"Andre Norton & Rosemary Edghill - Carolus Rex 1 - The Shadow of Albion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

before. Now Sarah Cunningham stood entirely alone in the uncaring world.
In a way, the shattering tragedy of her parents' deaths had been a dark blessing,
as it left Sarah too numb to care about the blows that followed. The sale of the
house and its furnishings had barely served to pay the bills left by nursing and burial,
and shortly Sarah had found herself resident in the home of a distant cousin of her
mother's, coming slowly to realize that she served there as the most menial of unpaid
laborers. Not that any brighter prospect had presented itself н not to Alisdair
Cunningham's daughter....
Sarah Cunningham had been born twenty-five years before, almost simultaneously
with the new Republic, to parents who'd had the best of all reasons to wish an end
to kings and crowns in this new land. She had grown up between two worlds:
bustling, forward-looking, Republican Baltimore, and the timeless woodland peace
of the Maryland hills and forests, where Sarah had learned to hunt and fish, shoot
and track, as well as any of her Indian playfellows. Even as a child she had always
known that someday she would have to give up that Arcadian freedom, but as she
grew older, Sarah saw what the eyes of childhood had not: that two wars had taken
their toll on her father's health, so that she, not he, must work to keep their family
fed.
And so, at a time when other girls dressed their hair high and lengthened their
skirts, and cast their eyes upon the masculine companions of their childhood with a
new interest, Sarah Cunningham wore beaded buckskin and carried not a delicate fan
but her father's hunting rifle. The skins and meat she brought home bought other
necessities, and if anyone knew that it was not Alasdair Cunningham, but his
daughter, who provided the furs and skins her father brought for trade, they had kept
that knowledge to themselves.
A husband for Sarah would have solved much, but such luck was hardly to be
expected. Sarah, after all, was plain, and well she knew it. Though her eyes (quite her
best feature) were speaking and grey, her mother's young students assured her the
fashion was all for eyes of pansy-brown. Worse, her hair was straight rather than
fashionably curled, and light brown rather than guinea-gold or raven-black or any of
the other unlikely hues so beloved of the romancers. Dowry would have
compensated for lack of beauty, but there was no dowry.
Even so, an outgoing charm of manner might have taken its place in this new
young land н but Sarah was quiet and shy, and rather better acquainted with powder
and shot and the best way of dressing a hare for the pot than with dancing-school
graces. There was very little likelihood that the matrimonial offers Sarah Cunningham
would receive were the .sort that Alasdair Cunningham would allow her to accept.
And so the years passed. Sixteen became twenty-one, then twenty-five.
Then disaster. Cholera, and death. And, just when she thought her fortunes had
changed, death again.
A change in the wind lashed her with chilly brine, and Sarah was jerked rudely
back to reality. The pain of past and present tragedy blended into one miserable
ache, and she scrubbed ruthlessly at her eyes with the mangled handkerchief.
,,Miss Cunningham?" The voice at her elbow was low, in deference to her loss.
,,The Captain sends his respects, and says they are ready to read out the service
now."
,,The Lord have mercy on this His servant, Missus Alecto Kennet of London,
who sleeps now in expectation of the Glorious Resurrection to come н " Captain
Challoner's deep voice intoned the rote words of comfort and promise.
Sarah Cunningham stood in the forefront of the small company of mourners