"Nancy Springer - Isle 03 - The Sable Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Springer Nancy)

from his rank and his elfin strangeness. So he found it a relief and a delight to be treated with something
less than royal respect. Meg's shafts of wit were never cruel, and she aimed them most often at herself.
Trevyn had seen her with the wolves; he knew her courage. Her merciless honesty concerning her own
short┬мcomings was a different kind of courage, he thought, and he admired her for it.

"No doubt the bards will sing of how ye pulled the fair maiden from the mud hole," Meg mused. "They
hold forth about everything ye Lauerocs do."

"No doubt," Trevyn gravely agreed.

'"Twill be known, of course, that they speak of Molly," Meg added. "As she is young, and has not yet
calved."

Trevyn never tired of listening to her. He had met many kinds of women in his young life: high-scented
foreign princesses, chilly court maidens, flirtatious servant girls. None of them had tempted him to more
than a quick conquest. But this fine-boned, birdlike creature, bright and cheeky as a sparrow, drew him
back to her again and again. He had felt for her small breast once, wondering what she kept beneath her
shapeless peasant blouse, and she had pushed his hand away. "Nay, Trev," she had told him, not even
angrily, only with a certainty he could not question. He did not try again, but he came to see her even
more often than before. All his life he had dreamed of finding a friendship such as Hal and Alan shared,
or of finding a true love. . . . But he told himself that this Megan, this homely, comical maid, was nothing
more than a diversion to him. He liked to be diverted, and certainly the girl did not mind.

He was thoughtless, as Brock had feared. Otherwise he might have known how his face floated before
her inward eye



day and night. He should have known how he inspired her love, he who was the talk of every lass in the
countryside. But it must be said that Megan hid her love well. Once she had showed fondness for a
youth, and it had driven him away. Brave though he thought her to be, she would not risk showing her
heart to the Prince. She fed her soul merely on the sight of him and the memory of his lighthearted words.
Sometimes, lying in her bed at night, she silently wept.

"When must you be going, lad?" Rafe asked Trevyn one evening at the manor keep.

"Trying to rid yourself of me?" Trevyn retorted. Though he would talk to Meg for hours, he found little
enough to say to his kindly host.

"You know that you're welcome to stay 'the rest of your life." Coming from Rafe, this was not hollow
courtesy. "But surely you must be back to Laueroc by Winterfest."

"There will be ill cheer at my home this feast-tide," Trevyn responded sourly. "Nay. I'll stay a while
longer."

Rafe gaped, for Trevyn had told him nothing about his troubles with Gwern, or about Hal's strange
behavior, or even about the wolves. But the lord of Lee rose to the occasion with the enthusiasm for
which he was famous. "Why, we'll make a royal festival of it, then!" He rubbed his hands in delight, for
Rafe was as eager as a boy when it came to a frolic. "We'll have a regular carole, with musicians and
everything, O Prince, in your honor. It will be just what this poor country place needs for some waking