"Martha Wells - Thorns" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells Martha)

blue eyes. He said, "I am, Madame. Would you be able to assuage my curiosity?"
"If I could, I daresay I wouldn't. We all know the danger of curiosity."

"And is the Great Thorn Forest very dangerous, Madame?" he pounced.

Electra had sufficiently recovered, and the others were beginning to return their attention to us. Dearing
caught my eye, and for an instant his expression was appalled. I think he had actually forgotten my
intimate acquaintance with the subject under discussion. Hastily, he said, "In the purely botanical sense,
your Grace, the thorns are sharp, and rumored to be poisonous. I would count that dangerous."

"'In the purely botanical sense,'" Robson, Dearing's cousin, repeated, laughing heartily. "Good one, old
man." Robson was a fool, and what he thought 'botanical' meant was anyone's guess.

A few of the ladies tittered, trying to smooth over the awkward moment and Dearing smiled nervously.
Kohler smiled in return, as if he appreciated the joke, but said, "My interest lays more in what is rumored
to be within the forest."

"White palaces, with gates of gold?" I said. "Halls paved with marble, hung with silks, velvet, jewels? The
inhabitants still present, trapped there in time and magic, men and women -- oh, yes, especially women --
caught in sleep like flies in amber?" It doesn't do to mince words with these people, or they start to
imagine themselves subtle.

The others were silent. Kohler's rather wolfish eyes narrowed. "Madame seems to speak from personal
experience."

I had to fold my lips over a smile. "Young man, do you believe me as old as that?"

Kohler retreated in confusion.

Dearing nodded importantly. "Yes, there's a tale of a greathouse or keep of some past age trapped within
the forest by whatever witchcraft caused the thorns to appear. It's pure legend. The thorns have always
been there."

Kohler said, "You must be right," and allowed Dearing to turn the subject to a famous fayre hill in the
next county. This worried me more than anything. Our prince had not come to learn anything, or to pry
for information. He already knew. Had he known of my presence here when he had decided to break his
journey at Dearing's house?

Perhaps.

***

The only other clash occurred after the gentlemen had finished their port and cigars, and joined the ladies
in the drawing room. I was working on a square of embroidery, seated in a corner away from the fire. I
had always preferred spinning, but one can't do it in the drawing room nowadays. I still kept a wheel in
my parlor, and spun much of the finer thread we used in the house.

Kohler took a seat near me. He sat forward, a little closer than I liked; if he had done so to one of the
other women in the room, I would have felt compelled to intervene. Eyes intent, he said, "Madame...But I
don't think we have been properly introduced?"