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

the daughter of Ilya the blacksmith, who has since become Baron Ilya. You and he are thus both
members of the nobility, not the peasantry."
I was wearing an old embroidered velvet outfit rather than one of my usual military uniforms. The
almost annoying young lady was busily undoing the strings on my codpiece.
She said, "You are trying to wiggle out of this on a legal technicality, and I won't have it! Ilya isn't
my father. My father was the highwayman Sir Rheinburg, and you killed him!"
"If Sir Rheinburg was your father, and if he legally married your mother, then you are a member of
the German nobility and not a peasant. However, it is by no means certain that he was your father.
Rheinburg had two men-at-arms with him, and either of them could have been married to the
woman who was killed. Or there may possibly have been a fourth man involved somehow. We don't
know. What we do know is that your mother and probably your biological father were dead, that you
were adopted, albeit informally, into a family, and that later your stepmother legally married Ilya. She
never divorced Ilya, even if she left him for another man. No, there's no way around it. You are stuck
with being a baroness, and you are not acting like one."
It took me a while to say that, since while I was talking, she had continued with her program of
kissing and disrobing me.
"I've been planning for this day for years, and you're not going to talk me out of it!"
The conversation continued for a while longer, but there is a limit as to how long any normal man
can stay firm in his noble intentions. I bowed to the inevitable before I committed the sin of Onan.
Much later, as she was leaving, I said, "Well, Baroness, I still think that you should go and at least
meet your father. He's stationed at Three Walls, a half day's ride south of here."
"I'll think about it, your grace."
And then she left without asking my leave and without saying a good-bye, much less a thank-you.
Baron Piotr was just approaching my office door as the disheveled girl walked away.
"What was that all about, your grace? I'm sure that I've never seen her before."
"I'm not really sure, but I think I was just raped."
He pondered that a bit before answering. "Remarkable. Still, she doesn't seem to have caused
you any permanent damage, sir. What disturbs me is that a total stranger could enter your castle
and make it all the way to your inner sanctum without being stopped or even identified.
"You know, your grace, I think we are getting entirely too lax about security around here. What if
she had had different designs on your body? Putting some extra holes in it, for example. What then? I
notice that you aren't even wearing your sword."
"Hmm. Yes, you're right. I must have left it somewhere."
"I noticed that you weren't wearing it at lunch, either. Your grace, you must remember that you aren't
just a backwoods knight anymore. You have become one of the most important men in the world.
There are people who feel that they have good reason to hate you, and men in your position have been
assassinated for reasons that no one has ever figured out. The death of Duke Henryk the Bearded is a
recent example."
"Okay, okay, I'll make a point of always wearing my sword from now on. Enough said."
"No, not quite enough, your grace. You need a bodyguard, or better yet, a number of bodyguards
such that there are always at least two of them awake and on hand at all times."
"Piotr, that would be a royal pain in the butt, and I am not royal enough to have to put up with it. I
won't do it. Also, I am not at all sure that bodyguards make a man any safer. They make him stand
out when there is safety in anonymity. And bear in mind, the Duke Henryk you mention was mur-
dered by one of his own bodyguards. So was Philip of Macedonia, Alexander the Great's father."
"You have very little chance at anonymity, your grace, being at least a head taller than anyone else
in the city. As to the rest, I expect that guards have saved a hundred rulers for every one they have
killed."
"Piotr, the only really nice thing about being a 'ruler' is that you get to do what you want. I want no
bodyguards."