A Web of Dreams (The Corvill Family Saga Book 1) by Tessa Barclay

Author:Tessa Barclay [Barclay, Tessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: family saga, Scotland, Queen Victoria, historical fiction, Balmoral, British royal family, love and marriage
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2018-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

After the first shock of regret and the excitement of the funeral, the chief interest in Galashiels was in the will. Corvill and Son was a chief employer in the town, and likely to have expanded considerably under the management of Miss Corvill. But now …?

The terms of the will became known. A hundred pounds and his theological books to the United Secessionist Church. A hundred pounds to the Huguenot Church of Edinburgh. Five thousand pounds and a one-third share each in the house, Gatesmuir, to his wife and daughter. Thus having ensured they always had a roof over their head and an income if worst came to worst, he left everything else to his son, Edward Corvill.

‘It’s a damned shame,’ Ronald Armstrong remarked to friends, over a glass of ale in the saloon of the Abbotsford Inn. ‘She made the firm what it is. It should have been left to her.’

‘Aye, but you canna expect a man to leave a business to a lassie,’ came the objection from Hanson, the lawyer’s clerk. ‘It isn’t fitting.’

‘Fitting! Do you see any of the men and women the mill employs, refusing to work for her because it isn’t fitting?’

Heads wagged or nodded. ‘What d’you think’ll happen now, Ronald?’

‘He’ll sell up. He’s no interest in it. I’m told he was a weaver once himself but he prefers to forget that now, among his high-toned friends. Him and that little Dresden china wife of his … If he’d the slightest mind to go on with the mill, his wife’d put a stop to it.’

Here he was wrong, for since her father-in-law’s death, Lucy Corvill had learnt a lot. The interest aroused by the funeral had startled her. Everyone who was anyone had come to it ‒ all the members of the town council and the Manufacturers’ Corporation, all the local landowners, elders of all the churches besides the Secessionist, every other cloth-maker in the Scottish Borders, to say nothing of the workforce, which came in its entirety as a mark of respect.

Letters of condolence began to come in from all over the world ‒ from wool merchants and selling agents in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Spain: from cloth warehousemen in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, New York, New Orleans, Sidney and Wellington. From fashion houses, from famous shops, from young William Morris the poet, from Scottish writers. Most impressive of all, there were letters from members of the nobility and, on the stiff unmistakeable paper of Buckingham Palace, a note in the very hand of the Prince Consort himself.

This had borne in upon Lucy something she’d never believed ‒ that the Corvills were people of consequence. Their rather simple way of life, the gentle pursuits of country living, had misled her to think that they were of no importance. The mill, which had always been something that made her rather ashamed, now became a thing of value.

So when her husband muttered that it would be as well to be rid of it as soon as possible, to his astonishment Lucy demurred.

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