"Jeffrey Lord - Blade 17 - The Mountains of Brega" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lord Jeffery)

The Mountains of Brega
Blade Book 17


By Jeffrey Lord




Chapter 1
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Richard Blade was bored. This condition very seldom killed anybody. It did not very often make people
want to die. But it could and did take away much of a man's zest for living. At the moment, it was doing
that to Richard Blade.
He turned on the heel of one custom-made shoe and stared out the floor-to-ceiling window of the
deluxe flat. The peach-colored velvet draperies were drawn back, and through the heavy glass he could
seeLondon spread out below. The flat was forty stories up in one of the newest ofLondon 's luxury
buildings, so Blade could see a long way. The twinkling lights and spots of color that were neon signs
seemed to march endlessly away into the darkness. It was an unusually clear night, but the spectacle did
nothing to diminish Blade's boredom.
From behind him came the noises of a cocktail party. Ice cubes clinked in glasses, corks popped,
soda-water siphons hissed like snakes. The noises simply made Blade feel more bored. They were so
expected, so conventional.
Blade was at the party more out of a sense of duty than anything else. He was there as the guest of a
certain young lady who wanted to show him off to her "set." She had been quite frank about that. She
hadn't been quite as frank about why she was showing him off. But Blade had an almost instinctive ability
to read another person's intentions toward him. He wouldn't have been alive without it. And what he read
in Clarissa was the desire to snare him for a husband.
He was certainly eligible enough. The Richard Blade who moved elegantly through theLondon social
whirl was one of the most eligible bachelors around. Wit, charm, intelligence, and an ample if vague
income, he had them all. Though he had left forty behind, his face and body showed no signs that he was
much more than thirty. Not a confirmed bachelor, in other wordsтАФstill young enough for a determined
woman to mold into whatever kind of husband might strike her fancy.
The faint reflection from the window glass gave Blade a picture of his face and body. It was a strong
faceтАФthe face of a warrior rather than a courtier. Blade had been both in his career, in places stranger
and more distant than anyone in the room could or would believe even if he chose to tell them.
And the body inside the custom-tailored jacketтАФthat was an athlete's body, six feet one and a little
more, carrying two hundred and ten pounds on its large bones. It suggested a former rowing or tennis
Blue fromOxford who had kept himself in excellent trim. Blade had been those, among other things.
Now he was almost physically itching with boredom. He looked at his reflection in the window again
and noticed a pale face framed in dark hair hovering near his right shoulder. He drained the last of his
drink and turned to face the slender woman who had drifted up behind him as he stared out the window.
She must have been at least five feet eight. Her dark brown hair swept up to a point almost on a level
with the top of Blade's head, and her wide gray eyes looked almost straight into his. From her grooming
and poise, Blade thought at first that she might be a fashion model. But her figure was too full in the hips
and bosom, and her legs were too elegantly curved to make her a good object on which to hang current
fashions.
She smiled as she sensed his eyes going over her. "You look bored, I think. Yes?" There was a slight
trace of a foreign accent in her low voice. Blade tried to place it. Not French; not Italian. German?
Vaguely, but not quite. Somewhere farther to the east? Quite possibly. Without any outwardly visible