"Barbara Hambly - Benjamin January 1 - A Free Man of Color" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

storming up and grabbed hard and furiously at the fragile lace of Angelique's wing.

She whirled in a storm of glittering hair, ripping the wing still further. "What, pulling wings off flies isn't
good enough for you these days?" she demanded in a voice like a silver razor, and the boy drew back.

"You b-bitch!" He was almost in tears of rage. "You . . . stuh-stuh-strumpet!"

"Oooh." She flirted her bare shoulders. "That's the b-b-best you can do, Galenette?" Her imitation of his
stutter was deadly. "You can't even call names like a man."

Crimson with rage, the boy Galen raised his fist, and Angelique swayed forward, just slightly, raising her
face and turning it a little as if inviting the blow as she would have a kiss. Her eyes were on his, and they
smiled.

But her mother swooped down on them in a flashing welter of jewels, overwhelming the furious youth:
"Monsieur Galen, Monsieur Galen, only think! I beg of you ... !"

Angelique smiled a little in triumph and vanished into the dark archway of the hall with a taunting flip of
her quicksilver skirts.

"A girl of such spirit!" the mother was saying— Dreuze, January recalled her name was, Euphrasie
Dreuze. "A girl of fire, my precious girl is. Surely such a young man as yourself knows no girl takes such
trouble to make a man jealous unless she's in love?"

The boy tore his eyes from the archway into which Angelique had vanished, gazed at the woman grasping
him with her little jeweled hands as if he had never seen her in his life, then turned, staring around at the
masked faces that ringed him, faces expressionless save for those avid eyes.

"Monsieur Galen," began Clemence, extending a tentative hand.

Galen struck her aside, and with an inchoate sound went storming down the stairs.

Clemence turned, trembling hands fussing at her mouth, and started for the archway to follow Angelique,
but January was before her. "If you'll excuse me," he said, when their paths crossed in the mouth of the
hallway, "I have a message for Mademoiselle Crozat."

"Oh," whispered Clemence, fluttering, hesitant. "Oh ... I suppose . . ."

He left her behind him, and opened the door.

"How dare you lay hands on me?"

She was standing by the window, where the light of the candles ringed her in a halo of poisoned honey.
Her words were angry, but her voice was the alluring voice of a woman who seeks a scene that will end
in kisses.

She stopped, blank, when she saw that it wasn't Galen after all who had followed her into the room.

"Oh," she said. "Get out of here. What do you want?"