man whose accomplishments had given her the courage to keep going nailed down the coffin lid on her dreams.
”Women’s fashions change radically from locale to locale, often from year to year. What happens if you go scouting through an unknown gate and show up a couple of centuries off in clothing style? Or maybe a whole continent off? Any idea how ridiculous you’d look in 200 B.C. China, wearing an eighteenth-century British ball gown? You’d stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. Maybe-probably, even you’d end up dead. Quite a few societies weren’t real tolerant of witches.”
”But-”
”At best, you’d end up in prison for life. Or even more fun, in some asshole’s private harem. Just how fond of rape are you, Margo?”
She felt like he’d punched her. Painful memory threatened to break her control. Margo was shaking down to her fingertips and Carson, damn him, wasn’t done yet. In fact, the look in his eyes was one of growing satisfaction as he noticed the tremor in her hand.