"Christopher Stasheff - Warlocks Heirs 01 - M'Lady Witch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

"I am sure that your brother is quite concerned for your honor, milady," Squire Bruntly said, vaguely shocked without knowing why.


"My honor, forsooth! When my honor needs such defending as a brother might do, I shall tell him! Oh, Squire Bruntly! In which direction did he
ride?"


"Why, I cannot say, milady-but I shall send for the sentries."


"You need not. Which way did Prince Alain ride?"


"West, milady, back toward Runnymede."


"Then you need not ask which way Geoffrey rode," Cordelia said grimly. "Blast! If only I could teleport, as he can! Well, there's no help for it! I
shall return when I may, Squire Bruntly!"


"We shall keep the kettle hot, milady." Squire Bruntly stared after her as she caught up her broomstick and hurried away toward the nearest tower.
Now he knew why that feeling of dread had been building within him.


As they had ridden west, the day had darkened, and Alain had calmed a bit, from anger into moroseness. A strange, hollow feeling had been
growing inside him; where butterflies had been struggling out of their cocoons, there was now only echoing darkness.


Very dark indeed. There was a lethargy, a hopelessness, that had never been there before. Could Cordelia really have meant so much to him?


Yes, he realized. For year after year, she had been his playmate, when the two families had met for feast-day or parents' conference. She had played
with the boys as vigorously as any, and Alain had fallen in love with her before he was seven. Of course, he had told himself, that had been only a
child's infatuation-but when she had undergone the teen-age metamorphosis from child into young woman, he had been taken all over again; his
head had seemed lighter whenever he had looked at her, watching her move and hearing her talk had become entrancing again. Of course, he had
been tongue-tied, unable to talk with her then, except in the old, familiar ways of friend ship, never as boy to girl, so he had never told her of his
feelings. Instead, he had consoled himself with the thought that, since he was a Prince and Heir Apparent, he could have his pick of any of the girls
in all his parents' kingdom, and of course he would choose Cordelia. It had never occurred to him that she might say no.


However, with a new and brutal self-honesty, he realized that he had never seriously thought that she could be in love with him. Oh, yes, he was
Prince and Heir, and would some day be King-but he was lumpen compared to her. She was a fairy, light and dancing; he was an ox, plodding


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through life with nothing but a dogged determination to do what was right-right for his subjects, right for the kingdom, and right for her. Not for
himself, of course-that was one of the most important principles in being a knight and a nobleman, let alone a King: to sacrifice one's own comfort
and pleasure for others' good. So his father had taught him, and it had never occurred to him to question it, in spite of his mother's jaundiced looks