A Curse Dark As Gold Quotes
"When my father died, I thought the world would come to an end."
"The entire village had crowded into our parlor—Father’s workers and all our neighbors—toasting the dead with ale from Drover’s and feasting him with food brought by the Friendly Society."
"I almost managed a smile. 'You Bakers think food is the answer to everything.'"
"My father's voice seemed to echo in the room: 'We don’t own this mill, girls; we are merely stewards here.'"
"Though we were whittled down to nothing, scoured and battered and stripped clean, we rallied together through the end of winter and the first uncertain days of spring."
"It was a cool, damp morning in early March, and I stood in the kitchen at the Millhouse, watching the first flocks of sheep toddle toward Stirwaters’s woolshed."
"Don’t be an idiot,' she said. 'You were born to do this.'"
"This house, always so quiet with Father here, was filled with too much noise, too many people, too much black…and too many unspoken questions I did not know how to answer."
"Rosie took over the millworks, a jumbled affair of ancient machines and spare parts cobbled together until Stirwaters resembled nothing in the known milling world."
"He never would hire a Penny, called the lot of them lazy drunk and unreliable."
"Gold Valley folk are stubbornly superstitious, happy to blame the least little oddity on the Fair Folk or the Old Ones."
"It’s not the biggest, but it’s our warmest, and it has a lovely view of the mill."
"Run businesses? My dear, what an odd notion."
"You must have no fear that what became of my sister and I will befall you—that you’ll be left to fend for yourselves in the wide world."
"The immediate crisis is we haven’t any money."
"It’s not just a matter of Rosie and me. There are other families depending on us as well."
"There hasn’t been a Townley girl as long as anyone can remember. Is that a curse, too?"
"Bad luck in spades, maybe, but there’s a difference."
"There’s practical, and there’s practical. Don’t let your pride get in the way of your seeing."
"You can’t mean to keep on in this fashion. The very idea of you girls working in that dangerous old mill…goodness, a boy was nearly killed there today!"
"You come from quality—at least on one side—and I will not have you wasting your lives in this rustic little backwater."
"Because you’ll think of something. You always do."
"A delicate constitution like yours needs rest after such a shock."
"No one else makes this color. It’s exclusive to Stirwaters."
"I don’t think this family is eligible for miracles."
"My rates are reasonable. I’m sure we can work out some bargain that’s agreeable to all of us."
"I agree, it's all a bit…curious. But what are we risking, really?"
"No more mortgage, no more Pinchfields," Rosie said.
"I wanted Stirwaters to produce things of such quality and beauty."
"Anything for Stirwaters," he'd said with a grin. "You folks are family now."
"Oh, it's all the same. Rosie—aren't you the faintest bit disturbed by this?"
"Hold on to that, Mistress. You don't know when you might need it."
"I’m not leaving a stranger alone in the mill all night. This is my responsibility."
"That’s steam, my dear girl. No clumsy waterwheels here—we use only the very latest equipment."
"This was Progress. Stirwaters wasn’t venerable, we were just old."
"I and all the Millers will be cold and dead before you get your filthy hands on Stirwaters."
"You stupid girl! Do you have any idea what that little display cost us?"
"Charlotte, please—listen to me. You can still go back in there, and—"
"The proposed terms are agreeable. We will hold the stock until the new year."
"Let's say I have a lot of respect for girls—young women—who have to step up and take care of their entire families."
"Oh, well," I said lightly, "you can’t believe everything you hear."
"Your sister is going to marry me," Randall said, his voice thick with emotion behind the grin.
"I’ve always wanted a brother. I can’t imagine one I’d like more than you."
"I want that house filled to bursting with fat, noisy Miller-Woodstone children."
"You look like you’ve swallowed a live fish," she said.
"I wasn’t likely to find a better prospect among the men in Shearing; in fact, I’d never dreamed of making so good a match."
"It was a nice face, one I could be happy looking into every day."
"Well, first we’ll stand before the vicar, and you will say, ‘I do,’ and then I will say, ‘I do,’ and then we’ll live happily ever after."
"The man in the shop told me garnets are good luck."
"You know we don’t have that kind of money!" I hadn’t meant to burst out like that.
"Yes, well—things are different now, aren’t they?" She was glaring at me, her jaw thrust out stubbornly.
"It’s always too big a risk," she said. "Father would have understood!"
"Dreams, Rosie—that’s all Father’s ideas ever were. That’s all this is."
"It’s a grand old park, or it will be, once I convince the woods to give it back."
"My father made plans like that." I said it without thinking, and Randall took it for a response to some comment I had not even heard.
"You’re running out of time, and we have the money, or we can get it. It just doesn’t make sense for you to be so resistant."
"Anger," she said, and the word rolled over me like low thunder. "Dark, fearful anger—jealousy, resentment, pain."
"First," she said. "You must know who set the curse. That story’s been trailing around Stirwaters a long, long time."
"Taking advantage of a day that was almost pleasant, we closed the sluice and emptied the spillway, draining the water from the wheelpit."
"For a frugal people, we certainly managed to lose our share of things."
"Toss a corn dolly into the Stowe every spring, and the capricious river will spare you and yourn."
"Seems to me we can go two ways: cast ‘em back into the wash, for there they were meant to stay—or toss ‘em onto the fire, for they done their job already."
"Better to prepare for the worst by having less to risk."
"Wool won’t burn, but it will scald, stink, shrink, warp, and run."
"I understood—I had done its bidding, its wish was granted: Stirwaters was saved."
"My world was like a glass tipped on its side, reason flowing out and…something else flowing in."
"A Mr. Ellison Wheeler is, but apparently your name was given as surety on all the loans."
"Take your lies and your debts and get out of my home."
"What’s this? Iron above the bed, herbs by the window?"
"I don’t see how hanging sharp objects above my sleeping child makes him safer."
"What else can I think? You won’t talk to me, you pull away when I touch you."
"Why didn’t I have sense enough to let them stay that way?"
"Gods, Charlotte! Why do you do that? You never talk to me like you used to—I thought…"
"I've tried to be what I thought you wanted—I don’t interfere at Stirwaters, I’m not home too much, I tried not to pry into that madhouse where you kept your uncle."
"You’re like the mill building, you know—this wall here. There’s no reason for it, but you’ve built it up anyway."
"There in the dim light, I had pieced together a grim impression of Stirwaters’s early days."
"WITCHCRAFT IN THE GOLD VALLEY," blazed the headline.
"I felt as if I’d plunged into the icy millpond myself."
"You have only two things I want," Spinner said. "I didn’t think it fair to take them both."
"But in the end she agreed it was unavoidable."
"The woods were very dark, even stripped bare for winter."
"I saw something else, then—the lights had gathered round an ancient beech tree."
"I found myself rising from my perch and scrabbling my way across the fallen limb toward the old beech."
"You’ll be thinking it didn’t look so bad, I’m sure. But trust me, my sweet niece, you have no idea what it really means to be poor."
"I wanted someone to explain what I had seen, to take my hand and say that it was just a trick of the moonlight, the workings of an overwrought imagination."
"I’ve been trying to tell you, Charlotte—I’m pretty handy to have around."
"Off ye go, then, Charlotte Miller. Put that curse to rest with the past."
"This is Charlotte Miller Woodstone," I said. "Let me enter."
"He’s a fine boy, like his da’. You go, lass—make some other bairns with that pretty city gentleman of yourn."
"I’ve seen what comes of an unwillingness to forgive, and I’ll not pass that legacy on to William. And nor will you."
"What will happen if I pour all this out?" I said. "Will you vanish? What would become of William then? He cannot go where you must go."
"Save your apologies!" he cried. "Keep your sympathy! We don’t need them. I have what I need!"
"Some deals can’t and shouldn’t be enforced, and those deals include ones made under duress and those that involve taking a mother’s child away from her."