"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Beautiful Damned" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

mansion. The lights blazed on the hillside, and the sound of laughter washed
down to me like the blessing of a god. Perhaps Ari's casual suggestion put
something in my mind, or perhaps I was still feeling the effects of the mint
juleps, but whatever the cause, I walked up the path, feeling drawn to the
house
like a moth to light.

My shoes crunched against the hard-packed earth, and my legs, unused to such
strenuous exercise, began to ache. Midway up, the coolness of the valley had
disappeared, and perspiration made my shirt cling to my chest. The laughter
grew
closer, and with it, snatches of conversation --women's voices rising with
passion, men speaking in low tones, pretending that they couldn't be
overheard.

I stopped at a small rock formation just before the final rise to Fitz's
house.
The rocks extended over the valley below like a platform, and from them, I
could
see the winding road I had driven that afternoon to Ari's house.

A car passed below and I followed the trail of its headlights until they
disappeared into the trees.

As I turned to leave the platform, my desire to reach the party gone, I caught
a
glimpse of a figure moving against the edge of the path. A man stood on the
top
of the rise, staring down at the road, as I had. He wore dark evening dress
with
a white shirt and a matching white scarf draped casually around his neck. The
light against his back caused his features to be in shadow-- only when he
cupped
his hands around a burning match to light a cigarette already in his mouth did
I
get a sense of his face.

He had an older beauty-- clean-shaven, almost womanish, with a long nose, high
cheekbones and wide, dark eyes. A kind of beauty that had been fashionable in
men when my grandfather was young-- the Rudolph Valentino, Leslie Howard look
that seemed almost effete by the standards of today.

As he tossed the match away, a waltz started playing behind him, and it gave
him
context. He stared down at the only other visible point of light --Ari's
knoll--
and his posture suggested such longing that I half expected the music to
swell,
to add too much violin in the suggestion of a world half-forgotten.