"Mary Stewart - Touch Not The Cat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)

who now had a considerable reputation as a Kur-Doktor, and had turned his house into a sanatorium.
Daddy went there simply to rest, and to be cared for by Herr Gothard, who, for old times' sake, took
him cheaply. I stayed for a month, but he mended so rapidly in that air that it was impossible to worry
any more, so, when the Madeira job was suggested, I was easily persuaded to go. Even my lover,
when I asked him, said there was nothing to go home for. I only half liked this kind of
reassurance, but it was true that none of my cousins was at Ashley, and the cottage in winter and the
damps of early spring looked lonely and uninviting; so in the end I took the job, and went off
happily enough to the sun and flowers of Funchal, with no idea in the world that I would never see
my father alive again.

Bryony?

Yes. I'm awake. What is it? But the trouble was there already, in the room. It settled over
me in a formless way, like fog; no colour, neither dark nor light, no smell, no sound; just a clenching
tension of pain and the fear of death. The sweat sprang hot on my skin, and the sheet scraped
under my nails. I sat up.

I've got it, I think. It's Daddy. . . . He must have been taken ill again.

Yes. There's something wrong. I can't tell more than that, but you ought to go.

I didn't stop then to wonder how he knew. There was only room for just the one thing, the
distress and urgency, soon to be transmuted into action; the telephone, the airfield, the ghastly slow
journey to be faced. . . . It only crossed my mind fleetingly then to wonder if my father himself had the
Ashley gift; he had never given me a hint of it, but then neither had I told him about myself. Had he
been "read" by my lover, or even been in touch with him . . . ? But there was denial
stamped on the dark. With the denial came over a kind of uncertainty, puzzlement with an element of
extra doubt running through it, like a thread of the wrong colour through a piece of weaving.

But it didn't matter how, and through whom, it had got to him. It had reached him, and now it
had reached me.

Can you read me, Bryony? You're a long way off.

Yes. I can read you. I'll go . . . I'll go straight away, tomorrowтАФtoday? There was a flight
at eight; they would surely take me. . . . Then urgently, projecting it with everything I had: Love?

It was fading. Yes?
 Will you be there?

Again denial printed on the dark; denial, regret, fading . . .

Oh, God, I said soundlessly. When?

Something else came through then, strongly through the fading death cloud, shouldering it
aside; comfort and love, as old-fashioned as potpourri and as sweet and sane and haunting. It was as if
the rose shadows on the ceiling were showering their scent down into the empty room. Then
there was nothing left but the shadows. I was alone.

I threw the sheet off and knotted a robe round me, and ran for the telephone.