"Andrews, V C - The Casteels 02 - Dark Angel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Andrews V.C)

Unfortunately, that didn't last long. He neglected me in favor of his
business. Maybe you've heard of the VanVoreen Steamship Line. Cleave was
inordinately proud of it. His silly boats and ships demanded all his
attentions, so even his holidays and weekends were stolen from me. I
grew lonely, just as your mother did " Tony interrupted: "Jillian, look
at this girl, would you! Can you believe those eyes? Those incredible
blue eyes, so like yours, so like Leigh's!" She leaned forward to flash
him a cool, chastising look. "Of course she's not Leigh, not exactly.
It's more than just her hair color, too. There's. something in her eyes
something that isn't, well, as innocent. OW I had to be careful! I
should think more about what my eyes might reveal. Never, never should
they even guess what had happened between Cal Dennison and me. They
would despise me if they knew, just as Logan Stonewall, my childhood
sweetheart, despised me.

"Yes, you're right, of course," agreed Tony with a sigh. "No one is ever
duplicated in every detail."

Sk Those two years and five months I spent in Candlewick, just outside
of Atlanta, with Kitty and Cal Dennison, had not given me the kind of
sophistication I needed now, not as I had previously thought. Kitty had
been thirty-seven when she died, and she'd considered her advanced age
intolerable. And here was my grandmother, who had to be much older than
Kitty, and she didn't appear even as old as Kitty, and as far as I could
see she had a strong hold on confidence. Truthfully, I'd never seen a
grandmother who looked so young. And grandmothers in the hills came in
very young ages, especially when they married at twelve, thirteen, or
fourteen. I found myself speculating on just how old my grandmother was.

In February I'd be seventeen, but that was still months away. My m other
had been only fourteen the day I was born; the same day she died. If
she'd lived, she'd be thirty-one. Now I was rather well read, and from
all the facts I'd learned about Boston blue bloods I knew they didn't
marry until they finished their educations. Husbands and babies weren't
considered essential to the lives of young Bostonian girls as they were
back in West Virginia. This grandmother would have been at least twenty
when she married the first time. That would put her in her fifties, at
least. Imagine that. The same age as I remembered Granny best. Granny,
with her long, thin white hair, her stooped shoulders with her dowager's
hump, her arthritic fingers and legs, her pitifully few garments drab
and dark, her worn-out shoes.

Oh, Granny, and once you'd been as lovely as this woman.

My intense and unrelieved study of my youthful grandmother brought two
small tears to shine in the corners her cornflower blue eyes so much
like my own. Tears that lingered without falling.

Made brave by her small, unmoving tears, I found a voice: "Grandmother,
what did my father tell you about me?" My question came out tremulously