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

"I was asked to speak to you by Madame Trepagier," said January. "She'd like to meet with you."

"You're new." There was curiosity in her voice, as if he hadn't spoken. "At least Arnaud never mentioned
you. She can't be as poor as she whined in her note if she's got bucks like you on the place." Behind the
cat mask her eyes sized him up, and for a moment he saw the disappointment in the pout of her mouth,
disappointment and annoyance that her lover had had at least one $1,500 possession of which she had
not been aware.

"I'm not one of Madame Trepagier's servants, Mademoiselle," said January, keeping his voice level with
an effort. He remembered the flash of desire he had felt for her and fought back the disgust that fueled
further anger. "She asked me to find you and arrange a meeting with you."

"Doesn't that sow ever give up?" She shrugged impatiently, her lace-mitted hand twisting the gold-caged
emeralds, the baroque pearls against the white silk of her gown. "I have nothing to say to her. You tell her
that. You tell her, too, that if she tries any of those spiteful little Creole tricks, like denouncing me to the
police for being impudent, I have tricks of my own. My father's bank holds paper on half the city council,
including the captain of the police, and the mayor. Now you ..."

Her eyes went past him. Like an actress dropping into character, her whole demeanor changed. Her
body grew fluid and catlike in the sensual blaze of the candles her eyes smoky with languorous desire. As
if January had suddenly become invisible, and in precisely the same tone and inflection in which she had
first spoken when he came in, she said, "How dare you lay hands on me?"

January knew without turning that Galen Peralta stood behind him in the doorway.

It was his cue to depart. He was sorely tempted to remain and spoil her lines but knew it wouldn't do him
or Madeleine Trepagier any good. And Peralta would only order him out in any case.

The boy was trembling, torn between rage and humiliation and desire. Angelique moved toward him, her
chin raised a little and her body curving, luscious. "Aren't we a brave little man, to be sure?" she purred,
and shook back her outrageous hair, her every move a calculated invitation to attack, to rage, to the
desperate emotion of a seventeen-year-old.

Stepping past the ashen-faced boy in the doorway, January felt a qualm of pity for him.

"You . . . you . . ." He shoved January out of his way, through the door and into the hall, and slammed
the door with a cannon shot violence that echoed all over the upstairs lobby.

It was the last time January saw Angelique Crozat alive.

THREE
Bitch, thought January, his whole body filled with a cold, dispassionate anger. Bitch, bitch, bitch.

Anger consumed him, for the way she had looked at him, like a piece of property, and at the knowledge
that this woman had flitted and cut and stolen her way through the life of the woman who had once been
Madeleine Dubonnet. That for one moment he had wanted her—as probably any man did who saw
her—disgusted him more than he could say. His confessor, Pere Euge-nius, would probably call it
repentance for the Original Sin, and he was probably right.

Back in the ballroom, major war appeared to have broken out.