Lonely Girl by Josephine Cox Page B

respects.
    A moment later, she was on her way, stealing a backward glance at the gullible man who was laying his future on the line for her.
    Molly’s dark eyes glittered with a smile as she walked away, while reassuring herself: no one gets the better of Molly Tanner. She had always been able to wind men around her little finger. It gave her great pleasure to think that her weak-minded lover was at this very moment painstakingly wiping away any possible fingerprints of hers from the murder weapon.
    Gleefully contemplating her own future, she felt a certain grudging gratitude to the good man who had been her devoted husband.
    From boy to man, John had seen with his own eyes how hard and long his own father had toiled to improve what had been left to him by
his
dear father. With hard work, long hours and total dedication over these many years, John had built up what his father had inherited as a run-down farm and created a splendid and most valuable holding.
    The once rough land was now highly productive. Covering some four hundred acres, most of it had been brought back from wilderness and was now such prime land that any commercial farmer would snap at the chance to own it.
    Over the years a procession of determined neighbours had offered handsome money for the land and property, but always they were disappointed. John Tanner felt duty-bound to honour his father’s wishes that the land and everything on it should be the inheritance of the next generation.
    He made it known that he would never sell up, not at any price, even if the money offered meant that he would never have to work another day in his life, and eventually, all would-be buyers got the message.
    Tanner’s Farm had been handed down through many generations of Tanners, but only young John had had the bigger vision to make it into one of the most valuable and productive holdings in the region.
    Through years of dedication and with little help, he had struggled hard to achieve his goal. He brought the rough, non-productive areas into pasture; he nurtured and culled the woodland to create sturdy new growth; and he used the felled trees to improve the layout and size of the farmhouse and buildings. He cleared the wider land of many years’ wild growth.
    He had dug out a channel and directed the precious natural spring with which his land was blessed into a cascade that flowed into the newly renovated lake, so fixing the irrigation of the pastures and the wide fields of corn that in summer made giant waves in the sunshine whenever gentle winds blew across the land.
    John Tanner had considered that beautiful lake to be one of his greatest achievements. And, more importantly, he had regarded it as a fitting memorial to his beloved parents.
    As with his father, the land and everything on it had been dearly loved by John, but his greatest love had been for the horses. He’d bred foals from his own peerless mares, and also brought in new young stock and nurtured them to maturity.
    His young horses were tirelessly trained and he’d proudly rode or displayed them at the many shows and equestrian events hereabouts, where they won cups and ribbons of the highest recognition. John Tanner’s reputation as a knowledgeable breeder and trainer of horses was second to none in the county.
    When it was time for them to be sold on, he would deal only with buyers who wanted the animals for working the fields, for personal riding, or to breed from with the best bloodstock.
    He would never sell to anyone who sought to obtain the horses for immediate resale into dangerous work, or for random and continuous breeding until a once-fine mare was worn down, eventually to be discarded.
    John was also extra careful, after it had been made known to him, to avoid certain quarters in which young horses were dying in fear and agony when untrained men were castrating them rather than paying out for registered and responsible vets.
    Anyone who had experience of horses and farming recognised John