The Heiress Read Online Free PDF Page B

seen. Louise need have no fear. He had hardly been in the house before he was counting the days till he returned to Versailles.
    â€˜What dress will you wear, Madame? I’ve put out three for you, but you left no instructions this morning and I didn’t know …’ Anne had two maids to look after her. She often felt that one was quite sufficient, but the de Bernard ladies always had two women of the chamber, and when they were married they had three.
    She went into the dressing closet and pulled out the dresses one by one. There was a yellow silk trimmed round the sleeves with gold lace, a crimson velvet with cuffs and hem lined in Imperial sables, and a peacock-blue, the petticoat covered in silver embroidery. After a moment Anne pointed to the blue dress. ‘I will wear that; bring out my jewel-boxes.’
    She had said nothing about meeting her cousin; she allowed the maids to undress her and bathe her, but when they tried to talk about the visit and her fiancé she told them to be quiet. The laws of obedience to the mistress were very strictly enforced at Charantaise; nobody dared to say a word. After she was laced into the blue dress and sitting before her dressing mirror, while one of the maids dressed her hair, Anne opened the jewel-boxes one after another, taking out this piece and that and rejecting it. Her mother had been passionately fond of jewels; many of the lovely rings and ornaments were given to her by her lovers. Her husband was a stern and solid man, devoted to his estates and his sports and accustomed to the vagaries of his frivolous wife which he ignored. Anne had inherited the splendid family jewels of the de Bernards and the sentimental trophies of her imprudent mother. It was a set of these which suited the brilliant colour of her dress. They were pale sapphire, surrounded by large diamonds and exquisitely set in a necklace and a brooch. It was the custom to change four times a day, when she went walking or driving out, hunting, receiving visitors in the afternoon and again when she dined at night—even alone.
    The only difference was in her choice that night; the blue gown was very formal; her reflection in the mirror dazzled with diamonds and the flash of silver embroidery. She would have given anything in the world to have met her cousin Charles for the first time looking as she did at that moment.
    â€˜My fan,’ she said. The maid put a pale blue one in her hand. ‘Ring for my uncle to escort me.’
    â€˜Immediately, Madame.’
    When the old Comte de Bernard came into her boudoir he opened his eyes wide and made her a low bow.
    â€˜My dear Anne! Why, you look simply brilliant, simply dazzling!’
    â€˜Uncle, before I go down I want to tell you something. I don’t like my cousin and I’m not going to marry him.’
    The Comte was genuinely fond of his niece. It was his ambition to see her suitably married before he died and the future of Charantaise secured by several children. He could think of no more sensible match than between the two cousins. He had hardly seen the young man himself, but he was handsome enough to please any woman and, in the Comte’s estimation, his reputation was not a disadvantage. The old roue would never have wished an inexperienced prig upon his niece. Equally, his greatest anxiety had been the advent of some smooth-mannered fortune hunter; but Charles Macdonald had excellent prospects and the Scots were notoriously independent. Anne and her great possessions would be safer with him than with any of the degenerate scoundrels he had seen loafing around Versailles.
    â€˜How do you know, my darling child, when you haven’t even seen him?’
    â€˜I have,’ she retorted. ‘I met him in the gallery. I had been out hunting, as you know, and my dress was dirty … he said he knew me immediately because I was covered in mud as usual! Well, he can’t say that now. You really think I look