دانلود رمان انگلیسی “بانوی لنگان”

Before the war, Virginia had believed weather was something that happened outside the body. Now, she knew it was a conspiracy that began within. The autumn damp of Lyon was not merely in the air; it was a fifth columnist that seeped into the leather of her harness, a traitor that whispered of rust and friction to the steel joints of her prosthetic leg. It bled from a bruised-grey sky, slicking the cobblestones until they gleamed like polished slate, turning the city’s grand façades into watercolour shadows. It was the perfect weather for a ghost, especially one who was haunted, most of all, by the mechanics of her own body, and the uneven rhythm of the lie her footsteps told with every single step. She walked with the measured, slightly-too-brisk pace of a woman with a purpose, a journalist late for an appointment. The identity was a comfortable coat she had worn for two months now: Marie Cointre of the New York Post, an American insulated by a passport from a nation still pretending the war was a distant European squabble. Marie was inquisitive, a little naïve, and utterly harmless. Virginia was none of those things. A dull, familiar ache pulsed from the point where her calf should have been. Cuthbert, her silent, uncomplaining companion, was chafing again. The damp had worked its way under her stocking, and with every step, she could feel the subtle, grating friction of the leather harness against her skin. It was a constant, low-grade conversation, a reminder of the woman she had been and the weapon she had become. Pain, she had learned, was an excellent anchor to the present moment. Ahead, where the Rue d’Algérie narrowed, she saw them. Two of them, their long black leather coats shining in the wet, their peaked caps pulled low. They stood half-sheltered in a doorway, their presence a knot of menace in the grey afternoon. Gestapo. They were not actively checking papers, merely observing, their eyes sweeping the thinning crowds with a bored, predatory arrogance. One of them lit a cigarette, the flare of the match a brief, violent orange in the gloom.