"Mercedes Lackey - A Ghost of a Chance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

employment with, she got no favor from the females. Certainly on the rare
occasions when she talked to her daughter about those long-ago days, she had
railed against the "jealous old bitches" who had turned her out again after they
discovered what their spouses had hired.
And so would I have, Rune thought wryly, as the pile of dirt in front of her
broom grew to the size of her closed fist. The girl Stara had been was all too
likely to have a big belly again as soon as she'd wormed her way into the
household. And this time, the result would have been sure to favor the looks of
the master of the house. She had no credentials, no references-instead of
applying properly to the women of the household, she went straight to the men.
Stupid, Mother. But then, you never have paid any attention to women when there
were men around.
But finally Stara had wound up here, at the "Hungry Bear." The innkeeper's wife,
Rose, was of a credulous, generous and forgiving nature; Innkeeper Jeoff a pious
Churchman, and charitable. That alone might not have earned her the place as the
serving-maid in the tavern. But luck had been with her this time; their pot-boy
had signed with the army and gone off to the city and there was no one in the
village willing or able to take his place. Stara's arrival, even encumbered as
she was, must have seemed like a gift from God, and they had needed her
desperately enough to take her story at face value.
Although the villagers guessed most of the tale easily enough, they too were
obliged to accept the false story, (outwardly, at least) since Jeoff and Rose
did. But Rune was never allowed to forget the truth. Stara threw it in Rune's
face every time she was angry about anything-and the village children had lost
no opportunity to imply she was a bastard for as long as she could remember.
They only said openly what their parents thought. Stara didn't seem to care,
wearing low-cut blouses and kilted-up skirts when she went into the village on
errands, flirting with the men and ignoring the sneers of the women. Back in the
tavern, under Rose's eye, however, she had pulled the drawstrings of her blouses
tight and let her skirts down, acting demure and briskly businesslike in all her
dealings with males. Rune had more than once heard Rose defending her foundling
to her friends among the villagers, telling Jeoff afterwards that they were just
envious because of Stara's youth and attractiveness.
And that much was certainly true. The village women were jealous. Stara was
enough to excite any woman's jealousy, other than a tolerant, easy-going lady
like Rose, with her long, blond hair, her plump prettiness, her generous breasts
and her willingness to display her charms to any eye that cared to look. Of
course, none of this did any good at all for her reputation in the village, but
Stara didn't seem to concern herself over trifles like what the villagers
thought.
It was left to Rune to bear the brunt of her mother's reputation, to try to
ignore the taunts and the veiled glances. Stara didn't care about that, either.
So long as nothing touched or inconvenienced her directly, Stara was relatively
content.
Only relatively, since Stara was not happy with her life as it was, and
frequently voiced her complaints in long, after-hours monologues to her
daughter, with little regard for whether or not Rune was going to suffer from
loss of sleep the next day.
Last night had been one of those nights, and Rune yawned hugely as she swept.
Rune wasn't precisely certain what her mother wanted-besides a life of complete