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

"I cannot be anything but myself!"


"That is true," Geoffrey agreed, "and you were best to wait for the lady who loves what you are, rather than try to become what she loves. But you
may have sterling qualities that would inspire her love, if only you could show them. When all's said and done, winning a lass is a matter of how
you present yourself. That, and learning to be romantic."


"What is this `romance'?" Alain asked, frowning. Geoffrey spread his hands, at a loss. "'Tis as much a fantasy as a reality, my friend. The
troubadours know it'tis not a matter of lying, exactly, but of making the plain facts more appealing, of surrounding the bare bones of life with a
pleasing form. 'Tis this that awakens desire in a lady-candlelight, and viols playing, and a dance that whirls her away."


"You speak of deliberate planning, of cozening," Alain protested. "Must I persuade her that what I say is true?" Geoffrey shrugged. "Her future, her
entire life, depends upon it, Alain. She must be sure."


"Then however am I to win her?" Alain cried in despair. "For I have no gift in persuasion, no silvered tongue, no ability to charm! I am only a blunt,
plain-spoken soldier who knows how to guard his words!"


"Guarding one's words is not altogether what the ladies want," Geoffrey advised him, "though you must choose those words well. They wish you to
be borne away by a flood of passion so strong that tender, caring words burst out of you."


"And all my training has been to keep words in!" Alain turned away in misery. "I shall never win her love, then! I shall never win any woman's
love!"


Now Geoffrey felt the first faint twinges of alarm-of concern for his friend but, moreover, for his sister. He knew Cordelia had always thought of
Alain as her personal future property, and frankly, the young Prince was the only man whom he thought worthy of his sister-not because he was the
future King, but because he was as dependable as a rock and, beneath all his pomposity, goodhearted and warm. Geoffrey didn't doubt that, if they
were married, Alain would treat Cordelia like the precious thing she was. He felt a sudden need to boost his friend's ego. "It is nothing inborn," he
said, "no quality within you. It is only that all your life, all your experience, has been spent in the safe confines of your parents' castle, the controlled
and artificial world of their court."


"Artificial!" Alain looked up, amazed and affronted.


"'Tis quite a work of artifice, a thing made by people, not by God," Geoffrey explained. "Hunger and ugliness are banished and kept out; oppression
and cruelty are veiled and harnessed by custom and manners. You have never faced real danger without others to ward you, nor dealt with the world
on its own terms."


"What terms do you speak of?" Alain demanded sharply.