"Ardath Mayhar - The Clarrington Heritage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mayhar Ardath)

Then she smiled. They'd been married for three days ... and nights. She
had no reason to doubt his vigor, if nothing else.
"Marise Dering Clarrington, you are a worrier. Relax and be happy!" she
ordered herself aloud.
A voice, so faint that afterward she was not totally certain she had
heard it at all, quavered through the dimness of the hall. "Happy? Happy? In
this house?" She thought a peal of laughter, faint and ghostly, had followed
those words.
Even now, she wondered if that had been the first warning, the
foreshadowing, of what she felt certain must be her own madness. But then she
had clenched her hands in her lap. She was a practical country girl, she'd
told herself, and she did not hear voices where there was nobody to speak.
She was here, safe in her husband's home. Her nerves must be playing
tricks after the long strain of nursing Ben. The fast-paced courtship and her
swift and unforeseen marriage might easily have left her tense and fanciful.
She drew a long breath, flexing and relaxing her muscles, one after the
other, ending with the tip of her nose. The sound of Ben's steps on the stair
brought a smile to her face, and she rose and went to the foot of the steps to
meet him.
"Well, do we have a place to lay our heads?" she called up to him.
The words died on her lips. Ben's face showed a fury she had never
dreamed he could feel. She realized she had never seen him really angry
before. Now he reached down to take her hand. Even through his fingers she
could feel the racing of his pulse.
"They must not have been here," he said, and she knew he was lying to
save her feelings. "I've chosen to put us up in the tower rooms. That will be
best, anyway, for it's private and nobody will bother us." He tried to smile,
but it came out as a grimace.
"Anyplace you like, dear," she said. "But slow down. I worry when you
go pounding off, particularly when you run up stairs. You have to remember
that you've been sick.
"Now show me where to go and we can take the hand luggage up. Aren't
there any servants? I'd have thought that in a house this large you would need
several, just to keep things going. Somebody needs to go out and get the trunk
off the sidewalk, anyway, or your bride will find herself limited to wearing
this single suit and these shoes." She did her best to sound teasing and
cheerful, but she knew it didn't quite come off.
"Oh there are a couple of people who have worked for us forever. Hildy
should be in the kitchen. I should have gone to check with her the first
thing, but she's so deaf it's hard to communicate. She's a dear, though.
"Andy, her husband, does the outside work and the heavy stuff. He's
probably down in their quarters in the basement, sound asleep. I'll get him.
Then I'll show you to our room ... or rather, our suite. You have your own
sitting room." His expression had eased, lost the fury that had marked it.
"If you can find your way upstairs, you can go ahead with the little
case. Straight up, round the first landing, up the next flight. There's
another landing after that, and halfway up the third flight you'll find a door
on your right. It's set in a sort of pie-shaped niche, and it leads to the
tower rooms."
He tried to smile. "Thank heaven they didn't put it any higher, or we'd