"Roberts, Nora - Irish Gallaghers 03 - Heart of the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Roberts Nora)

"I've asked Jude to take a few moments to sit and tell you about Lady Gwen," Brenna began and was already unloading the order. "She's a seanachais."

At Trevor's raised eyebrow, Jude shook her head. "It's Gaelic for storyteller. I'm not really, I'm just-"

"And who has a book being published, and another she's writing. Jude's book'll be out at the end of this very summer," Brenna went on. "It'll make a lovely gift, so I'd keep it in mind when you're out shopping."

"Brenna." Jude rolled her eyes. "I'll look for it. Some of Shawn's song lyrics are stories. It's an old and honored tradition."

"Oh, he'll like that one." Beaming now, Brenna scooped up the tray. "I'll deal with this, Jude, and give Sinead a bit of a goose for you. Go ahead and get started. I've heard it often enough before."

"She has enough energy for twenty people." A little tired now, Jude picked up her cup of tea.

"I'm glad I found her for this project. Or that she found me."

"I'd say it was a bit of both, since you're both operators." She caught herself, winced. "I didn't mean that in a negative way."

"Wasn't taken in one. Baby kicking? It puts a look in your eye," Trevor explained. "My sister just had her third."

"Third?" Jude blew out a breath. "There are moments I wonder how I'm going to manage the one. He's active. But he's just going to have to wait another couple of months." She ran a hand in slow circles over the mound of her belly, soothing as she sipped. "You may not know it, but I lived in Chicago until just over a year ago."

He made a noncommittal sound. Of course he knew, he had extensive reports.

"My plan was to come here for six months, to live in the cottage where my grandmother lived after she lost her parents. She'd inherited it from her cousin Maude, who'd died shortly before I came here."

"The woman my great-uncle was engaged to."

"Yes. The day I arrived, it was raining. I thought I was lost. I had been lost, and not just geographically. Everything unnerved me."

"You came alone, to another country?" Trevor cocked his head. "That doesn't sound like a woman easily unnerved."

"That's something Aidan would say." And because it was, she found herself very comfortable. "I suppose it's more that I didn't know my own nerve at that point. In any case, I pulled into the street, the driveway actually, of this little thatched-roof cottage. And in the upstairs window I saw a woman. She had a lovely, sad face and pale blond hair that fell around her shoulders. She looked at me, our eyes connected. Then Brenna drove up. It seemed I'd stumbled across my own cottage, and the woman I'd seen in the window was Lady Gwen."

"The ghost?"

"That's right, yes. It sounds impossible, doesn't it? Or certainly unreasonable. But I can tell you exactly what she looked like. I've sketched her. And I knew no more of the legend when I came here than you appear to know now."

"I'd like to hear it."

"Then I'll tell you." Jude paused as Brenna came back, sat, and tucked into her meal.

She had an easy way with a story, Trevor noted. A smooth and natural rhythm that put the listener into the tale. She told him of a young maid who'd lived in the cottage on the faerie hill. A woman who cared for her father, as her mother had been lost in childbirth, who tended the cottage and its gardens and who carried herself with pride.

Beneath the green slope of the hill was the silver glory of the faerie raft, the palace where Carrick ruled as prince. He was also proud, and he was handsome, with a flowing mane of raven-black hair and eyes of burning blue. Those eyes fell upon the maid Gwen, and hers upon him.

They plunged into love, faerie and mortal, and at night when others slept, he would take her flying on his great winged horse. Never did they speak of that love, for pride blocked the words. One night Gwen's father woke to see her with Carrick as they dismounted from his horse. And in fear for her, he betrothed her to another and ordered her to marry without delay.

Carrick flew on his horse to the sun, and gathered its burning sparks in his silver pouch. When Gwen came out of the cottage to meet him before her wedding, he opened the bag and poured diamonds, jewels of the sun, at her feet. "Take them and me," he said, "for they are my passion for you." He promised her immortality, and a life of riches and glory. But never once did he speak, even then, of love.

So she refused him, and turned from him. The diamonds that lay on the grass became flowers.