"Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 6 - Change of Command" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

reached over and punched up the volumeтАФno sense in that slow crescendo if she was already
awakeтАФand threw off the covers in one angry gesture.


file:///F|/rah/Elizabeth%20Moon/Moon,%20Eliz...0Legacy%2006%20-%20Change%20Of%20Command.txt (11 of 202) [5/20/03 11:39:47 PM]
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Bunny was dead. Nothing would change that, not the music, not the dawn, not whatever mood she was
in. Beneath her feet, the carpet was still soft and thick. Around her shoulders, the fleecy jacket
warmed her.

Bunny was dead. She was alive, and beautiful (she heard people whispering, and after all it was
true) and very, very wealthy.

Faintly, through the closed door, she heard a lusty cry.

Wealthy, and the grandmother of bastards whose fathers were, if not dead, criminals and no doubt
partners of those who had killed Bunny.

Miranda had not told Bunny how she felt about those babies. Grandmothers were supposed to have a
natural love for grandchildren, but she could not see those boys as anything but vandalism
perpetrated on her daughter.

Bunny had seen it differently. Bunny had assumed she would love them, if Brun couldn't; Bunny had
assumed she would organize their care.

Bunny was dead.

She stood, unable to move for a long moment. It wasn't supposed to be like this. People their age
were supposed to be adult, mature, stable . . . they were resigned to loss, said the books she'd
read.

She wasn't resigned. She wanted to shake her fist and scream at the sky; she wanted to fall off a
cliff and drown. The secret was that the rich had hearts too . . . she had loved Bunny the way
girls in romance storycubes loved their heroes, and forty years of marriage had not changed that.

And he was dead.

And she was alive, with children and grandchildren and bastard grandchildren who were not at fault
for their fathers' sins, and a daughter still healing from what had been done to her, and all
Bunny's hopes and dreams for the peace of the world crashing down around them, shattered.

When her maid knocked, Miranda smiled and calmly accepted a cup of tea, which she drank with
perfect composure while her maid ran her bath.



Brun Meager had wakened even earlier, when the twins cried, as they often did, in the middle of
the night. They should be sleeping through the night, the nursemaids said, but they hadn't done so