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

rioting since five o'clock with revelers—white, black, and colored, slave and free, French and
American—bedizened in every variation of evening costume or fancy dress. God knew there were
women enough yanking men off the high brick banquettes into doorways and carriage gates and public
houses on Rue Royale and Rue Bourbon and all over the old quarter tonight. He wondered what Titian
or Rembrandt would have made of the composition; he was turning politely to go when the woman
screamed.

The fear in her voice made him swing around, just within the arch of the gate. The oil lamp's light must
have fallen on his face, for when she screamed a second time, she cried his name.

"Monsieur Janvier!"

A stride took him to the grappling forms. He seized His Eminence by the shoulder and tossed him clear
out of the carriageway, across the brick banquette, over the dark-glittering stream of the open gutter and
into the oozy slops of Rue Ste.-Ann with a single throw—for January was a very big man—making sure
to cry as he did so in his most jovial tones, "Why, Rufus, you old scamp, ain't nobody told you . . . ?"

Timing was everything. He'd learned that as a child.

Even as his victim went staggering into the jostle of carriages, he was bounding after him, catching the
man's arm in a firm grip and gasping, "Oh, my God, sir, I'm terribly sorry!" He managed to yank the
enraged churchman out of the way before both could be run down by a stanhope full of extremely
Cooperesque Indians. "I thought you were a friend of mine! My fault entirely!" Richelieu was
pomegranate with rage and thrashing like a fish on a hook, but he was also a good half foot shorter than
January's six-foot three-inch height and hadn't spent nine years carrying cadavers—and occasionally
pianofortes—on a daily basis. "I do beg your pardon!"

January knew the man would hit him the moment he let go and knew also that he'd better not hit back.

He was correct. It wasn't much of a blow, and at least Richelieu wasn't carrying a cane, but as the
scarlet-masked villain flounced back across the gutter and disappeared into the dark maw of the gate
once more, January was surprised by his own anger. Rage rose through him like a fever heat as he tasted
his own blood on his lip, burning worse than the sting of the blow, and for a time he could only stand in
the gluey street, jostled on both sides by gaudy passersby, not trusting himself to follow.

I've been in Paris too long, he thought.

Or not long enough.

He picked up his high-crowned beaver hat, flicked the mud from it—it had fallen on the banquette, not in
the gutter—and put it back on.

The last time he'd let a white man strike him, he'd been twenty-four. An American sailor on the docks
had cuffed him with casual violence as he was boarding the boat to take him to Paris. He'd thought then,
Never again.

He drew a long breath, steadying himself, willing the anger away as he had learned to will it as a child.

Welcome home.