He knew how she ticked. Tough, no-nonsense Ronnie, serial survivor, was struggling to close the lid on this one, no matter how explosive and impossible the match. They’d flirted through nearly four decades of friendship before becoming lovers. Blair’s obstinate, bloody-minded possessiveness held no surprises. And whether fifteen or fifty-something, her Percy pride hadn’t changed either – nothing short of tragedy would compel her to pick up the phone and call him. That old-fashioned purring landline. It had once rung non-stop: clients, villagers, friends, hunt members, salesmen, boyfriends. Silent more days than not, now. They didn’t even get ambulance chasers or PPI cold calls. And nobody had rung enquiring about putting a mare to a Percy stallion or buying a youngster in months.

She wiped condensation off one of the windowpanes with a finger, its glass a rain-stained sepia from lack of cleaning. These attic rooms offered the best view across two beautiful hidden Cotswolds valleys: the Comptons from the other side, Eynhope Park from this, once the stately seat of far grander Percy ancestors. The stud’s undulating, wood-fringed land in the foreground always lifted her spirits, even at its monochrome, muddy winter worst, and with hundreds of its acres long since sold off by her father. A lion’s mane of winter wheat now surrounded the remaining fields and paddocks, but the Percy pride still roared at its heart.

Convinced the stud’s revival would bring her family closer together, Ronnie refused to be daunted by the hard work needed to make it profitable by the trustees’ deadline. She just had to attract owners, generate stud fees and sell horses fast. Horse-trading was in her blood.

Behind her, Ronnie’s two small dogs were rooting round the skirting boards on the hunt for mice, sneezing at the dust. Tough, low-slung black and tans – mother and daughter Lancashire Heelers – their tails gyrated at a fresh scent.

‘Catch ’em, girls,’ she urged. ‘Got to make this place habitable.’ She glanced round the room, part of a long-neglected staff flat. Blast the housekeeper for going AWOL just when they needed her most, a handwritten note delivered last week to say she was fed up working for nothing.

Well, she couldn’t afford to buy Pip back when she had a new work rider to pay.

Hired before she’d changed her mind about staying on, Luca O’Brien was an added expense Ronnie knew she must justify. Having poached him from a big Canadian showjumping yard, she’d vetoed both daughters’ demands to withdraw the job offer at the last minute. No rider could make a horse look as good as Luca; added to which he wasn’t afraid to muck in and get his hands dirty, could manage a yard, and never stopped smiling. Lester had his teeth gritted too tightly in disapproval to muster much joy these days.

She watched the small, bowed figure in the distance, throwing open the gate to the winter turn-out then limping back to the broad-span barn to let out a stampede of yak-like woolly beasts, kicking and squealing as they charged into the field to shake off the straw, playfight and roll. Somewhere beneath all the matted hair and mud were some decent youngsters, she hoped. And whinnying furiously from his stallion box in the yard, trumpeting his superiority, her beautiful grey powerhouse would wow fellow breeders just as soon as she figured out how to defuse the bomb in his head.