"Sherwood Smith - Summer Thunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Sherwood)

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Lasva took in the music room at a glance. She returned bows and curtseys from the
clusters of people, her fan held open at the neutral Anticipation of Artistic Pleasure, giving
a smile and polite word here and there, aware of conversations resuming as she made her
quiet way across the room to the table by the fire.


The focus of the company gathered there was two young lords, one entirely in rose, the
other wearing layers of celestial blue alternated with pale gold. If he dared that color to
catch Lasva's attention, he was disappointed, so they resumed idly vying with one
another in teasing an enchanted young woman named Lissais, and a very bored Ananda,
who watched the others in the room over her fan.


Here also was young Farava, new to Colend's court under her mother's wary eye, very
correct but stiff and uncomfortable. And alone.


"May I see your album?" Lasva asked, sitting on a satin couch next to her.


Farava blushed, smiled, and held it out; Farava's mother, the Countess, cast Lasva a
grateful look. Lasva leafed through the pages, glancing at the variety of sketches of
Farava, ranging widely in skill, and came to a page marked with a thin golden ribbon.
There was a fast but well-executed sketch not just of tall, thin Farava, capturing the exact
expression of her merry brown eyes, but in the background Lasva discovered herself,
standing pensively framed in a window, the complicated folds of her five layers of over
robes indicated by no more than blurred silver-point lines.


Not a window. A mirror, and she wore a lace mask.


"Isn't that a wonderful drawing?" Farava whispered. "He said I am as beautiful as a
princess, which is why he sketched me with you. I hope you don't mind," she added
quickly, blushing.


Sketches of masks and mirrors conveyed their own hidden meaning. The drawing was not
signed, except by a quick semblance of a coronet: the younger Landis prince.


Marry me, he'd said to Lasva, laughing. We are so alike.


Perhaps they were, in mirrored rooms, surrounded by masked courtiers, but not in the
realm of the spirit, or he would have seen that her acknowledging the truth of his remark
did not admit of it being a compliment.