"Linda Evans - Time Scout 2 - Wages of Sin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

A glance back showed her the figure of her husband, gaining ground. Terror
sent her, sobbing, up toward Athene's great temple. She literally ran into the
solid wall of a small cobbler's shop hugging the cliff face, staggered back--
and saw it happen.
Inside the open doorway of the cobbler's shop, the dark air had torn
asunder before her disbelieving eyes. Her gown fluttered like moth's wings as
she faltered to a halt, staring at the pinpoint of light and movement through
it. Dimly, she was aware of people crowding around her, her husband's curses
at the back of the crowd. She hesitated only a moment. At the embittered,
battered age of seventeen, Ianira Cassondra lifted her hands in thanks to
whichever Goddess had listened-and shoved past startled men and women who
tried to stop her. She stepped straight into the wavering hole in reality, not
caring what she found on the other side, half-expecting to see the grand halls
of Olympus itself, with shining Artemis waiting to avenge her defiled
priestess.
She found, instead, La-La Land and a new life. Free of many of her old
terrors, she learned to trust and love again, at least one man who had learned
caution from harsher masters than she had yet found. And even more precious,
something she had not thought possible, she had found the miracle of a young
man with brown hair and a laughing heart and dark, haunted eyes who could make
her forget the brutality and terror of a man's touch. He would not marry her
yet. Not because she had left a living husband, but because in his own mind-he
was not honorably free of debt. Ianira had never met this man who owned
Marcus' debt, but sometimes when she went into deep trance, she could almost
see his face, amidst the most unlikely surroundings she had ever witnessed.
Whoever and wherever he was, waiting for Marcus to finish his days' labors,
Ianira hated the hidden man with such a passion as Medea had known when she'd
snatched up the dagger to slay her own sons, rather than let a replacement
queen raise them like slaves. When-if-he returned, Ianira mused, she herself
would find no barriers to taking-up her own dagger and punishing the man who
had treated her beloved so callously. It would not be the first time she'd
offered the pieces of a sacrificial human male to ancient Artemis, she who was
called by the Spartans Artamis the Butcher. She had thought herself long past
the need for such bloody work; but when her family was threatened, Ianira
Cassondra knew herself capable of anything. Quite a change from that time in
her life when the thought of sleeping with a one-time slave would have been
revolting to her-but the contrast between a year of "honorable" marriage and
Marcus' tender concern for a stranger lost in a world the gods themselves
would have found bewildering, had worked a magic Ianira could recognize.
Sharing Marcus' bed, his fears and dreams, Ianira gave him children to ease
the pain in his heart-and her own.
To her surprise, Ianira found she not only enjoyed the humble, mundane
chores she had never before been forced to do, but also she enjoyed the
surprising status and acclaim her abilities and personality had earned her.
Odd to be so suddenly sought after-not only by other lonely downtimer men, but
by tourists, uptimer students, even professors of antiquities. In this strange
land, Ianira had discovered she could make many things, beautiful things:
gowns, baubles and ornaments, herbal mixes to help those in suffering. After a
few of these items had sold, demand was suddenly so great, she'd asked Connie
Logan if she would please teach her to use one of the new machines for sewing,