"Fall Revolution - 04 - The Sky Road" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

I sipped the coffee gratefully, unable to take my eyes off her. She looked calmly back at me, with the smile of a contented cat.
'Good morning,' I said, finding my voice at last. 'And thank you.'
'Not just for the coffee, I hope,' said Menial.
I was grinning so much that my cheeks, too, were aching.
'No, not just for the coffee. God, Menial, I've never...'
I didn't know how to put it.
'Done it before?' she inquired innocently.

20 KEN MACLEOD
Coffee went up the back of my nose as I spluttered a laugh.
* Compared with last night, I might as well not have,' I ruefully admitted. 'You are - you're amaz-ing!'
Her level gaze held me. She showed not the slightest embarrassment. 'Oh, you're not so bad yourself, colha Gree,' she said in a judicious tone. 'But you have a lot to learn.'
'I hope you'll teach me.'
'I'm sure I will,' she said. 'If you want to stay with me, that is.' She waved a hand, as if this were a matter yet to be decided.
'Stay with you? Oh, Merrial!' I couldn't speak.
'What?'
'Nothing could make me leave you. Ever.'
I was almost appalled at what I was saying. I had not expected to hear myself speak such words, not for a long time to come.
'How sweet of you to say that,' she said, very seriously, but smiling. 'ButЧ'
'But nothing!' I reached sideways and put the mug on the floor and shifted myself down the bed towards her. Without looking away from me, she put her mug down too, on a trunk at the end of the bed, and rocked forward to her knees to meet me. We knelt with our arms around each other.
'I love you,' I said. I must have said it before, said it a lot of times through the night, but now there was all the weight in the world behind the words.
'I love you too,' she said. She clung to me with a sudden fierceness, and laid her face on my shoulder. A wet, salt tear stung a love-bite there. She sniffed and raised her head, blinking her now even brighter eyes.

THE SKY ROAD 21
'What's wrong?' I asked.
Tm happy/ she said.
'So am 1/
She regarded me solemnly. 'I have to say this/ she said, with another unladylike sniffle. 'Loving me will not always make you happy/
I could not imagine what she meant, and I didn't want to. 'Why are you saying this?'
'Because I must,' she said. Her voice was strained. 'Because I have to be fair with you.'
'Aye, sure,' I said. 'Well, now you've warned me, can I get on with loving you?'
She brightened instantly, as though some arduous responsibility had been lifted from her shoulders.
'Oh yes!' she said, hugging me closer again. 'Love me as much as you like, love me for ever!' She pulled back a little, looked down, then raised her gaze again to mine.
'But not right now,' she added regretfully. *You have to go.'
'Now?!' We had fallen out of our mutual dream into the workaday world, where we were two people who didn't, really, know each other all that well.
'Yes,' she insisted. *You have to get back across town, get... washed, and ready for work and catch the bus at half past six.'
'I can catch it from here.'
'The hell you can. People will talk.'
'They'll talk anyway.'
'People around here, I mean.'
I climbed reluctantly off the bed. Menial slipped lithely under the covers and pulled them up to her chin.
'What about you?' I asked, as I searched out and sorted my clothes.

22 KEN MACLEOD
I'm an intellectual worker/ she said smugly as she snuggled down. 'We start at nine.'
She watched me dress with a sort of affectionate curiosity. 'What have you got on your belt?'
I patted the hard leather pouches and fastened the buckle. 'The tools of a tradesman,' I told her, 'and the weapons of a gentleman.'
'I see,' she said approvingly.
'So when will I see you again?' I asked, as I recovered the sgean dhu and stuck it back down the side of my boot.
'Tonight, eight o'clock, at the statue? Go for something to eat?'