A Brother's Price

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    A Brother's Price
    By
    Wen Spencer
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    To Ann Cecil and June Drexler Robertson
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    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Thanks to Ann Cecil, W. Randy Hoffman, John Schmid, and Linda Sprinkle for all their help.
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    Chapter 1

     
    There were a few advantages to being a boy in a society dominated by women. One. Jerin Whistler thought, was that you could throttle your older sister, and everyone would say, “She was one of twenty-eight girls—a middle sister—and a troublemaker too, and he—he’s a boy,” and that would be the end of it.
    Certainly if a sister deserved to be strangled, it was Corelle. She was idly flipping through a magazine showing the latest in men’s fashions while he tried to stuff a thirty-pound goose, comfort a youngest sister with a boo-boo knee, and feed their baby brother. Since their mothers and elder sisters had left the middle sisters in charge of the farm, Corelle strutted about, with her six-guns tied low and the brim of her Stetson pulled down so far it was amazing she could see. Worse, she started to criticize everything he did, with an eye toward his coming of age—when he would be sold into a marriage of his sisters’ choosing.
    She had previously complained that he chapped his hands in hot wash water, that trying to read at night would give him a squint, and that he should add scents to his bathwater. This morning it was his clothes.
    “Men’s fashion magazines are a joke,” Jerin growled, trying to keep the goose from scooting across the table as he shoved sage dressing into its cavity. If he hadn’t spent years diapering his seventeen youngest sisters and three little brothers, the goose might have gotten away from him. The massive, fat-covered goose, however, was nothing compared with a determined Whistler baby. “No one but family ever sees their menfolk! How do these editors know what men are wearing?”
    “Things are different with nobility,” Corelle countered, and held out the magazine. “It’s the whole point to a Season: to be seen! Here. This is the pair I want you to make for yourself.”
    Instead of good honest broadcloth trousers, the fashion plate showed kid-glove-tight pants with a groin-hugging patch of bright colored fabric. Labeled underneath was Return of the codpiece: it allows the future wives to see what they are buying .
    Jerin wrestled the goose into their largest roasting pan. “Don’t even think it, Corelle. I won’t wear them.”
    “I’d like seeing you say that to Eldest.”
    “Eldest knows better than to waste money on clothes no one will see.” Jerin worked the kitchen pump to wash the goose fat from his hands. Much as he hated to admit it, Corelle’s aim was dead-on—he wouldn’t be able to face Eldest and say no. Two could play that game, though. “Eldest is going to be pissed that you went to town and got that magazine. She told you to stay at the farm, close to the house.”
    “I didn’t go to town, so there.” Corelle, nonetheless, closed the magazine up, realizing it was evidence of a crime.
    So where did she get it ? Jerin swung the crying little girl holding on to his knees up onto the counter beside the goose. It was Pansy, when he had thought it was Violet all this time. “Hey, hey, big girls don’t cry. Let me see the boo-boo. Corelle, at least feed Kai.”
    Corelle eyed the sloppy baby playing in his oatmeal. “Why don’t you call Doric? It’s boys’ work. He should be learning all this from you before you get married. Your birthday is only a few months away—and then you’ll be gone.”
    Luckily Pansy was crying too hard to notice that comment.
    “Doric is churning butter and can’t stop,” Jerin lied. “If you want to spell him, I’m sure he’d rather be feeding Kai instead.”
    Corelle shot him a dirty look but picked up the spoon and redirected some of the oatmeal into Kai’s mouth. “All I’m saying is that the—that certain families are making noises that they want to come courting and see you decked out in something other than a walking robe and hat. Hell, you might as well be stuffed in a gunny-sack when you’re out in public—at least as far as a woman knowing if you’re worth looking at or not.”
    “That’s the point, Corelle.” Jerin had gotten the mud and crusted blood off of Pansy’s knee and discovered a nasty cut. He washed it well with hot water and soap, put three small stitches in to hold the flesh together, and then, knowing his little sisters, bandaged it