"Robin Hobb - The Inheritance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hobb Robin)

тАШDid Howarth ever come back?тАЩ I asked in a whisper. The
pendantтАЩs small face twisted in disgust. тАШOh, yes. He returned. Some
three years later, he came back to Bingtown, but it was months before
your grandmother knew of it. She recognized him one day as he strolled
through the Market with his fine foreign wife at his side. A servant
walked behind them, carrying a parasol to shade them. A nurse carried
their little son. And his pale, plump Jamaillian wife wore the Lantis
emerald at her throat.тАЩ
тАШWhat did she do?тАЩ I whispered.
The pendantтАЩs small voice grew heavy with an old weariness. I
sensed it was a memory often pondered but still painfully fresh. тАШShe
stood and stared. She could not believe her eyes. And then a cry of
purest disbelief broke out of her. At the sound, he turned. Howarth
recognized her, and yet he turned aside from her. She shrieked his
name, demanding to know why he had abandoned her. In the streets of
Bingtown, before Traders and common merchants, she wailed like a
madwoman and tore out her hair. She fell to her knees and begged him
to come back to her, wailing that she could not live without him. But
Howarth only took his wifeтАЩs arm and hurried her way, whispering
something to her about "that poor mad woman." тАШ
The pendant fell silent.
тАШThen what happened?тАЩ I demanded. My heart was beating
strangely fast. тАШDid she go to him and confront him and his wife,


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denounce how he had taken her fortune, demand the return of her
emerald?тАЩ
In a trembling whisper, the pendant confided, тАШNo.тАЩ
тАШWhy?тАЩ Pain hushed my voice. I recalled my grandmotherтАЩs
resigned eyes and feared I already knew the answer.
тАШI do not know. I will never understand it. Her friends urged her
to confront him, to bring a complaint against them. When she spoke
with them, she was strong. But whenever she was alone and set pen to
paper, she lost her resolve. Weeping, she would confess to me that she
loved him still. She would spin tales that he had been drugged or was
bewitched by the woman. Her hands would shake and she would
wonder aloud what she herself lacked, what was wrong with her that
the Jamaillian woman could steal Howarth from her. Never, ever did she
see him for the scoundrel and the cheat that he was. I could not make
her see that the man she loved had never existed; that she persisted in
loving an idealized image of Howarth, that the real man was worthy only
of her contempt. She would sit down, pen in hand, to denounce him.
But always, her accusing letters somehow changed into pleas to him to
come back to her. The worst was the night that she went by darkness to
his door. She sought entry there, like a beggar, pleading with a servant
to let her in so she might speak privately with the master of the house.
The servant turned her aside with disdain, and she, Aubretia Lantis of
the Bingtown Traders, crept away weeping and shamed. I think that
night broke her. The next evening she packed the few possessions that