The Importance of Being Married Read Online Free PDF Page A

of smile.
    “Actually, there is something else,” he said, clearing his throat. “There’s the matter of Mrs. Hampton’s will.”
    “Will? Oh, right.” I sat down again with an inward sigh. I knew all about wills. Grandma’s will had been read to me two days after she died. I hadn’t expected anything—I knew she’d sold the house to pay for her care at Sunnymead. What I hadn’t banked on was that wills worked both ways—that instead of inheriting money, I was inheriting all her debts.
    “Mrs. Milton,” Mr. Taylor said seriously, pulling out a folder and handing it to me. “You are the primary beneficiary of Grace’s will, and you’re going to be inheriting her estate. I can run through the details now, if you’d like, or if you’d like to come to my office one day next week, we can sort out the paperwork then and there.”
    I put the folder to one side. “Okay. I mean, I’ll look at this later, if that’s okay. When I’m…better able to…you know.”
    “You’re not interested in the contents of the estate?”
    I looked up. “Contents. Yes, of course. You mean her personal effects?” I sniffed, forcing myself to concentrate. She hadn’t had much in her room—a couple of pictures, a few books. Still, it would be nice to have something to remember her by.
    “Ah. Yes, well, I suppose that I do,” Mr. Taylor said uncertainly. “But it’s the house that forms the largest part of the legacy.”
    “The house?” I looked at him blankly.
    Mr. Taylor smiled at me as if I were a small child. “The house has been in her family for several generations. I know that she was very keen for it to come to you.” He handed me a photograph of a crumbling stone house. I say house, but really it was a huge mansion, surrounded by land. And suddenly I knew what it was; could see Grace as a young girl tearing along the corridors with her brothers, spilling out into the garden.
    “Sudbury Grange?” I gasped. “She left me Sudbury Grange?”
    “So you know the house? Well, that’s good,” the lawyer said, nodding. “In addition to the house there are some not insignificant investments, along with various paintings, jewelry, and so on. Obviously you’ll be wondering about death duties and I’m happy to tell you that Grace also provided for those, with a trust of one million pounds that should be ample to cover all your taxes.”
    My eyes widened, then I grinned. “Oh, you’re joking. For a moment there you had me. A million pounds for taxes. That’s good. That’s very good.”
    Mr. Taylor didn’t smile. Instead he cleared his throat awkwardly.
    “The liability is reduced because of various trust arrangements,” he said. “Without them, I’m afraid that the bill would be even higher.”
    “Higher?” I repeated stupidly. My skin felt prickly and I was getting rather warm.
    “Grace thought a great deal of you,” the lawyer said. He was smiling benevolently at me, like he was talking to a small child. “With no…no family of her own, I think she rather thought of you as…kin.”
    “Me, too,” I said. “But there has to be some mistake. She wouldn’t leave me her house. No way.”
    “Oh, but she did.” Mr. Taylor smiled. “You do know who Grace Hampton was, don’t you?”
    I looked at him impatiently. “Of course I knew who she was. I’ve been visiting her for nearly two years.”
    He looked relieved. “The estate, then,” he said, seriously, taking some papers out of his briefcase and passing me a photograph. “There is a husband-and-wife team who currently work full-time and live in one of the cottages. I understand that they’re happy to continue if you’d like them to. Then there’s a team of gardeners, a cook, and two cleaners who work on an ad hoc basis.”
    I was staring at the photograph. It was even more incredible in real life than Grace had described, with ivy growing up the walls and acres of land around it with secret gardens and outhouses and places to hide where no