"Dickson, Gordon - Dorsai 01 Dorsai Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"Forgive me," said Donal, and took two steps onwardЧbut between these and a third, some sudden swift prompting made him change his mind without warning; and he turned back.

"If you don't mindЧ" he said.

"Oh, excuse me." She moved back again from the water fountain. He bent to drink; and when he raised his head from the fountain, he looked her full in the face again and recognized what had brought him back. The girl was frightened; and that strange, dark ocean of feeling that lay at the back of his oddness had stirred to the gust of her palpable fear.

He saw her now, clearly and at once; at close range. She was older than he had thought at firstЧat least in her early twenties. But there was a clear-eyed immaturity about herЧa hint that her full beauty would come later in life, and much later than that of the usual woman. Now, she was not yet beautiful; merely wholesome-looking. Her hair was a light brown, verging into chestnut, her eyes wide-spaced and so clearly green that, opening as she felt the full interest of his close gaze, they drove all the other color about her from his mind. Her nose was slim and straight, her mourn a little wide, her chin firm; and the whole of her face so perfectly in balance, the left side with the right, that it approached the artificiality of some sculptor's creation.

"Yes?" she said, on a little gasping intake of breathЧand he saw, suddenly, that she was shrinking from him and his close survey of her.

He frowned at her. His thoughts were galloping ahead with the situation, so that when he spoke, it was unconsciously in the middle of me conversation he had in mind, rather than at the beginning. "Tell me about it," said Donal. "You?" she said. Her hand went to her throat above the high collar of her dress. Then, before he could speak again, it fell to her side and some of the tightness leaked out of her. "Oh," she said. "I see."

"See what?" said Donal, a little sharply; for unconsciously he had fallen into the tone he would have used to a junior cadet these last few years, if he had discovered one of them in some difficulty. "You'll have to tell me what your trouble is, if I'm going to be any help to you."

'Tell youЧ?" she looked desperately around her, as if expecting someone to come upon them at any moment "How do I know you're what you say you are?"

For the first time Donal check-reined the horses of his galloping estimate of the situation; and, looking back, discovered a possible misconception on her part

"I didn't say I was anybody," he answered. "And in factЧI'm not I just happened to be passing by and saw you seemed upset about something. I offered to help."

"Help?" Her eyes widened again and her face suddenly paled. "Oh, noЧ" she murmured, and tried to go around him. "Please let me go. Please!"

He stood his ground.

"You were ready to accept help from someone like me, if he could only provide proofs of identity, a second ago," said Donal. "You might as well tell me the rest of it."

That stopped her efforts to escape. She stiffened, facing him.

"I haven't told you anything."

"Only," said Donal, ironically, "that you were waiting here for someone. That you did not know that someone by sight, but expected him to be a man. And that you were not sure of his bona fides, but very much afraid of missing him." He heard the hard edge in his own voice and forced it to be more gentle. "Also that you're very frightened and not very experienced at what you're doing. Logic could take it further."

But she had herself under control now. "Will you move out of the way and let me by?" she said evenly. "Logic might make it that what you're engaged in is something illegal," he replied.

She sagged under the impact of his last word as if it had been a blow; and, turning her face blindly to the wall, she leaned against it.

"What are you?" she said brokenly. "Did they send you to trap me?"

"I tell you," said Donal, with just a hint of exasperation, "Fm nothing but a passer-by who thought maybe I could help."

"Oh, I don't believe you!" she said, twisting her face away from him. "If you're really nobody ... if nobody sent you ... you'll let me go. And forget you ever saw me."

"Small sense in that," said Donal. "You need help evidently. I'm equipped to give it. I'm a professional soldier. A Dorsai."

"Oh," she said. The tension drained from her. She stood straighter and met his eyes with a look in which he thought he read some contempt. '"One of those."

"Yes," he said. Then frowned. "What do you mean one of thoseT

"I understand," she answered. "You're a mercenary."