"John DeChancie - Castle 08 - Bride of the Castle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dechancie John)

"You can still call it off."
"What? After all those engraved invitations? To the royal family, yet. They R.S.V.P.-ed, kid. Too late
now."
"Well, canceling would be better than making a mistake you might regret-"
"Wait a minute. I don't think it will be a mistake. If I thought that, I would have called it off long ago. It's
Gene I'm thinking about."
"Oh, sure, Bionda. Thanks."
Bionda curtsied, hiked up her smock, and left. "Sorry I talked out of turn," Melanie said.
"You picked up on some cue, for sure."
"So you don't think Gene is the marrying kind?"
"Sometimes I wonder if most men really are," Linda said. "But I know that Gene's a free spirit, a wild
stallion. Do I really want to rein him in?"
"Does marriage have to be that way?"
"Maybe not. Maybe my fears are groundless. Anyway... "
Linda snapped her fingers again, and the gown was transformed into an outfit consisting of black tights,
black leather shorts, ankle-high boots, and a kelly green puffed sleeve blouse.
She jumped down from the table. "Where's Gene?" Melanie asked.
"The bachelor party's this afternoon."
"Oh, the bachelor party, right. Is Lord Incarnadine going?"
"I think. Don't know for sure. Gene sent out the invites."
"Hope they don't get into too much mischief. I mean with the dancing girls."
"I conjured 'em. You can be sure there won't be any monkey business."
"You conjured dancing girls for your fiance's bachelor party? Woman, that's trust."
"Not the way I conjure dancing girls."
"Uh-oh."
"Look-see only."
"Hmmm. Interesting. I won't ask for details."
"You hungry?"
"Yeah, let's go have lunch."
The walk from the seamstress's tower to the Queen's Dining Hall was long but interesting, going past
some attractive "aspects." These looked like doorways to other lands-and in fact they were. Moreover,
each aspect was a different world, a universe altogether separate from, and alien to, the world of the
castle.
"What you said about men," Melanie continued. "It's true. Basically they're feral. All of them."
"Oh, not all, come on."
"I'll grant that some can be domesticated."
"Wait a minute! What's this `domesticated' stuff? Don't tell me that's what marriage is about?"
"Just a manner of speaking."
"Look, Melanie, let's not get into another men-bashing marathon. I'm tired of those."
"It's not bashing, it's just facing reality. DNA rules them. They're genetically programmed to spread their
genes as widely as possible."
"I'm the only one who's going to get Gene's genes," Linda said decisively.
Melanie was significantly silent.
"From here on in, that is." Linda added. "I know he hasn't been exactly a monk in the past."
"Well, he's been married in the past. I mean, he was married to Vaya. Or is he still married to her?"
"The world she came from doesn't even exist," Linda said, "except as some weird probability factor.
Gene and Vaya were married according to the laws of Vaya's tribe. He was coerced. He didn't have a
choice. She chose him. That means the union's invalid in the Castle, and on Earth, for that matter. At
least, that's the way Gene explained it to me."
"But what if she shows up to claim him? With Gene's kid."