"David Weber - Honor 09 - Ashes of Victory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

irrational of him. It wasn't as if she actually went out looking for ways to
get herself killed, no matter how it sometimes seemed to those watching her.
It was just --

He realized he'd been motionless just a moment too long. He could feel the
curiosity behind the countless eyes watching him, wondering what he was
thinking, and he forced a smile. The one thing he couldn't have any of them do
was to actually figure out what had been going through his mind, and he held
out his hand to her.

"Welcome home, Lady Harrington," he said, and felt her long, slender fingers
tighten about his with the careful strength of a native heavy-worlder.

***
"Welcome home, Lady Harrington."

She heard the words, but they seemed tiny and far away, at the other end of a
shaky com link, as she gripped his extended hand. His deep, resonant voice was
just the way she'd remembered it -- remembered, in fact, with rather more
fidelity than she might have desired -- yet it was also completely new, as if
she'd never heard it before. And that was because she was hearing him on so
many levels. Her sensitivity to others' emotions had increased yet again.
She'd suspected that it had; now she knew it. Either that, or there was
something special about her sensitivity to his emotions, and that was an even
more disturbing possibility. But whatever the cause, she heard not simply his
words, or even the messages communicated by the smile in the blue eyes. No,
she heard all the things he didn't say. All the things he fought so hard, and
with such formidable self-control, against allowing himself even to hint that
he might want to say.

All the things he might as well have shouted at the top of his lungs yet
didn't even guess he was giving away.

For a fleeting moment of pure self-indulgence she let the emotions hidden
behind his face sweep her up in a dizzying whirl. She couldn't help it as his
joyous surprise at her survival swept over her. His soaring welcome came on
its heels . . . and his desire to sweep her into his arms. Not a trace of
those things showed on his face, or in his manner, but he couldn't possibly
hide them from her, and the sheer lightning-strike intensity of the moment
burned through her like an explosion.

And on its heels came the knowledge that none of the things he longed to do
could ever happen.

It was even worse than she'd feared. The thought rolled through her, more
dismal still for the moment of joy she had allowed herself to feel. She'd
known he'd stuck in her mind and heart. Now she knew that she had stuck in
his, as well, and that he would never, ever admit it to her.

Everything in the universe demanded its own price . . . and the greater a