[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
for me?"
"Sure. Even what we were talking about, if it ever becomes right."
Strained little smile. "Touch me."
"Huh?" I was back into my trick bag of brilliant repartee.
"Touch me."
What the hell? I reached out, touched her shoulder. She raised her hand,
grabbed mine, moved it to her cheek. I rested my fingers there gently. She had
the silkiest skin I'd ever touched.
She started shaking. I mean shaking bad. Tears filled her eyes. She turned
away, embarrassed or frightened. After a while she turned back and we started
walking again. As we reached the low rail fence around the cemetery, she said,
"That was almost as much."
"What?"
"Nobody ever touched me before. Ever. Not since I was old enough to remember.
Cook did, I guess, when I had to be changed and burped and all those things
you do with babies."
I stopped dead, faced that grim old mansion. No wonder it was so goddamned
bleak. I faced her. "Come here."
"What?"
"Just come here." When she stepped closer, I pulled her into a hug. She went
as rigid as an iron post. I held her a moment, then turned loose. "Maybe it's
not too late to start. Everybody's got to touch sometime. You're not human if
you don't." I understand what she wanted when she wanted to stop being a
virgin. Sex had nothing to do with it. She might not realize it consciously
but she thought sex was the price she had to pay for what she needed.
How many times has Morley told me I'm a sucker for cripples and strays? More
than I like to remember. And he's right if you call wanting to ease pain being
a sucker.
I stepped over the cemetery fence, held her hand as she followed. She caught
the hem of her dress, which wasn't exactly designed for a stroll in the
country. She cursed softly. I helped her keep her balance while she worked it
loose, looking around as she did so. My gaze fell on a tombstone less aged
than most, as simple a marker as there was there. Just a small slab of granite
with a name: EleanorStantnor . Not even a date.
Jennifer stepped over to it. "My mother."
That was all? That was the resting place of the woman whose death had warped
so many lives and turned theStantnor place into the house ofgraydom ? I
Page 89
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
would've thought he'd built her a temple . . . Of course. The house had become
her mausoleum, her memorial. The house of broken dreams.
Jennifer shuddered and moved closer. I put my arm around her. We had a biting
cold wind, a gray day, and a graveyard. I needed to be close to somebody, too.
I said, "I've reconsidered. Somewhat. Spend the night with me tonight." I
didn't explain. I didn't say anything more. She didn't say anything, either,
neither in protest, shock, or accusation. She stiffened just the slightest,
the only sign she'd heard me.
It was an impulse, almost, kicked up by that part of me that hates to see
people hurting.
Maybe there's such a thing as karma. Our good deeds get their reward. A small
thing, but if I'd overcome that impulse, I'd probably be dead.
24
We stood looking at the tombstone. I asked, "Do you know much about your
mother?"
"Only what I told you, which is all Cook ever told me. Father won't say
anything. He fired everybody after she died, except Cook. There wasn't anyone
else to tell me."
"What about your grandparents?"
"I don't know anything about them. My grandfatherStantnor died when I was a
baby. My grandmotherStantnor went when my father was a boy. I don't know who
they were on my mother's side except that they were astormwarden and afirelord
. Cook won't tell me who they were. I think something bad happened to them and
she doesn't want me to know."
Ting! A little bell rang inside my head.
A favorite pastime of our ruling class is plotting to snatch the throne.
Though we haven't lately, sometimes we go through periods when we change kings
like underwear. We had three in one year, once.
There'd been a big brouhaha when I was eight, maybe seven. About the time
Jennifer had been born. An assassination attempt had gone awry and had been
soblackhearted at its core that the would-be victim had gotten so righteously
pissed off, he'd made a clean sweep. Not a bit of forgive-and-forget. Necks
got stretched. Heads and bodies went their separate ways. Arms and legs got
hauled around the kingdom and buried individually beneath crossroads. Great
estates got confiscated. It hadn't been a good time to be related to the
conspirators, however remotely.
From my neighborhood it had been great fun, watching the ruling class chase
its tail and get it caught in a door. Or some such mixed metaphor. When those
things come up, everybody on the outside hopes that crowd will wipe themselves
out. But they never do. They just select out the least competent schemers.
Shouldn't be hard to find out who her grandparents had been. "Would you want
to know?" I asked. "Is it important to you?"
Page 90
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"It's not important. It wouldn't change my life. I don't know if I care
anymore." After some silence, "I used to dream about them when I was little.
They were going to come take me home to their palace. I was really a princess.
They'd sent me and my mother here to hide us from their enemies, only
something happened. Maybe they'd forgotten where they'd hidden us. I don't
know. I never figured out why they never came. I just pretended that they
would, someday."
A common childhood mind game. But, "It could be true, Jennifer. Things were
unsettled politically in those days. It's possible the marriage was arranged
to put your mother out of harm's way. With your grandparents dead, your father
might have been the only one left who knew who your mother was."
"You're kidding."
"No. I was young but I remember those days. Some people tried to kill the
King. They blew it. He went crazy. A lot of people died, including some who
had nothing to do with the plot." Sometimes you tell the white lie. Wouldn't
hurt to leave her the option of believing her grandparents had been innocents
caught in the storm.
She laughed without humor. "Wouldn't that be something? If my kid's daydreams
were true?"
"Do you still not care?" I could find out about her grandparents without
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]