"Chelsea Quinn Yarbro - The Spider Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yarbro Chelsea Quinn)

THE SPIDER GLASS
An Edwardian Story
By
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
==========

It’s only fitting, I think, that we end this volume with one of the series’ most favorite contributors.
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro was one of the first women to establish what should have been known by
editors and publishers all along—that women can write “this stuff” just as well as men. Sadly,
she and the other women in the field still have to prove it, it seems. That is, not to put too fine a
point on it, dumb. A writer is a writer is a writer, by God, and what the hell does sex have to do
with the price of apples ? Nevertheless, she perseveres. She grows. She gives us some of the best
writing the field has ever seen. And when Shadows finally, inevitably comes to an end, I can only
hope that it will end with something she has written.

==========

“THERE IS A curious tale behind this mirror, actually. I’m pleased you noticed it,” their host said to the
select and exclusively masculine company that had gathered in the Oak Parlor at Briarcopse after dinner.
He reached for the port and rather grandly offered it around. “Surely you’ll have some. It was laid down
the year I was born—splendid stuff. My father was quite the expert in these matters, I assure you.”

Five of his guests accepted with alacrity; the sixth declined with a polite, Continental bow, and the Earl
put the decanter back onto the silver tray set out on the gleaming mahogany table. “Don’t stand on
ceremony, any of you,” he said with a negligent wave of his long, thin hand. He then settled back in his
chair, a high-backed, scallop-topped relic of the reign of Queen Anne, and propped his heels on the
heavy Tudor settle before the fire. Slowly he lit his cigar, savoring the aroma and the anticipation of his
guests.

“For the lord Harry, Whittenfield…” the rotund gentleman with the brindled mutton-chop whiskers
protested, though his indignation was marred by an indulgent smirk.

Their host, Charles Whittenfield, ninth Earl of Copsehowe, blew out a cloud of fragrant, rum-scented
tobacco smoke and stared at the small, dull mirror in its frame of tooled Baroque silver. “It is a curious
tale,” he said again, as much to himself as any of the company. Then, recalling his guests, he directed his
gaze at his wiry, middle-aged cousin who was in the act of warming his brandy over one of the candles.
“Dominick, you remember my mother’s Aunt Serena, don’t you?”

“I remember all the women on that side of the family,” Dominick said promptly. “The most amazing
passel of females. My mother refuses to mention half of them—she feels they aren’t respectable. Well, of
course they’re not. Respectable Women are boring.”

“Yes, I’m always amazed by them. And why they all chose to marry such sticks-in-the-mud as they did,
I will never understand. Still, they make the family lively, which is more than I can say for the males—not
a privateer or adventurer among them. Nothing but solid, land-loving, rich, placid countrymen, with a yen
for wild girls.” He sighed. “Anyway, Dominick, Great-aunt Serena—”

Dominick nodded with vigorous distaste that concealed a curious pride. “Most misnamed female I ever
encountered. That whole side of the family, as Charles says—they marry the most unlikely women.
Serena came from Huguenot stock, back in the middle of the seventeenth century, I think.” He added this