"Freda Warrington - A Taste of Blood Wine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Warrington Freda)

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A Taste


You have driven me to it. You were warned."
"Gut Gott, Kristian," said a crisp female voice. He wasn't startled.
He knew Ilona was there before he looked round to see her in the
balcony doorway, gypsy-brilliant against the cool dark interior of
the castle. This time she had adopted a Bohemian style, rich
embroidered silks and a tasselled shawl, and she had dyed her hair
again—no realistic shade, but brilliant scarlet.
Her appearance displeased him. She grinned, all rebellion and
bravado, pleased to have shocked him. But her adoration of him was
clear in her liquid brown eyes.
"Kristian?" she said. "Are you going to stare at me all day?"
"What have you done to your hair?"
"Don't you like it?" She stepped forward into the light, daring him
to be angry with her.
"This is vanity, Ilona. It is a mortal weakness, to paint and colour
yourself in this way. We should be above such folly."
"It's not vanity, it's camouflage," she retorted. Her rose-red lips
thinned slightly. She defiantly shook the offending hair free of her
shawl, so that it flowed over her shoulders like arterial blood.
However she changed her guise, her face remained the same. A
milk-white oval; the perfect features of a statue with dark unhuman
eyes, all the more shocking when the expression came to life. Like
Kristian's own face. Like Karl's. "How do you expect me to move
among humans without looking like them?"
"I don't believe there is any fashion for scarlet hair."
His displeasure made her defensive. "Since the War, Kristian,

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A Taste


anything goes, the more outrageous the better. If you were not such
a recluse you would know that. Do you expect me to dress like a
nun?" She laughed, revealing small neat teeth; no visible fangs.
"Actually, why don't I? It would be perfect."
Her mirth was a glittering play of light and sound that struck no
chord in Kristian. "You think your irreverence can shock me," he
said. "But the trappings of religion are only another example of
human delusion. They imagine that layers of cloth can bring them
nearer to God, when in truth they can never hope to know Him.
They use cloth to disguise their spiritual emptiness. So your attempt
to goad me means nothing, my beloved. It is shallow."
Her smile vanished, her eyes turned glass-sharp. "Don't call me
shallow, Voter. Don't ever call me that."
He let his mouth relax into a smile. He could afford to be indulgent;