He wished Ronnie would stop behaving like a thigh-slapping principal boy.

‘Let’s march on.’ She launched her way back down the hill, hurrying him. ‘Pax will think we’ve done a runner.’

As he strode in her wake, hands plunged deep in his pockets, Luca was willing to forgive her all the jolly hockey sticks chivvying, accentuated here in her family home. Compared with Pax’s company, she was sunshine after a storm. And she was right to be worried about her daughter. He was worried about her daughter, her shadow across the fairy tale, Maleficent in her cottage.

He needed his cavalry. Ronnie’s next tour stop was what he’d been waiting for.

‘Come and meet the Compton Magna herd,’ she said, holding open a gate. ‘You must tell me exactly what you think.’

Growing up the middle of five brothers had taught Luca that sparing his words got him further and kept the peace. While a personality like Ronnie’s made everyone that she met feel like the only one in the room, Luca always observed a group as a whole. He was exactly the same around horses; quiet and watchful, aware of the dynamics between the personalities as much as the individuals. It’s what made him so good at studwork and breaking in, at conquering so-called ‘untrainable’ horses.

He said nothing as she led him down to look at the in-foal mares out in the fields.

The visiting mares that were being looked after until they foaled were uninspiring types – a few cobs and stringy ex-racers, and a warmblood showjumper common enough to pull a gun carriage. The home-owned mares were much higher spec, but they were no spring chickens – the four top foundation mares, all heavy with foals, had a combined age of seventy-six.

In his last years at the helm, Jocelyn Percy had retained too many youngstock and hadn’t brought in new lines. Where the Percy family had once bred a much-admired mixture of thoroughbreds with enough blood to race and chase, the stud’s progeny was now more utilitarian; working hunters and entry-level eventers. The best youngstock had already been snapped up by Blair Robertson, it seemed; few of those remaining stood out – one buckskin colt was exceptional, and there were some nice full-blood three-year-old National Hunt stores – but the rest were mediocre.

‘That dun colt will win Badminton one day.’ Ronnie was ever-positive as she marched him onwards, blonde fringe swinging.

Luca doubted the Compton Magna Stud would survive long enough to see it; it was unlikely to make it through another eighteen months, patently on its knees financially, brought there by a long era of Ronnie’s die-hard father selling off assets just to keep it running, with no thought to modernisation or improving the bloodline. Frozen in time like a museum, it was understaffed and poorly managed. Whilst it had possibly the best and most undervalued stallion in Europe charging around in its lowest paddock – his shouts ringing around the valley like a singing bell – it had none of the equipment required to stand him.