desirous: переводы

→I paused mid-step, the hairs on the back of my neck rising on end. All summer, reports of strange
animal attacks had emerged from neighboring plantations. Usually, the animals were small, mostly
chickens or geese, but in the past few weeks someone—probably Robert, after four or five tumblers of
whiskey—had begun a rumor that the attacks were the work of demons. I didn’t believe that, but it was
one more reminder that the world wasn’t the same one I’d grown up in. Everything was changing,
whether I wanted it to or not.

→Robert shielded his eyes from the sun as he shook his head. “No, not the war. The animal attacks.
The folks over at Griffin’s lost five chickens. All with gashes in their necks.”

→I shook my head. “Haven’t been reading the papers. What’s General Groom doing now?” I asked,
even though conversation about the war always left me uneasy.

→“Heard the latest?” Robert asked, abandoning the horse to walk toward me. I groaned inwardly.

→“Yep,” I grunted. That was another problem: While I yearned for someone to talk with, when presented with a conversation partner, I was never content. What I desperately wanted was to meet someone who could understand me, who could discuss real things like books and life, not just the weather. Robert was nice enough and one of Father’s most trusted advisers, but he was so loud and brash that even a ten-minute conversation could leave me exhausted.

→“Gonna be a hot one!” our overseer, Robert, yelled from the edge of the barn, where he was watching two stable boys attempt to bridle one of the horses Father had purchased at auction last week.

→The worst part was that I had no one to talk to. Damon, my brother, was with General Groom’s army down in Atlanta, most of my boyhood friends were either about to be betrothed or on faraway battlefields themselves, and Father was constantly in his study.