"Robin McKinley - Damar 1 - The Blue Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

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THE BLUE SWORD
Robin McKinley

To Danny and Peachey, who first led me to Damar.


CHAPTER ONE
She scowled at her glass of orange juice. To think that she had been delighted when she first arrived
herewas it only three months ago?with the prospect of fresh orange juice every day. But she had been
eager to be delighted; this was to be her home, and she wanted badly to like it, to be grateful for itto
behave well, to make her brother proud of her and Sir Charles and Lady Amelia pleased with their
generosity.
Lady Amelia had explained that the orchards only a few days south and west of here were the finest
in the country, and many of the oranges she had seen at Home, before she came out here, had probably
come from those same orchards. It was hard to believe in orange groves as she looked out the window,
across the flat deserty plain beyond the Residency, unbroken by anything more vigorous than a few
patches of harsh grass and stunted sand-colored bushes until it disappeared at the feet of the black and
copper-brown mountains.
But there was fresh orange juice every day.
She was the first down to the table every morning, and was gently teased by Lady Amelia and Sir
Charles about her healthy young appetite; but it wasn't hunger that drove her out of bed so early. Since
her days were empty of purpose, she could not sleep when night came, and by dawn each morning she
was more than ready for the maid to enter her room, push back the curtains from the tall windows, and
hand her a cup of tea. She was often out of bed when the woman arrived, and dressed, sitting at her
window, for her bedroom window faced the same direction as the breakfast room, staring at the
mountains. The servants thought kindly of her, as she gave them little extra work; but a lady who rose
and dressed herself so early, and without assistance, was certainly a little eccentric. They knew of her
impoverished background; that explained a great deal; but she was in a fine house now, and her host and
hostess were only too willing to give her anything she might want, as they had no children of their own.
She might try a little harder to adapt to so pleasant an existence.
She did try. She knew what the thoughts behind the looks the servants gave her were; she had dealt
with servants before. But she was adapting to her new life as best as her energetic spirit could. She might
have screamed, and hammered on the walls with her fists, or jumped over the low windowsill in her
room, clambered to the ground by the ivy trellis (special ivy, bred to withstand the desert heat, carefully
watered by Sir Charles' gardener every day), and run off toward the mountains; but she was trying her
best to be good. So she was merely first to the breakfast table.
Sir Charles and Lady Amelia were all that was kind to her, and she was fond of them after a few
weeks in their company. They had, indeed, been far more than kind. When her father died a year ago,
Richard, a very junior military adjutant, had laid the difficulty of an unmarried sister and an entailed estate
before Sir Charles, and begged for advice. (She heard all this, to her acute embarrassment, from
Richard, who wanted to be sure she understood how much she had to be grateful for.) He and his wife
had said that they would be happy to offer her a home with them, and Richard, too relieved to think hard
about the propriety of such a godsend, had written to her and said, Come out. He had not specifically
said, Mind your manners, but she understood that too.
 She hadn't any choice. She had known, because her father had told her five years ago when her
mother died, that she would have no inheritance; what money there was was tied up very strictly for the
eldest son. "Not that Dickie will mistreat you," their father had said, with the ghost of a smile, "but I feel
that, with your temperament, you had best have as long as possible a warning to resign yourself to it.