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

the beautiful, ruined woman lying between them. "They do not understand how to do these things quietly,
discreetly. Of course, of course they must be summoned in the morning—after I have spoken to
Monsieur Davis. ... Of course he will want to summon them. . . ."He chewed his lip in an agony of
uncertainty, and January remembered the mother of one of his friends in Paris, who would put aside bills
"for a few days until I know I have the money" and then eventually burn them unread.
Angelique's body was a bill that would be burned unread. Not because she was an evil woman or
because she had harmed every life she touched, but only because she was colored and a placee.

"Well, what would you?" sighed Froissart—January could almost see Mme. du Gagny sliding yet another
dressmaker's dun into that nacre-and-rosewood secretaire. "It is how it is. ... Good heavens, how long
have we been here? People will begin to ask. . . . You must return to your piano and say nothing,
nothing. Be assured that the matter will be taken care of in the morning."

January inclined his head and arose. "I'm sorry," he said humbly. "I was so shaken up by seeing her here
like this, I ... It took me a while to get my thoughts back. Thank you for your patience with me."

Froissart beamed patronizingly. "One understands," he said, as if he himself hadn't gone fishbelly green at
the sight of the body—January guessed he was one of those who headed for Mandeville at the first of the
summer heat and had never been through an epidemic at firsthand in his life. "Of course, the shock of it
all. I hope you are better."

"Much," said January, wondering if he should fake a spell of dizziness with the shock and rejecting the
idea— and his own consideration of it—with loathing. He made a show of looking around as if he'd
forgotten something, playing for as much time as he could scrape. "Much better."

Froissart turned and left the jewelbox room with its grisly occupant, and January perforce followed. He
glanced back at the crumpled body, the grasping and greedy woman who had assumed he was a slave
because his skin was darker than hers. Still, she did not deserve to be forgotten like an unpaid bill. I did
my best, he apologized. More, certainly, than he would ever have accorded her in life.

As he left he laid the four coins Froissart had given him gently on the table by the door.

"Romulus!" called Froissart. "Romulus, I ..." They emerged from the hallway into the lobby in time to see
a small party of blue-clothed city guardsmen arrive at the top of the stairs.

Froissart stopped, goggling, as if he hoped these were another group of revelers, like Robin Hood's
Merry Men or the Ladies of the Harim.

But none of them were masked. And no Creole he knew, thought January, would have the wit to dress
that much like an out-at-elbows upriver Kaintuck, with a shabby, flapping corduroy coat many years out
of fashion and too short in the sleeves for his loose-jointed height. Minou slipped past them, startlingly
invisible for someone so beautiful and brightly clad, and melted into the crowd in the ballroom like snow
on the desert's dusty face. The tall officer stepped forward and laid a black-nailed hand on Froissart's
arm.

"Mr. Froissart?" Interestingly, he got the pronunciation right. " 'Fore you and your boy head on back to
the ballroom, we'd like to talk to you." His tone was polite but his backcountry dialect so thick that his
English was barely comprehensible.

Two of the guards were heading into the ballroom. The music ceased. Silence, then a rising clamor.