"Wait, now you say e'en the men don't get to pick?" Niabheara drew up straighter, horrified. "Is it like the Midsummer Rites, where you have to marry whoe'er gets the other acorn? At what point are people e'en allowed to meet one another--the bed, or are they introduced at the chamber door?"

"Some of them meet at the wedding," Elaine answered. "Usually at the engagement, at least. Some girls are allowed to meet their suitors before their fathers choose, but that's not everyone." She made a face. "Ihadn't met anyone my grandfather had been talking to. Because of the not-being-white bit."

She gave Elaine a critical look. "That's still a little short-sighted," she said doubtfully. "He would notice what colour you were, surely, unless he were blind, or you glammed yourself otherwise, or else pretended you were under a geis where he could only look upon you on a moonless night."

"Yeah, only we don't have glams or geises there," Elaine replied. "I think it was more a throw-money-at-him and get him in so deep that my grandfather could wreck his reputation if he tried to back out. It is my grandfather, you know," she said, rolling her eyes. "You know he tried to kill Jochy for taking my virginity?"

"I didn't know," she said. "This was after Jochy came to Cnoch-na-Niall? But Marcello explained all that to me," she went on cheerfully. "Mostly."

Elaine nodded. "It was after he left. Er, I left. And came back to the ship, and we switched bodies back," she answered. "Marcello told you? What the hell did Marcello tell you? I didn't even know he knew about it. He wasn't around."

"About killing people who lose their virginity," she explained with the tone of one only recently enlightened and pleased to have conversational context.

Elaine let out a weird cough-laugh-sneeze sort of noise. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I thought you meant about Jochy. Nobody tried to kill me she said. "My grandfather isn't like that. He just tried to kill Jochy over it, for spoiling me." She snorted. "I've never met anyone who was actually killed for it. I mean, known. I wouldn't have met them after they were killed. But I know people who couldn't get married for it. Because they were ruined. Frankly, I don't see what the big fuss is, short of having someone else's baby."

"I don't understand how you can be ruined," she said. "Ruined implies you can't be used again. Which sounds awful, but there you are." She waved it away. "I mean, he explained all that as well--how everything has to be measured out through the baby's father and if you can't prove who the father is . . . it just sounds terribly complicated. But you would think, wouldn't you, that a woman could be counted on to know who she's slept with."

"Well, yes, but if she's slept with two men, how do you tell who the father is?" she asked. "And if you marry her and she has another man's child, should you-- I mean the man, here, be responsible for paying for the child?"