"Anthony Piers - Incarnations 3 - With a Tangled Skien" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

indeed!

He saw her and paused. "You're cold. Miss Niobe,"
he said with a rich backwoods accent that, like Niobe's
form, is better imagined than rendered. "Here, take my
jacket till I get the wood in. I'm too hot anyway."

"Don't call me miss," she protested. "I am, after all,
your wife." It grieved her to say it, but it was a truth she
could not deny, and honesty required that she not attempt
to. A marriage, however ill-conceived, was a marriage.

Piers Anthony 5

He paused, half-startled. "Uh, sure, I guess so. But
you know, ma'am, it was none o' my notion to get married
like this; I'm not even through school."

She might have guessed! "It wasn't my idea either,"
she said. "At least notЧ"

"Not to an ignorant kid!" he finished with a rueful grin,
"Come on, now, take the jacket before you freeze your
toes off, missЧuh, ma'am." He approached her, jacket
extended.

"Just a moment," she said, constrained to assert her
independence even from this. "You look a lot more com-
fortable than I am. Give me that axe."

"Oh, that's not no woman's work, ma'am! I'll do it."

"That isn't woman's work," she said, annoyed by the
double negative.

"That's what I said!" Then he paused, embarrassed.
"OhЧyou mean the way I said it. I'm sorry. I'm just a
backwoods boy, ma'am, and sorry you had to get stuck
withЧ"

"What's done is done, Cedric," she said firmly. She
wrested the axe from his grip, knowing he could offer no
effective resistance to her because she was an adult. She
set up a billet and swung at itЧand caught the very edge
of it. The blade caromed off and plunged into the ground
beside her right foot.

"Uh, ma'am, pleaseЧ" Cedric said, worried.

"No, I can do it!" she said, hauling the axe up again