"R Garcia Y Robertson - Strongbow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robertson R Garcia Y)

Strongbow smirked, "You seemed eager enough at the time."

"I wanted to be your wife."

He spread his hands in apology. "Alas, that was not possible."

"You married that heathen tart fast enough." Mother never used Eva's name g as
if Clare could somehow not know it.

"Only for reasons of state." The ghost shrugged armored shoulders. "I was
destitute, and Dermot McMurrough of Leinster offered a kingdom."

It already pained Clare to see her parents fight. Mother leaned back against the
wall of her cell, arms folded. "And now you are dead and useless."

"Believe me, that was never my plan."

"A thin excuse for leaving your daughter in desperate straits." She nodded at
Clare.

"My daughter?" Strongbow turned to stare, making Clare uncomfortably aware of
her nudity. "This is the child you were carrying?"

"Of course. She is why I called you here." Mother deftly appropriated Marian's
miracle.

"What is her name?" He seemed truly taken aback, suddenly confronted with his
grown child. Clare saw that while she had known about him all her life, her
father had no forewarning -- so much for the dead knowing everything.

"I called her Clare."

"She's beautiful." He was complimenting his own features, but it came from the
heart. Clare had been called a million things, from ,,little clot of dung" to
"Caer of Caeradar, the Rabbit Girl." Never had she imagined this was the first
thing her true father would say on seeing her. In a single stroke, Richard
FitzGilbert de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, the conqueror of Dublin, Waterford,
Wexford, and Leinster, had won over his daughter. She had prayed for some male
protector, some Saint George or Sir Galahad in shining armor, never expecting it
would be her dead father.

Turning about, he knelt before her mother, his gloved hand raised. "In the
divine presence of Mary Mother of God, I promise to do all I can for our
daughter. Whatever powers I have left, whatever gifts God may grant, I put them
in her service."

Mother snorted as if she had heard this all before, motioning Clare to her side.
Clare carefully stepped around her kneeling father -- though they were both
immaterial. "Do not fall for him," Mother warned. "He promised me the world, and
could not deliver Ireland. I ended up destitute and alone at Caeradar, forced to