A Divided Inheritance Read Online Free Page A

age?
    She spent some time with the other horses, the matched greys for the carriage and Toby, her neighbour’s old bay. Jakes flopped down in the straw whilst she fed Toby handfuls of oats. She
liked the tickling feeling of Toby feeding from her upturned palm, and she rubbed his greying muzzle affectionately as he snaffled up the oats with his velvet mouth.
    It was turning twilight as she came back across the yard, but she caught the glint of something fly, and heard a small grunting sound. It was Cousin Zachary, wielding his rapier, practising his
cut and thrust. He was bare-armed and the rapier pierced the air in a series of darts and strikes. His curling hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, his face grim.
    She pulled on the collar to draw Jakes closer. Jakes let out little barks now, straining at the leash, anxious to join in with the game going on in the yard. Her cousin ignored her and lunged
towards his imaginary opponent with renewed venom, his feet skidding and scraping in the dirt. His breath exploded in short exhalations as he leapt to throw his bodyweight behind the sword.
    ‘Heel, boy, heel!’ she hissed under her breath, dragging Jakes away, keeping under the overhang of the house. Anxious to get in where it was warm, she thrust the dog in through the
door ahead of her with a slap on the behind, but then paused.
    Someone else was watching her cousin’s practice, over in the kitchen window. It was Father. So taken up with Zachary was he, that he did not once glance her way. Even Jakes did not scamper
over to greet him as he usually did. Father stood like a simpleton in the lamp-light of the kitchen, a look of beaming pride on his face.

Chapter 2

    The next morning when Elspet went downstairs there were two empty plates already on the table. One was Father’s – he always placed his knife like that, across the
plate. The other had a scatter of crumbs about it and the remains of a half-eaten rind of cheese. There were great gouges in the butter, unlike Father’s thin scraping.
    She called Martha. ‘Where is Father?’
    ‘He went out early, mistress. With Master Deane. They’ve gone to Mr Bainbridge’s.’
    ‘Master Deane? Oh, you mean my cousin. Did he say when he would be back?’
    ‘No, mistress.’
    She sat down at the table. Usually Father would show her the mail and news from the city, and she would tell him about the household business, and anecdotes about the dogs. Of course Father
never really listened properly; he always had half an eye on the broadsheet. But, with no company, the knife rattled loudly on her plate and she could not face eating at the long table alone.
    It wasn’t fair. Father had never once invited her to go with him to Mr Bainbridge’s, though she had heard him talk of him – that Mr Bainbridge was of the Roman Church like
themselves, and held a secret morning Mass in his house whenever their priest, Fr Everard, was able to be there.
    She picked up the broadsheet and untied the ribband, but let it lie on the table. She had no heart for reading, for she was picturing her father and Cousin Zachary at Mass together. Bainbridge
had a fine statue of the Virgin and a high table bedecked with Leviston’s lace to serve as an altar. The lace had been hand-picked by her father; the best from his stock. Father’s lace
business was famous, but despite his generosity to Bainbridge, their own altar had to make do with no lace at all.
    ‘Bainbridge risks his own neck, like us, for the sake of his soul,’ Father used to say. ‘It is the least I can do.’
    But he had never invited her to Bainbridge’s, even though, ever since Guido Fawkes and his fire-powder plot, it had become more dangerous for them to hide their travelling Jesuit priest,
Fr Everard, and so Bainbridge sometimes hid him in his own house. She sighed. It was a shame, for she liked Fr Everard. He was a good tutor, and he would surely have shared the broadsheet with her;
his enthusiasm for culture and