Pokrewne

Start
Cabot, Meg Heather Wells 03 Mord au Chocolat
Cabot, Meg Heather Wells 02 Schwer verliebt
Cullman Heather Uroczy hulaka
Drugi podejrzany Lewis Heather
Bellairs John Johnny Dixon i zaklecie czaszki
Dissensus On Politics and Aesth Jacques Ranciere
Anne Rainey [Man Ma
Carolyn Hart [Death on Demand Yankee Doodle Dead (v5.0) (epub
[heft] Perry Rhodan 1242 Tsunamis im Einsatz
[heft] Perry Rhodan 2411 Schwinge von Raffat

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The girls! Azalea had left them there, alone in the nook.Had they tried to follow after her? Were they all right? And what—Azalea closed her eyes against the icy morning—what about Mother’s baby? She had been selfish.Take care—The odd, tingling feeling, only an echo of what it had been the night before, washed through her, to her fingers and throat.Inexplicably, almost magically, it filled a bit of the hollowness inside her.Clutching the silver handkerchief, Azalea stumbled to her feet.An hour later, still frozen from the wood and streaked with mud, Azalea found the girls in the palace nursery.The nursery was a small, cramped room on the second floor, swathed with lacy white furniture and masses of frills.A nursemaid left as Azalea arrived at the pitiful scene: girls sitting on the floor, among the rocking chairs and the broken dollhouse.They each clutched an orange to their chest with both hands.They were crying.They looked as miserable as she felt.“You’re f-f-frozen,” said Clover, who was fourteen.Instantly she was at Azalea’s side, pressing her own warm hands over Azalea’s stiff ones.Red rimmed her eyes, and her golden hair was tangled and mussed.Like all the girls, she still wore her clothes from yesterday.“I’m so sorry,” said Azalea.“I shouldn’t have left you all.”Bramble snapped to attention.She leaped to her feet and threw her orange at Azalea.It hit Azalea’s shoulder and bounced to the floor.“You shouldn’t have!” she said.She snatched Flora’s orange from her hands and threw it.Azalea didn’t move, and it hit her on the side of the head and bounced onto the frilly rug.“How dare you desert us like that!” Bramble threw Goldenrod’s orange, and it hit Azalea on the shoulder again.Bramble began to cry anew.“At least try to dodge them!” she said.In two strides Azalea was at Bramble’s side, pulling her to her shoulder.Bramble sobbed.The girls flocked to Azalea, the younger ones clutching her skirts, all of them a wrinkled mess.“You’re all wet,” said Bramble, between hiccups.“I know,” said Azalea.Her hair dripped.“L-Lea,” said Clover.She always had difficulty speaking, as though every word took her entire effort.She pushed a smile.“We…have something…to show—show you.L-look.”A frilly bassinet stood in the middle of the room, and Clover pulled Azalea to it.A tiny bundle of lacy blanket and dark curls lay inside.The baby was the tiniest Azalea had ever seen—and she had seen quite a few, now the eldest of twelve.It could fit inside her cupped hands.And a girl, too, judging by the tiny, frilly bonnet.Azalea pulled off her soggy, wet gloves and touched the baby’s curled fingers.“That would be L, then,” said Azalea.All her sisters had been named alphabetically, as the King liked everything very much in order.He was particular that way.He even had the jam jars in the pantry indexed.“Mother n-named her,” said Clover.“It’s Lily.”“Lily,” Azalea breathed.Graceful, delicate.The baby reminded her of the white garden lilies that bloomed through the snow.Mother always knew what was just right.“M-Minister said that Mother…h-held Lily,” said Clover.“Before she—”Clover didn’t finish, because she began to weep anew.Everyone began crying again, sobbing and wet hiccupping.Azalea felt lost, as though she had leaped into the air, a jeté, and kept falling and falling, her stomach turning and waiting to hit the ground that wasn’t there.She pulled the handkerchief from her sleeve, and the silver flashed.Promise me…The tingling prickled to her fingers.Azalea took a deep breath and moved her feet into fourth position, then traced her toe behind her and dipped into a kneel.Dancing always steadied her.She wiped Jessamine’s and Kale’s tiny faces, which were streaked and wet.She cleaned their noses, too.“Do you know,” she said, moving to Ivy, “what we haven’t done?”Ivy shook her blond curls.“We haven’t introduced ourselves to Lily.” Azalea pushed a smile.“It’s her first day here, and all we’ve done is cry at her.It won’t do.”Bramble grimaced.“Oh, really, Az—”“Come along,” said Azalea.She stood and held out her hands.“Join hands, trace the left foot back into a curtsy position number two.”No one moved.Azalea didn’t give up.The girls looked a mix of surprised, shocked, and disgusted as she dipped into a fifth-position curtsy, lowering to her right knee and pointing her left foot in front of her, so it peeked out from her muddy hem.When she straightened, their expressions had softened.“Your dip was unsteady,” said Bramble.“When you switched the balance to your other foot [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]