"Andrews, V C - The Casteels 04 - Gates of Paradise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Andrews V.C)

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GATES OF PARADISE
PROLOGUE
For as long as I could remember, the only person I could share my deepest secrets with was Luke Casteel, Jr. It was as if I were truly alive only when he was with me, and in my secret putaway heart, I knew he felt the same way, even though he had never-dared say anything about it. I wanted to look at him, look into his soft dark sapphire eyes forever and ever and tell him what I really felt, but the words were forbidden. He was my half-brother.
But there was one way I could look continually at him and he at me without either of us being selfconscious about it or feeling someone would discover our secret, and that was when I painted him. He was always a willing subject. With the easel between us and my world of art serving as a window, I could stare closely at his perfectly shaped, high-cheeked bronze face and I could capture the way those unruly, jet-black strands of hair always fell over his forehead.
Luke had my aunt Fanny's hair, but my father's deep blue eyes and perfect nose. There was strength in the lines of his mouth and in his sharp, smooth jawline. I couldn't help see the clear resemblances to my father and even to myself. He had the same tall, lean build Daddy had and kept his shoulders back
the same way. The resemblances always saddened me
because they reminded me that Luke wasn't simply my half-brother; he was my illegitimate half-brother bom out of a, passionate indiscretion between Daddy and my aunt Fanny, my mother's sister, something we all understood was best kept unmentioned.
We tried to leave it behind us, stuffed away in the shadows, even though we both knew people whispered and gossiped about us in Winnerrow. Although my family was the most prominent in Winnerrow, we were a very odd family indeed. Luke Jr lived with his mother, who had been married twice: once to a man much older who had died, and once to a man much younger, who had divorced her.
Everyone in Winnerrow remembered the court hearing over who would win custody of Mommy's and Aunt Fanny's half-brother Drake, after their father Luke and his new wife Stacie were killed in a car accident. Drake was only about five at the time. The argument was settled out of court, with Mommy getting custody and Aunt Fanny getting a lot of money. Drake hated to hear about it, and more than once got into a fight at school when some boy teased him about 'being bought and paid for'. Mother said Drake had her father's temper anyway. He was handsome, muscular, and very athletic, as well as very bright and determined. Now he was a student in his third year at Harvard Business College. Even though he was really my uncle, I always thought of him as a big brother. Mommy and Daddy raised him as they would raise a son.
Most everyone in Winnerrow knew about Mommy, how she was born and raised in the Willies,
w her mother had died giving birth to her, how she had lived in a shack most of her young life, and then gone off to live with her mother's rich family, the Tattertons.
She lived at Farthinggale Manor, or ' Farthy' as she often called it whenever I could get her to talk about it, which wasn't very often.
But Luke and I talked about it. Farthinggale Manor, it loomed high in our imaginations, this magical, yet sinister place, a castle filled with a thousand secrets, some of which we just knew had to do with us. It was still the home of the mysterious Tony Tatterton, the man who had married my great-grandmother and who still ran, the great Tatterton Toy empire, now only loosely associated with our Willies Toy factory. For reasons Mother would not discuss, she refused to have anything to do with him, even though he never failed to, send us all birthday and Christmas cards. He had sent me dolls from everywhere in the world every birthday for as long as I could remember. At least she let me keep them, precious little Chinese dolls that had long straight black hair, and dolls from Holland and Norway and Ireland with colorful costumes and beautiful, sparkling faces.
Luke and I wanted to know more about Tony Tatterton and Farthy. Even Drake was very curious, although he didn't talk about it half as much as Luke and I did. If only our home, Hasbrouck House, was as open and revealing about the family's past as it
was on holidays when Mommy and Daddy's friends and their families wandered freely through it'. There were so many lingering questions. What finally had
brought my parents, back here from the rich, lavish world of Farthinggale Manor? Why did my mother want so much to return to Winnerrow where she had been considered lower than everyone because she was a Casteel from the Willies? Even when she had been a teacher here, she hadn't been fully accepted by the rich, snobby townspeople.
So many secrets haunted the shadows around us, hanging in the comers of our minds like old cobwebs. For as long as I could remember, I felt something was
supposed to be told to me about myself, but no one had told it: not my mother, not my father, and not my Uncle Drake. I sensed it in the silences that sometimes fell between my parents and between them and me, especially between my mother and me. I wished I could come to a dear, clean canvas and lift my paintbrush and pull the truth out of the blank white sheet before me. Maybe that was why I had always been obsessed with my painting. Hardly a day passed when I didn't paint something. It was as much a part of me ... as breathing.


Part One
ONE
Family Secrets
'Oh no!' Drake exclaimed, coming up behind me without my realizing it because I was so involved in my painting. 'Not another picture of Farthinggale Manor with Luke, jr gaping out a window at the rolling clouds.' Drake rolled his eyes and pretended to go into a faint.
Luke sat up quickly and brushed the strands of hair off his forehead. Whenever anything embarrassed or unnerved him, he always went to his hair. I turned slowly, intending to scowl at Drake the way Miss Marbleton, Luke's and my English teacher, would every time anyone misbehaved or spoke out of turn; but Drake wore his impish smile, and his coal black eyes glimmered like two dew-covered stones. I couldn't make myself angry at a face like that. He was so handsome, but no matter how often he shaved, he had a- dark cloud in his. complexion. My mother was always running her hand over this cheeks affectionately and telling him to shave away the porcupine quills. 'Drake,' I said softly, practically pleading with him not to say anything more that might embarrass Luke and me. 'Well, ies true, Annie, isn't it?' Drake persisted.
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'You must have done a half dozen pictures like this with Luke inside of Farthy or walking about the grounds. And Luke wasn't ever there!' He raised his voice to dearly remind us that he had been. I tilted my head to the side the way my mother did when something suddenly occurred to her. Was Drake jealous of my using Luke as an artistic subject? It never occurred to me to ask him to pose because he rarely sat still long enough for me to paint his likeness. 'My pictures of Farthy are never the same,' I cried defensively. 'How can they be? I'm working only from my own imagination and the little tidbits I've been able to pick up here and there from Daddy and Mommy., ' You would think anyone would realize that,' Luke remarked, his eyes remaining fixed on his English literature textbook. Drake widened his smile. 'What, has the great Buddha spoken?' Drake's eyes danced with glee. Whenever he could get Luke to rise to one of his taunts, he was happy. 'Drake, please. I'm losing my mood,' I pleaded, Cand an artist has to seize the moment and hold it the way you would hold a baby bird: softly, but firmly.' I didn't mean to sound so pretentious, but there was nothing I hated more than Luke and Drake getting into an argument.
My beseeching eyes and pleas worked. Drake's face softened. He turned back to me, his posture relaxed. Mother always said Drake strode through Winnerrow with a Casteel's pride. Because he was six foot two with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and muscular arms, that wasn't hard to imagine.
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6is in sorry. I just thought I could wrench Plato here away for a while. We need a ninth man for softball over at the school,' he added.
Luke looked up from his textbook, genuinely surprised at the invitation, his eyes small and enquiring. Was Drake sincere? Since he had come home for his spring break, h. e had spent almost all his time with his older friends. 'Well I . . .' Luke looked to me. 9 had to study for this unit test,' Luke explained qu ickly, 'and I thought while Annie was painting me...' 'Sure, sure, I understand, Einstein. Einstein,' Drake repeated gesturing toward Luke, his voice- dripping with sarcasm. 'It's not all books, you know,' he said, spinning to face him again. This time his face was serious. 'A lot of it has to do with getting to know people, getting them tc; like you, respect you. That's the secret of success. More executives are coming off the playing fields than out of the classrooms,' he lectured, waving his' long right forefinger. Luke said nothing in response. He ran his fingers through his hair and fixed that stoical, yet piercing, analytical gaze on Drake, something. Drake couldn't stand. ' Ali, why am I wasting my breath?'
Drake turned to my. painting again. 'I told you that Farthy was gray, not blue,' he corrected softly. 'You were only five at the time you were there and you said yourself, you were hardly there. Maybe you forgot,' Luke said, quickly coming to my defense. 'You don't forget the color of a building as big as that!' Drake exclaimed, pulling in the corners of his
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mouth. 'No matter how young you are at the time or how short you stay.' 'Well, you once told us there were two outside pools and then Logan finally corrected that, telling us there was only one outside, but one indoors,' Luke continued.
When it came to Farthy, both he and I were as exacting as we could be, cherishing whatever small details and truths we knew. So little had been given to us about it. 'Is that so, Sherlock Holmes?' Drake replied, his eyes growing smaller, colder. He didn't like being corrected, especially by Luke. 'Well, I never said there were two outside pools; I just said there were two pools. You just don't listen when I tell you something. It amazes me you're-doling so well in school. What' dya do, cheat?' 'Drake, please!' I exclaimed, grasping his wrist and squeezing softly. 'Well, he doesn't listen. Unless it's you who does the talking,' he added, smiling, content because he had struck a sensitive spot. Luke blushed, his blue eyes swinging my way briefly before he turned away, his face turning sad.
I looked beyond him, just over the first rise in the Willies at a wisp of a cloud that the wind had molded into the shape of a tear. Suddenly I felt like crying myself and it wasn't only because of the conflict between Drake and Luke. It wasn't the first time this melancholy mood had come to me like a dark cloud passing over the sun. What I did realize was that the sad feelings often stimulated my desire to paint. Painting brought me relief, a sense of balance and
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peace. I was creating the world I wanted, the world I saw with inner eyes. I could make it forever spring or make winter dazzling and beautiful. I , felt like a :,magician, conjuring something special in my mind and then bringing it to life on the empty canvas. While I was sketching in my latest image of Farthy, I ' fe art grow lighter and the world around me
At my he grow warmer and warmer, as if I were lifting a shadow off myself. Now because Drake had really interrupted the mood, my sadness returned.
I realized Drake and Luke were botli staring at me, their faces troubled by my gray expression. I fought ,back the urge to cry, and smiled through the shadow over my face. 'Maybe each of my paintings of Farthinggale Manor is different because it changes,' I finally said in a voice barely above a whisper. Luke's eyes widened and a smile rippled across his soft lips. He knew what the tone in my voice meant. We were
about to play the fantasy game, to let our imaginations wander recklessly about and be unafraid to say what other seventeen and eigbteen-year-old teen-
agers would find silly.
But the game was more than that. When we played it, we could say things to each other that we were afraid to say otherwise. I could be his princess and he my prince. We could tell each other what we felt in our hearts, pretending it wasn't us but imaginary people who were speaking. Neither of us blushed or looked away.
Drake shook his head. He, too, knew what was