"Patricia A. McKillip - The Snow Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

"You have. You are so elegant, so sophisticated. So sure." He
paused; she saw the word trembling on his lips. She held his gaze,
pulled him deeper, deeper into her winter darkness. "But," he
breathed, "you must have men telling you this all the time."
"Only if I want them to. And there are not many I choose to listen
to."
"You are so beautiful," he said wildly, as if the word had been
tormented out of him.
She smiled, slid her other hand up his arm to link her fingers behind
his neck. She whispered, "And so are you."



The Thief

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The Snow Queen




Briony watched Gerda walk blindly through the falling snow. It
caught on her lashes, melted in the hot, wet tears on her cheeks. Her
long coat swung carelessly open to the bitter cold, revealing pearls,
gold, a hidden pocket in the lining in which Briony envisioned cash,
cards, earrings taken off and forgotten. She gave little thought to
Gerda's tears: some party, some man, it was a familiar tale.
She shadowed Gerda, walking silently on the fresh-crushed snow of
her footprints, which was futile, she realized, since they were
nothing more than a wedge of toe and a rapier stab of stiletto heel.
Still, in her tumultuous state of mind, the woman probably would
not have noticed a traveling circus behind her.
She slid, shadow-like, to Gerda's side.
"Spare change?"
Gerda glanced at her; her eyes flooded again; she shook her head
helplessly. "I have nothing."
Briony's knife snicked open, flashing silver in a rectangle of
window light. "You have a triple strand of pearls, a sapphire dinner
ring, a gold wedding ring, a pair of earrings either diamond or cubic
zirconium, on, I would guess, fourteen karat posts."
"I never got my ears pierced," Gerda said wearily. Briony missed a
step, caught up with her.
"Everyone has pierced ears!"
"Diamond, and twenty-two karat gold." She pulled at them, and at
her rings. "They were all gifts from Kay. You might as well have
them. Take my coat, too." She shrugged it off, let it fall. "That was

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The Snow Queen