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

Hall to convalesce. She always had mixed feelings about staying
here—she loved the house and grounds, disliked her aunt—but this
time she had welcomed the chance. It meant she would miss Karl
von Wultendorf's visit to Cambridge, as if the longer she delayed
meeting him, the more likely he was simply to disappear.
She knew her anxiety was irrational, but it had grown into
something beyond her control—while the delusions of a high
temperature, which had protected her, had also seemed intimately
connected to the fear. There was a dark web on her that she could
not shake off.

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A Taste


What's wrong with me? she thought, alone in a bedroom that was
very different from her room at home; twice the size, all blue and
gold with a four-poster bed and brocaded hangings. Why, when I
have so much, do I feel so empty?
Convalescence had given her too much time to think. She leaned on
the windowsill and stared out, too listless to move although she had
been there for two hours. A late summer haze shimmered over the
trees, drifting like silver gauze over a distant lake, blurring the
horizon into the sky. The landscape looked as she felt; blurred,
torpid, dull.
One thing she loved above all about Parkland Hall was the garden.
Her window overlooked a broad lawn, edged by a stone balustrade
on which roses and wisteria twined, shaded by a vast plane tree. On
the far side, exactly one hundred steps swept down through a belt of
silver birch, laburnum, conifers and rhododendrons to another lawn,
an Italianate layout with formal flowerbeds and a fountain at its
centre. Beyond that was a steep drop into semi-wild woodland. To
either side, hidden from her view, were other formal layouts, water
gardens, mazes; and then the wild gardens that she loved the best.
They were shadowy and mysterious, set with statues and follies that
had been gathering lichen and ivy since the eighteenth century.
As a child, her moments of true happiness had been spent exploring
the grounds alone. They still were, if she were honest. It was like
stepping into another time. She could forget everything there, even
herself.
Charlotte felt like a fugitive fleeing from some unseen beast. Yet
however fast she ran it was always gaining on her with soft, slow

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A Taste


footsteps. And the beast was real life.
A marquee was being erected on a side lawn to the right of the
house. From here she could just see the white walls flapping in and