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

surrounded by a worshipful gaggle of his pupils, and made a mental note to place bets with his sister
when he saw her on how many duels would be arranged tonight. In all his years of playing the piano at
New Orleans balls, January had noticed that the average of violence was lower for the quadroon balls,
the Blue Ribbon Balls, than for the subscription balls of white society.

And even on this night of masks, he noted that those who spoke French did not mingle with those who
spoke English. Some things Carnival did not change.

He'd laughed about that, too, in Paris, back when there'd been reason to laugh.

Don't think about that, he told himself, and opened the service door. Just get through this evening. I
wonder if that poor girl . . . ?

She was standing in the service hall that led to the manager's tiny office, to the kitchen and the servants'
stair.

At the sound of the opening door she whirled, her face a pale blur under the mask and the streaks of war
paint. She'd been watching through the little door that led into the .corner of the lobby, and for a moment,
as she lifted her weight up onto her toes, January thought she'd flee out into the big room, into which he
could not follow. He noted, in that instant, how absurdly the cheap buckskin costume was made, with a
modern corset and petticoat beneath it, and a little beaded reticule at her belt. Her dark plaits were a nod
to Monsieur Cooper, but she wore perfectly ordinary black gloves, much mended, and black slippers
and stockings, splashed with mud from the street.

She seemed to lose her nerve about the lobby and turned to flee up the narrow stair that led to the
upstairs supper room and the little retiring chamber beside it, where girls went to pin up torn flounces.
January said, "It's all right, Mademoiselle. I just wanted to be sure you were all right."

"Oh. Of course." She straightened her shoulders with a gesture he knew—he'd seen it a hundred times,
or a thousand, but not from an adult woman .... "Thank you, Monsieur Janvier. The man was . . .
importunate." She was trying to sound calm and a little arrogant, but he saw from the way the gold
buckskin of her skirt shivered that her knees were still shaking. She nodded to him, touched her absurd
headdress, loosing another two cock feathers, and started to walk past him toward the courtyard again.
It was well done and, he realized later, took nerve. But when she came close January got a better look at
what he could see of her face and knew then where he had seen that squaring of the shoulders, those full
lips; knew where he had heard that voice.

"Mademoiselle Madeleine?"

She froze, and in the same moment realization took hold of him, and horror.

"Mademoiselle Madeleine?"

Her eyes met his, her mouth trying for an expression of cool surprise and failing. She was a woman now,
wasp-waisted with a soaring glory of bosom, but the angel-brown eyes were the eyes of the child he
remembered.

She moved to dart past him but he put his body before the door, and she halted, wavering, tallying
possible courses of action, even as he'd seen her tally them when her father would come in after the piano
lessons and ask whether she would like a lemon ice before her dancing teacher arrived.