"Leo Frankowski - Stargard 6 - Conrad's Quest for Rubber" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

in one of her boots, then started unlacing the front of her white woolen dress.
"This must be somebody's idea of a joke," I said. "You have to be a prostitute hired by someone
from accounting."
"I am not a prostitute, and nobody hired me," she said as she dropped her dress to the floor. She
stepped naked out of it. She was obviously still in her early teens, but she had little of the baby fat that
so many girls her age are afflicted with. Instead, she was blessed with the firm, trim body of an athletic
woman of about five years older. Not to mention remarkably large, firm breasts. Or the dusting of
freckles all over everything. I tried not to let my normal male reactions show, and was glad of the
desk in front of me.
She hung the dress on another peg before continuing. "In fact, I'm still a virgin, and people have
told me that I am an attractive one."
 "Your face and body are more than adequate, but your character is very much in question," I
said as coldly as I could manage. "I am not a teenage boy who becomes irrational at the sight of a
few square yards of female skin. I want to know why you think you can get away with
approaching me so boldly, and I want to know your name."
My hopefully stern admonition had no apparent effect on the girl. She came around my desk
and sat on my lap. She gave me an inexpert kiss, with her lips too hard.
"My lord, I have the right to be bold with you because you are my proper liege lord. You rescued
me at a tender age from death, outlaws, and a winter blizzard. It is only proper that you should
now enjoy the flower of my maidenhood."
The whole situation had me stunned, flabbergasted, and thoroughly confused. Especially that
last statement.
"I still don't understand. What is your name?"
She kissed me again in the same inexperienced fashion. Part of me wanted to explain to her
the proper way of doing things, but most of me didn't want to change the subject.
"My name is the one you gave me when you christened me in a snowy woods. I'm Ignacy. You
really must remember me now."
Ignacy! Now I remembered. While escorting a merchant through the forests east of here—
what, fourteen years ago?—we were attacked by a highwayman with a black eagle on his shield.
Defending ourselves, we killed him and his henchmen, and my mount accidentally trampled a
young woman in the process.
Later, I'd found a baby in the outlaw's camp. I christened it in case it didn't survive the rest of
the wintry trip to shelter and brought it with me to Count Lambert's castle, here at Okoitz.
Only then did I find out that I had christened a girl with a boy's name.
And this was what that tiny bundle had grown into?
"I remember now. I also recall that you were adopted into a peasant family, that your new father soon
died, and that your stepmother then married a blacksmith."
"Yes, your grace. She told me that his name was Ilya, and that Count Lambert had forced them to
marry. They never did like each other, and she eventually ran away to Hungary with another blacksmith
more to her liking."
"Remember that I was there at the time. She was not actually forced to marry Ilya, although
Lambert was generally too persuasive by half," I said. "None of which explains why you are sitting
naked on my lap."
"This is Okoitz, isn't it? And the custom here is for a maiden to be taken first by her lord, isn't
it?" She kissed me yet again and managed to wiggle herself around such that she was straddling me as I
sat upright in my chair. Her body and breasts were pressed tightly against me, and my resolve to treat
this event as an annoyance was weakening.
"It was Lambert's custom to bounce every peasant girl within arm's reach, if that's what you are
referring to. But Lambert has been dead for five years, and you are not a local peasant girl. You were
raised in Hungary, judging from your accent. And thinking about it, I believe that you are legally still