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

remembered his older brother Geoffrey telling him that when a woman walked that way, she was seeking a dalliance. Then Gregory finally
remembered that the look on her face had been one that Geoffrey had told him of, too-but he also remembered his brother's caution that the lass
might have a shallow dalliance in mind, or a very deep one, or anything in between, and that a man had to move slowly, trying to read her
intentions, for frequently she wouldn't know them herself.



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 M'Lady Witch

It all sounded very tedious to Gregory, and singularly unproductive. He supposed that he would have to try it some day-but just now, he had far
more interesting matters to deal with. He was only sixteen, after all. And, to be quite frank, he couldn't imagine how the physical pleasures Geoffrey
described could ever approach the ecstasy of intellectual insight, the long hours of study and meditation that led to the rapture of new understanding
of natural phenomena.


Of course, women were natural phenomena, too-but somehow, he doubted that they wanted to be analyzed. And he was quite sure they didn't want
to be understood.


The drawbridge was down, the porter sitting at his ease on a stool in the shade of the gatehouse, cutting bits of apple and nibbling at them. He
stiffened abruptly at the cry of the sentry in the tower above; then the troop of horsemen came into view, and the guards snapped their halberds
down. "Who comes?"


"Alain, Prince of Gramarye!" cried the foremost knight, and behind him, the golden Prince himself sat, cocksure and smiling, head tilted back,
resplendent in cloth of gold and velvet, with a plume in his hat.


"Your Highness!" The porter bowed, his expressionless face hiding his surprise, almost shock, at the suddeness of the Prince's arrival. "I regret that
Lord and Lady Gallowglass are not within!"


"No matter, no matter," Alain said with careless generosity, "so long as the Lady Cordelia is. Say, are there any others of the family present?"


"His Lordship and Her Ladyship are away for the day, sir. I regret there are none here but the servants, the steward, and myself, saving Lady
Cordelia."


"A most excellent notion," Alain said with joviality. "Save her ladyship, indeed-and summon her!"


The porter blanched at the thought of "summoning" Lady Cordelia. He decided to summon the steward instead, and let him deal with the lady. After
all, porters were not paid that much.


Cordelia was in the stillery, brewing medicines to replace the stock depleted by the winter chills and agues and fevers of all the peasants on the
Gallowglass estates. She enjoyed the work, but it was tiring, not to say messy-her apron was spotted with the extracts of various herbs and the
mauve and purple from the juices of various berries. Her hair was tied back in a severe bun, to keep loose strands from being caught in the