"Andre Norton - The Opal-Eyed Fan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

"What are you going to do?" she demanded.
"I don't propose to meet Crewe Leverett under his own roof," Grillon returned. "Best we meet eye
to eye out there."
Persis had taken two quick steps backward so she stood within the doorway. She was ashamed
she had not once made her presence clear, but now she spoke.
"Miss Leverett-"
Lydia looked over her shoulder. Her expression was hardly a welcoming one.
"I understand," Persis plunged on, "that I have been given Captain Leverett's own chamber. Of
course that is not right now that he is returning—"
Grillon laughed again, lounging back against the rail of the veranda. But Lydia's frown deepened.
"What does all this have to do with me?" she de-manded impatiently.
"Why, you're mistress here, ain't you, sweet?" ob-served the Bahamian. "The young lady rightly
wants to know what you decide. Quite properly I would say. It's plain she and Crewe can't—"
Lydia jerked away from him. "Leave it to Mrs. Pryor. Her word carries more weight here than
mine, always has." She turned her back on Persis and looked out toward the wharf.
Grillon winked at Persis and nodded.
"I saw Mrs. Pryor just a few minutes ago," he said as Lydia continued to ignore the other girl. "I
think you may find her in the kitchen, Miss Rooke."
Persis managed a "thank you" and then fled. Did Grillon suspect she had overheard much of their
con-versation? She fully deserved the feeling of guilt she carried with her.
A door at the other end of the hall opened on three steps down into what was plainly the kitchen.
There was an open fireplace with old-fashioned spits and chains, and an oven built inside it. The heat, even
though an outside door stood wide open, was enough to make Persis feel as if she had walked into a fire.
A small black woman, her thin chemise blouse plas-tered to her shoulders in wet patches, her full
red skirt only partially covered by a coarse apron bearing the stains left by her work, was thumping out
pastry on a board with the vigor of one battling a long-sought enemy. Sukie and another maid were washing
vegeta-bles and cutting them up.
Persis' entrance brought a sudden silence, though the cook continued her energetic thumping. Her
eyes were not on the girl rather than the task before her.
"Mrs. Pryor, where is she?" Persis addressed them all. For a long moment she thought no one was
going to answer. They merely stared as if she were an appari-tion which they had never expected to see.
Then the cook raised a floury hand and pointed to the outer door. She said something but in a thick dialect
Persis could not understand.
So the girl brushed past the table and went on into the open. Mrs. Pryor was there, superintending
the stretching of a line across a portion of the mound top uncovered by the house, two boys making it tight.
She glanced around as Persis' slippers crunched on the layers of broken clam shells which seemed to cover
most of the ground.
"It's a good day for drying, Miss Rooke. Your maid will not have to wait long before she can put
iron to your things."
"Please," Persis had only one thought in mind now. "Captain Leverett—I was told I have his
bedchamber — which was most generous of him. But now that he is returning—"
"You may have no worries, Miss Rooke. The Cap-tain will stay on the Nonpareil, of course. He
spends many of his nights there when it is in harbor. It is he who gave the orders that you were to have his
chamber."
Persis found the other's calmness somehow a little irritating.
"I understand that there is also a matter of rescue fees. Since my uncle is at present unable to
discuss the matter, I do not want to trouble him. Can you explain just what is expected of us?"
She saw Mrs. Pryor's lips tighten. "I do not know where you have heard such nonsense, Miss
Rooke. Of course there are no fees. What you must have thought of us! There is a hotel down the Key built by
Captain Leverett's orders to house the crews of wrecked ves-sels, if their ships cannot be made seaworthy again, until