Brides of Aberdar Read Free Page A

throne itself lent ear to soothsayers and astrologers, when ladies’ maids ran errands for witches’ potions, and waxen images were pierced through with pins to bring about disaster: when life and death were all too often black and secretly contrived… A dream?—of bright blood springing, of velvet dyed to crimson, of the silent drip, drip, drip of red upon the red bows on the red-heeled shoes: of Avenging Fury, crouched like a Pieta with the slender body lying across her knee: ‘A curse upon you! My anathema upon you and all your house, upon all your family down the ages for ever, till the end of time! Your daughter, treacherous bitch that she be, and her children and her children’s children—this death shall be upon them, my curse upon them, they shall never know happiness, never in love nor in marriage….’ And as the shuddering man again moved forward, she cradled the dead body close against her breast as though it might ward off further danger. ‘Never again! From the very fires of hell, I’ll reach out to you and keep this curse alive—in this branch of the Hilbourne family, never again shall there be…
    ‘Never again… Never again…’
    A servant came upon the two little girls huddled, crying, outside the closed door. ‘Oh, Tomos, Papa fell down! There’s somebody in the library, talking to him. But there wasn’t anybody in there….’
    Nor was there now; only the Squire, lying half insensible across the arm of the carved wooden chair, the fallen glass still dripping its red wine. ‘What? Tomos? Yes, yes, I am well enough. I have been asleep, I think. And dreaming…. Dreaming….’
    ‘A nightmare, sir? You look so pale, Sir Edward, your hands are so cold. The poor mistress taken from the house today—you are tired, sir, exhausted: no wonder you should fall asleep and dream bad dreams. But these, sir, you may forget. Dreams need mean nothing, sir; we may forget such dreams.’
    ‘I have forgotten,’ said the Squire. But he stared down suddenly at the spilt wine. ‘Is that blood?’ he said.

CHAPTER 2
    T ANTE LOUISE WAS A Belgian, from the south, a Walloon—who, however, had married a Frenchman and lived most of her life in France—hideously ugly, with a frog-face and rolling grey-green eyes, yet of so resolute a chic that no one had ever yet recognised her as even plain. Her hair was dyed to an impossible auburn and her coiffure and maquillage always just so much ahead of the times—for the propriety in such matters of ces Anglaises , she cared not a fig. Her lingerie was exquisite, her outer garments extravagantly smart. How it could have been contrived, why for that matter she should have gone to such trouble for so limited a world of appreciation, who could say?—but in all her years of exile on the quiet old Montgomeryshire estate, she relaxed not a fraction of her vigorous toilette . It was typical of Tante Louise that in time for the funeral, she should have achieved the very last word in black bombazine trimmed with the newly fashionable jet, and the tall bonnet with its high white plume. All arranged in advance, perhaps, for just such an event. That also would be typical. Tante Louise was not blessed with a sentimental heart.
    In the ensuing months, she left undone nothing that might restore health and vigour to the ailing house. It was not to immure herself in a tomb, she said, that she had left her appartement in Paris, si chic, si bien meublé ; and, unhampered by delicacy or doubt, she scrubbed and swept and polished away the memories of three hundred years, banishing the heavy, dusty carved wood furniture and the ancestral portraits with their long, thin noses and bunched red mouths, and ruthlessly painting over moulded plaster, scrubbing down panelled oak. Gay carpets were imported, light wall-papers, delicate furniture, all the chic of the elegant Paris of her past. When Sir Edward protested she replied crudely: ‘You wish then your daughters to follow in the way of your