The unexpectedly feral-looking Luca O’Brien had been spotted twice at a distance on Bag hacks, although frustratingly it seemed not even Petra had managed to get an introduction yet.

‘He’s far too young for her,’ Gill scoffed.

‘What is a big, wild beard like Luca O’Brien’s called, Bridge?’ asked Mo.

‘A fecking mess?’

‘A yeard,’ Petra insisted excitedly, clearly entertaining another retro Joy of Sex moment. ‘I can’t believe I’m going into hiding just as the most exciting man arrives in this village,’ she groaned. ‘Charlie’s in a permanently foul mood now he’s back in chambers; I need a new crush to keep me company.’

Bridge guessed the Gunn marriage was uncocked again. On the surface, Petra’s festivities might have seemed an enviably M&S Christmas advert affair, but the Bags all knew one another’s home truths well enough to see that beneath all the tinsel and Tartan Stag sheets, Charlie and Petra Gunn wore emotional mittens and bobble hats. There was nothing lonelier than close confinement with a cold shoulder and the other cheek turned. It was no secret that Petra escaped into the plots of her racy bodice-rippers to compensate. She’d killed off the character inspired by Bay at the end of the last book.

‘I’m going to make the Horsemaker one of Prince Rupert’s cavaliers.’

‘How can you write it if you haven’t even met your new leading man?’ Gill pointed out.

‘I’ll use my imagination. It’s what I do for a living.’

‘Wait! Can you hear what I can hear?’ Mo gasped excitedly.

Hooves thundered in the distance.

‘It’s fate!’

They all stood in their stirrups and peered past the church yews and pollarded poplars and beyond the drystone wall at the far end of the lane where the church meadows swept up to the standing stones. There, two riders were silhouetted romantically on the brow of the hill, sexily slender and well-balanced.

‘That’s Monique Austen and her groom,’ Petra identified, the Bags all slumping back in their saddles disappointedly, suspecting that Bay’s dressage-loving wife – who rarely left the luxury of her arena – was out scouting for the new arrival too.

‘Let’s ride past the stud,’ Gill insisted, waving them into action. ‘Mohammed is going to the mountain. Trot on!’

‘Bagsy me ride up the mountain first!’ Petra was already in trot.

‘Then tie the mountain up and have your wicked way with him,’ muttered Bridge, wishing she’d applied some more Sudocrem to her beard-ravaged privates as Craic bounded in pursuit. At least scouting for the Horsemaker took her mind off her job interview.

*

‘It took eight messages to get you to ring me back, Pax!’ Alice complained.

‘Sorry, Lisp,’ she whispered, ‘you know the signal here. You could have tried the landline.’ Her sister loathed calling that in case she got their mother.

‘Where are you?’ Alice was demanding. ‘You sound like a spy.’

‘Up in the stables tower. There are bat droppings everywhere, plus a pair of binoculars and a notebook. I think Pip Edwards used it as her lair.’