"Tanya Huff - To Each His Own Kind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

To Each His Own Kind
Tanya Huff
London was everything the Count had imagined it to be when he'd told Jonathan Harker of how he'd
longed to walk "through the crowded streets… to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity."
Although, he amended as he waited for a break in the evening traffic that would allow him to cross
Piccadilly, a little less whirl and rush would be preferable.
He could see the house he'd purchased across the street, but it might as well have been across the
city for all he could reach it. Yes, he'd wanted to move about unnoticed but this, this was wearing at his
patience. And he had never been considered a patient man. Even as a man.
Finally, he'd been delayed for as long as he was willing to endure. Sliding the smoked glasses down
his nose, he deliberately met the gaze of an approaching horse. In his homeland, the effect would have
been felt between one heartbeat and the next. Terror.
Panic. Flight. This London carriage horse, however, seemed to accept his presence almost
phlegmatically.
Then the message actually made it through the city's patina to the equine brain.
Better, he thought and strode untouched through the resulting chaos. Ignoring the screams of injured
men and horses both, he put the key into the lock and stepped inside.
He'd purchased the house furnished from the estate of Mr. Archibald Winter-Suffield. From the dead,
as it were. That amused him.
His belongings were in the dining room at the back of the house.
"The dining room?" He sighed. His orders to the shipping company had only instructed that the
precious cases be placed in the house. Apparently, here in this new country, he needed to be more
specific. They would have to be moved to a place less conspicuous, but not now, not with London calling
to him. He set his leather case upon the table and turned to go.
Stepping around a chair displaced by the boxes of earth, he brushed against the sideboard, smearing
dust across his sleeve. Snarling, he brushed at it with his gloved hand but only succeeded in smearing it
further. The coat was new. He'd sent his measurements to Peter Hawkins before he'd started his journey
and had found clothing suitable for an English gentleman at journey's end. It was one of the last
commissions Mr. Hawkins had fulfilled for him. One of the last he would fulfill for anyone, as it happened.
The old man had been useful, but the necessity of frequent correspondence had left him knowing too
much.
Opening the case, he pulled out a bundle of deeds—this was not the only house that English dead had
provided—and another bundle of note paper, envelopes, and pens. As he set them down, he reminded
himself to procure ink as soon as possible. He disliked being without it. Written communications allowed
a certain degree of distance from those who did his bidding.
Finally, after some further rummaging, he found his clothing brush and removed the dust from his
sleeve. Presentable at last, he tossed the brush down on the table and hurried for the street, suddenly
impatient to begin savoring this new existence.
"… to share its life, its change, its death, all that makes it what it is."
The crowd outside on Piccadilly surprised him and he stopped at the top of the stairs. The crowds he
knew in turn knew better than to gather outside his home. When he realized that the people were taking
no notice of him and had, in fact, gathered to watch the dead horse pulled up onto a wagon, he
descended to the street.
He thrilled to his anonymity as he made his way among them. To walk through a great mass of
Londoners unremarked—it was all he had dreamed it would be. To feel their lives surrounding him,
unaware of their danger. To walk as a wolf among the unsuspecting lambs. To know that even should he
declare himself, they would not believe. It was a freedom he had never thought to experience again.
Then a boy, no more than eight or ten, broke free of his minder and surged forward to get a clearer
look. Crying, "Hey now!" a portly man stepped out of the child's way.
The pressure of the man's foot on his meant less than nothing but he hissed for the mark it made on his