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

further, down to the gently lapping waters of the lake. A gentle easterly breeze
blew across the waves, lifting the glossy nut-brown hair from her brow and
sweeping it back over her shoulders in tumbling waves. Leagh had the dark blue
eyes of her mother, Cazna, but had inherited her hair, good looks and calm
temperament from her father, Belial. She had loved her father dearly, and still
missed him, even though he'd been dead a decade. He'd been her best friend
when she was growing up, and to lose him when she'd been sixteen had been a
cruel blow.
"Stop it!" she murmured to herself. "Why heap yet more sadness and
loneliness on your heart?"
 Gods, why could she not have been born a simple peasant girl rather than a
princess? Surely peasant women had more luck in following their hearts! Here
she was at twenty-six, all but locked into her brother's palace, when most
women her age were married with toddlers clinging to their skirts.
Leagh turned back into the chamber, and sat at her work table. It was
littered with scraps of silk and pieces of embroidery that she had convinced
herself she would one day sew into a waistcoat for the man she loved - but when
everyone around her apparently conspired to keep them as far apart as possible,
what was the point? Would she ever have the chance to give it to him? Her
fingers wandered aimlessly among several scraps, turning them over and about
as if in an attempt to form a pattern, but Leagh's thoughts were now so far
distant that she did not even see what her fingers were doing.
Leagh's only wish in life was to marry the man she loved - Zared, Prince of
the North, son of Rivkah and Magariz. Yet it would have been easier for me, she
thought wryly, if I'd fallen in love with a common carter.
The problem was not that Zared did not love her, for he did, and with a quiet
passion that sometimes left her trembling when she caught his eyes across a
banquet table. Yet how long was it since they'd had the chance to share even a
glance? A year? More like two, she thought miserably, and had to struggle to
contain her tears. More like two.
Nay, the problem was not only that Zared and she loved too well, but that a
marriage between them was fraught with so many potential political problems
that her brother, Askam, had yet to agree to it. (Though doubtless he would
have let her marry a carter long ago!) Leagh loved her brother dearly, but he
tried her patience - and gave her long, sleepless nights - with his continued
reluctance to grant approval of the marriage.
Leagh's eyes slowly cleared, and she picked up a star-shaped piece of golden
silk and turned it slowly over and over in her hands. Power in the western and
northern territories of Tencendor was delicately balanced between their two
respective princes, Askam and Zared. Should she marry Zared, then the grave
potential was there that one day West and North would be united under one
prince. Askam had married eight years ago, but his wife Bethiam had yet to
produce an heir. For the moment Leagh's womb carried within it the entire
inheritance of the West.
And, with its burden of responsibility and inheritance, thus did her womb
entrap her.
If I were a peasant woman, Leagh suddenly thought, I would only have to
bed the man of my choice and get with his child for all familial objections to our
marriage to be dropped. She crushed the golden silk star into a tight ball, and
tears of anger and heartache filled her eyes. Askam would not let her get within