Read Online A Taste for Nightshade by Martine Bailey - Free Book Online Page B

The two men grimaced as they supped. Well, I could not brew a miracle from stale alewort, which was all Father would pay for. But soon curiosity drew me back to the kitchen door.
    â€˜What her grandmother were thinking, to settle it on our Grace, the Lord only knows,’ Father grumbled. ‘I should have taken that will to law, I should. The old woman must have been crazed to leave it to her and not me, her own son-in-law. As for the terms of her damned will, what’s the use of land you cannot sell? She be laughing from her grave, I reckon.’
    â€˜Aye, she be that.’ Mr Croxon’s wry amusement was lost on my father.
    I recollected that a letter, bearing a beautiful black seal, had arrived some days earlier; but my father had hidden it from me. So here was news – my grandmother was dead. She and my father had been at loggerheads all my life, forcing an estrangement from my mother and me.
    â€˜The tight-fisted bitch must have been crack-headed.’
    â€˜Maybe, maybe not.’ Mr Croxon paused, collecting his thoughts. ‘I could barely make sense of your jabbering last night. So what do the terms say precisely?’
    â€˜It’s Grace’s land to keep. I cannot even build on it. I could have got a thousand pound—’
    I held my breath. The truth was, I knew nothing of the details of my mysterious prospects. Though sneering hints of it had haunted my youth, until that day I had only the haziest notion of what it comprised. I listened hard and understood it was a thousand acres beside a river in Whitelow, in Yorkshire’s West Riding. It had been my grandmother’s from when she was widowed, since which time she had only collected rents from the farmers who lived on it and loosed their cattle on its pastures.
    â€˜Aye, but what can Grace do with it? Can she build on it?’
    â€˜Grace can. But I’m forbid from being a partner. It’s a pig in a poke.’
    â€˜So who can Grace be partner to?’
    â€˜I cannot partner her. Nor any person “of my association”,’ Father said in a mocking, gentrified tone. ‘Tully, her pettifogging lawyer, threatened me. Said if I tried to fangle it he’d find me out soon enough. Damn his lawyer’s tongue!’
    â€˜Grace’s husband, perhaps?’
    â€˜Well, you can’t marry her. Your missus wouldn’t let you.’
    â€˜Not me, you daft lummocks. But I’ve got sons – a son. Michael. My elder lad.’
    As I listened, the room seemed to move like water around me. A son? A Croxon son? I racked my brain to recall him. He did not frequent the High Street where I shopped, nor drink with my father at the Bush tavern. Michael Croxon. I had a slight recollection of a well-looking, fashionable man, riding an elegant hunter on the lane that led to the Croxon’s new villa. My impressions were favourable; but that in itself filled me with misgivings. As I sat in my threadbare gown with a bruise throbbing at my hairline, Michael Croxon seemed an altogether different manner of person from me. Yet he is a chance, I thought. A chance to escape from Father.
    â€˜Eh, but what about me? Who’ll look after me?’ At the sound of Father’s voice my fingernails dug painfully into my palms. I knew it – he was going to destroy my chance of freedom. Scarcely knowing what I did, I walked into the parlour.
    â€˜Mr Croxon,’ I nodded, praying he would not send me away. ‘Father,’ I added, quailing to see his livid face. ‘I believe I should be present.’
    â€˜Yes – yes, Grace.’ Mr Croxon was quicker-witted than my father. ‘This concerns you very much. Come, sit with us.’
    As I sat, my legs were as weak as a lamb’s. Mr Croxon continued speaking, and I tried to follow, but some of it was legal talk, too complex for me. However, the import was quite comprehensible. The Croxon family wished to found a business. The elder son,