"Sara Douglass - Redemption 1 - Sinner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

her bright eyes danced with love for him. The portrait had been painted eighteen
months into their marriage. Two weeks after it had been finished Isabeau was
dead, crushed beneath the body of her horse which had slipped and fallen during
the excitement of the hunt.
She had been five months pregnant with their first child.
Zared had never forgiven himself for her death. He should never have given
her that horse - but she was so skilled a horsewoman. She should never have
been riding at that stage in her pregnancy - but she was so healthy, so vibrant.
He should have forbidden her to follow the hounds and hawks - but she did so
love the hunt.
He'd never ridden to the hunt again. The day after her death Zared had given
away his hawks, and the hunting horses in his stable. His huntmaster had drifted
away, seeking employment with lords to the south.
And Zared had promised himself never to love so deeply again, and never
again to expose himself to such hurt.
He took a mouthful of wine and moved along to the next portrait. His father,
Magariz. And next to his portrait, that of his mother, Rivkah.
They were, Zared supposed, the reason he had succumbed to love again.
Magariz and Rivkah had lived life so completely in love, and so contented in that
love, that Zared just could not imagine living himself without a soulmate to share
his life with. For years after Isabeau's death he'd kept himself distant from
women, keeping to his promise… and then he'd met Leagh.
Re-met her, actually, for Zared had known Leagh as a tiny girl in Belial's
arms. But once he'd assumed the Princedom of the North, his responsibilities had
kept Zared away from Carlon, and he didn't see Leagh again until she was
twenty-one.
They'd met, not at Carlon, but at Sigholt. Wreathed in its magical blue mists,
Sigholt was normally the province only of the enchanted SunSoar family, but the
year Leagh turned twenty-one she'd travelled to Sigholt with Askam for a
meeting of the Council of the Five First Families.
Askam and Zared, as the heads of the two leading families, had attended,
along with FreeFall SunSoar, the Icarü Talon, Sa'Domai, the Ravensbund Chief,
and Prince Yllgaine of Nor. Leagh had gone, partly at Caelum's invitation - a gift
for her coming of age - and partly because she was close friends with Caelum's
youngest sister, Zenith.
Zared had found himself alone with her late one night atop the Keep of
Sigholt, both there for the night air. They'd spent the night talking, laughing, and
- as they both discovered to their amazement - falling deeply in love.
Loving her was the easy part, Zared reflected. Being together, spending their
lives together, seemed all but impossible. He'd come home from that Council so
optimistically in love that he'd ordered the private apartments of his residence to
be redecorated in the blue of Leagh's eyes.
Almost immediately he'd opened the diplomatic negotiations needed for such
a high-ranking marriage, only to be confronted with a wall of distrust from
Askam. Certainly the two had never liked each other, and they'd been economic
rivals for years, but Zared had never thought that such matters would come
between him and Leagh.
It was naive of him. Stupid of him.
Zared's fingers tightened about his wine glass, and he moved a little further
down the gallery. He didn't want to be so close to his parents' portraits. Now the