"Madeliene E Robins - Somewhere In Dreamland Tonight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robins Madeleine E)

laughter too coarse and familiar. For the first time Dreamland was not an
enchanted village but a playground, loud and vulgar. She thought, it's not a
dream, it's a nightmare.

He wasn't at the Congress of Wonders. The barker saw her, all right: tipped his
bowler and smirked, and then pursed his lips in a soundless whistle as if he
knew something she didn't. She began to push her way through the crowd into the
freak show; the barker didn't try to stop her, no one demanded money. She just
pushed in and pushed through, ignoring the freaks, looking for a dark head, a
white smile. When she came out the exit she pushed on to Hellgate. All the
places he had taken her, the backstage areas, the cul-de-sacs between rides and
exhibitions, even the shadowy path under the Boardwalk were hard to find,
although she had thought she knew them.

When she reached the beach at last she was exhausted and bedraggled. The hem of
her brown twill skirt was soggy and stained, and her white shirtwaist was
creased and dirty. She held her hat in one hand; it had come off when she
climbed under the stanchions of the Boardwalk. Where are you, she prayed. Please
find me, please.

In the moonlight the ocean looked like a flat, tranquil mirror. A hundred feet
away she saw him, gray and silver in the moonlight, his back to her, looking out
at the ocean. Ruth gasped in relief and began to cross the sand. He turned at
the sound and she saw: there was a girl in his arms, pale and fair, her face
turned up to his. What was worse, Adam's face when he saw Ruth was perfectly
blank, as if he didn't know her at all. No fear, no explanation, no surprise. He
was smooth and implacable as an onyx pebble.

Ruth turned and ran.

They found her at the Beacon Tower, waiting for them. When Jonah put his coat
around her shoulders and Leda took her hand to lead her out of Dreamland, Ruth
smiled and cried, as if she was too grateful to them ever to stop smiling, and
too miserable ever to stop crying. She cried like a child, and felt like a
child, pathetic, small and weary. When they got her on the train she slept all
the way back, waking fitfully to clutch at Leda and weep again.

They brought Ruth home that night over her protests. Aunt Min's icy disapproval
vanished when she saw her niece's gray, miserable face. Leda and Mfn put her to
bed with a hot water bottle and a cool compress, and Ruth fell back into her
restless sleep. Her dreams were full of darkness and rhythm, of pulses and
heartbeat, the touch of Adam's white hands' on her, the weight of his body
leaning in to her; she dreamt of his breath cool in her ear, loosing a hot
churning excitement in her belly and between her legs. His lips, tracing a path
from her ear to her throat. His teeth, nipping gently, then piercing. Their
cries, together, as he took from her and she gave, yielding everything up to
him. His teeth at her throat, piercing neatly, releasing a flood of liquid heat
through her arteries. It was everything she had heard of love: he told her it
would only hurt once and then only pleasure, only joy.