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

to make her gowns faster.
Connie had grinned. "Sure. Just let my computer copy down any embroidery or
dress patterns you use an you've got a deal!"
Connie was a shrewd businesswoman. So was she, Ianira remembered with a
smile. "The embroidery? No. The dress patterns? Yes, and welcome."
Connie shook her head and sighed. "You're robbing me blind, Ianira, but I
like you. And if that Ionian chiton you're wearing is any example of what you
can do ... you've got a deal.
So Ianira used Connie Logan's workshop to create the chitons she was
stockpiling toward a future business of her own. She'd spent her entire
pregnancy with Gelasia sewing, making up little bags to hold dried herbs,
learning to make the simple but beautiful kinds of jewelry she recalled so
clearly from her home and her now-dead husband's. And finally it paid off,
when she got the permit from Bull Morgan to open a booth, which Marcus made
for her in his free time. They painted it prettily and set up for business.
Which was good, if not as phenomenal as she'd once or twice hoped. But
good, still, more than enough to pay for itself and leave extra for family
expenses, including Marcus' debt-free fund. Theirs was an odd marriage-Ianira
categorically refused to acknowledge the year of rape and abuse in Athens as a
legitimate marriage, as she had not consented-but the odd marriage was filled
with everything she could have wanted. Love, security, children, happiness
with the kindest man she'd ever known ... sometimes her very happiness
frightened her, should the gods become jealous and strike them all down.
Marcus reeled in from work the night the Porta Romae cycled, far gone in
wine he rarely took in such quantities, and shook his head at the supper she'd
kept warm for him. Ianira put it away efficiently in the miraculous
refrigerator machine, then noticed silent tears sliding down his cheeks.
"Marcus!" she gasped, rushing to him. "What is it, love?"
He shook his head and steered her into the bedroom, not even bothering to
undress-either of them, then held her close, nose buried in her hair, and
trembled until he could finally speak.
"It-it is Skeeter, Ianira. Skeeter Jackson. Do you remember me laughing
when he left for Romae, promising to give me a share of his bet winnings?"
"Yes, love, of course, but-"
He shifted a little, pressed something heavy inside a leather pouch into
her hand. "He kept his promise," Marcus whispered.
Ianira held the heavy money pouch and just listened, holding him, while he
wept the kindness of an uptimer friend who had given him the means at long
last to discharge his heavy debt and finally marry her.
"Why?" she whispered, not understanding the impulse which had driven a man
universally regarded as a scoundrel to such generosity.
Marcus looked at her through eyes still flooded with tears. "He knows, I
think, a little of what we have known. If he could only find what we have
found ...."
Marcus sighed, then kissed his wife. "Let me tell you." Ianira listened,
and as Marcus' tale proceeded, vowed to store in her heart the story of
Skeeter Jackson, who had, in his boyhood, stumbled through an open gate into
an alien land.
"He was drunk that night," Marcus whispered to her in the darkness, so as
not to waken their young daughters in the crib beside their shared bed. "Drunk