"Colin Greenland - A Passion For Lord Pierrot (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenland Colin)

Lord Pierrot kisses the top of her head.
'What are you thinking of?' she asks him.
'I'm thinking of you, my delight,' he tells her. His voice is high, and
quavers. It seems to lose all its virile resonance after lovemaking.
Lord
Pierrot has remarked it before, and wondered whether anything can be
done
about it. 'I'm thinking of you,' he says. 'And how perfect you are.'
It is a lame, trite answer, he knows. Nor is it altogether true. Lord
Pierrot is in fact thinking of his wife, Lady Dove, and wishing she
were
away from home. But what a gross error of tact it would be even to
mention
this to his mistress, as they lie together in the afterglow of passion.
Lord Pierrot is nothing if not fastidious. It embarrasses him to utter
falsehoods and platitudes, though Daphne Dolores has an inexhaustible
capacity to receive them. She rejects nothing, not if Lord Pierrot
gives
it.
He gets out of bed, leaving her lying there. He finds his accordion on
the
floor and, dusting it reverently with the palm of his hand, remembers
his
plan to delight Daphne Dolores with a serenade or two. He opens the
door
and sits there, on the step, looking out at the night.
Now that he has drained the cup of passion dry, the melancholy fit is
upon
him again. Lord Pierrot plays once more the slow, sad tango.
'What a mournful tune, my love!' exclaims Daphne Dolores.
Lord Pierrot looks round at her, seeing only a dark shape in the dark
house, out of reach of the moonlight. The lodge is full of the musky
scent
of her. Lord Pierrot lays his accordion aside.
'Would you have me always happy?' he asks her.
'For my sake,' she tells him.
'Ah, that I might do everything for your sake,' he muses, sorrowfully.
'Then would you be mistress indeed.'
Lord Pierrot wishes his wife might be sent away, just for a while,
before
 the end of summer. He has an aunt, in the north-west. She and Lady Dove
have always got on wonderfully well together. They play bezique, and
compare their illnesses.
While the accordion finishes its tango Lord Pierrot cups his chin in
his
hands and watches the golden moon of Triax climb above the trees along
the
lake shore. The heat blurs the sky about it to the violet of a fresh
bruise.
The moonlight creeps through the open door, finding Daphne Dolores