"Mary Stewart - Wildfire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stewart Mary)


"The topaz velvet. I remember it. It was a heavenly dress."

She made a face over her glass. "I suppose so. But a mistake for all that. You know as well as I do that it
wasn't built for a blonde."

"You weren't a blonde when you bought it," I said, fairly, before I thought. "Sorrj," I added hastily, "IтАФ"

But she laughed, a lovely joyous gurgle of sound. "Neither was I. I'd forgotten. I'd gone auburn for Mitzi.
It didn't suit me, and Mitzi was a flop anyway." She stretched her exquisite legs in front of her and gave me
the famous three-cornered smile. "I'm so glad you've come. I've only been here three days and I'm
homesick already for town. This is the first time since I left that I've even been able to think about civilized
things like clothes, and I do so adore them, don't you?"
"Of course. But as they're my jobтАФ"

"1 know," she said. "But nobody here talks about anything but fishing or climbing, and 1 think they're too
utterly dreary."

"Then what on earth are you doing here?" The question was involuntary, and too abrupt for politeness, but
she answered without resentment.

"My dear. Resting."

"Oh, I see." 1 tried to sound noncommittal, but Marcia Maling lifted an eyebrow at me and laughed again.

"No," she said, "I mean it; really restingтАФnot just out of a job. The show came off a week ago. Adrian
said I positively must vegetate, and I had just read a divine book on Skye, so here I am."

"And doesn't Skye come up to the book?"

"In a way. The hills are quite terribly pretty and all that, and I saw some deer yesterday with the cutest
baby, but the trouble is you can't really get around. Do you like walkingтАФrough walking?"

"I do, rather."

"Well, I don't. And Fergus just simply refuses to take the car over some of these roads."

"Fergus? You're here with your husband, then?" I tried vainly to remember who was Marcia Maling's
current man.

"My dear! I'm not married at all, just now. Isn't it heaven, for a change?" She gave a delicious little
chuckle over her pink gin, and I found myself smiling back. Her charm was a tangible thing, something
radiant and richly alive, investing her silliest clich├йs and her outdated extravagances of speech with a
heart-warming quality that was as real as the blazing fire between us. "No. Fergus is my chauffeur."

"Marcia!" The name was out before I realized it; the fact that I used it was, in a way, a tribute to that
charm. "You haven't brought a car and chauffeur here? Is that what you call vegetating?"

"Well, I hate walking," she said reasonably, "and anyway, we're not staying here all the time. I'm on a sort
of tour of the Highlands and Islands. Let's have another drink. No, really, it's on me." She reached out and