‘Doesn’t she?’

He didn’t want to talk about Pax, muttering vaguely, ‘She’s enough on her plate.’

‘She never has enough on her plate! She hardly bloody eats.’ The good-humoured despair in her tone masked deeper feelings, regret so close to the surface, it was impossible to hold her gaze without feeling sucked in. ‘She used to love the stud, the land, the horses. Daddy had her lined up to be his successor. Entirely my fault it didn’t happen. I let her down so badly.’

‘When you left?’

‘When I came back.’ She sighed. ‘Do you think we should sell it, Luca?’

Beneath him, Beck was balling up, back shorter and tighter, ready to spring. Pax’s words rang in his ears again: You have absolutely no idea about our family!

He shook his head, tossing the question away with a smile. ‘Forget I asked.’

‘At my age, that’s entirely probable.’ She dangled one of her flirtatious, age-gap hooks, sharing the smile.

‘Sure, age means nothing; it’s how grown-up you are that counts.’

‘Oh, I do like that. Now I want no more mention of selling anything but horses. We must sell horses, Luca.’

Relieved, he suggested instead that he start educating the thoroughbred three-year-olds, eager to get going on those bred at the stud with the class to make her money fast. ‘They look plenty ready.’ The comforting simplicity of breaking young horses was a much-needed one.

With a dismissive wave of the hand, Ronnie explained that she’d entered them all in the Doncaster sales later that month. ‘They’re Oak Hill’s last crop, so Lester thinks we’ll get a decent price, even at this time of year, and it’s fewer for you to break in.’

‘Cancel the entries. I’ll make you more money from them.’

‘It’s a quick turnaround – and cashflow is a little tight.’

‘Why d’you ask me here, Ron, if it’s not to do what I’m best at?’

‘We have some nice youngsters earmarked for you to start.’

Luca said nothing, although his body stiffened imperceptibly with displeasure, and the stallion snatched at the bit and shied at a shadow.

‘I just wish we could get Pax back in the saddle,’ Ronnie was lamenting. ‘I can just see her towing little Kes round the lanes on a lead rein, can’t you? Wouldn’t that be heaven?’

Luca was thinking the opposite, when a switch tripped beneath him.

He felt Beck spring-load long before he heard anything. He seemed to grow six inches, the crabbing trot exaggerating to passage, his whinnying bellow feeling like sitting on the main amp in the O2 Arena during a rock guitar solo.

Then they heard the hoofbeats.

Moments later, three women came flying along the track on horseback as though riding a racing finish, one on a hairy grey pony, its white eyes bulging, another kicking along a huge bay as she tried to head off the first. Not far behind them, the third woman on a chestnut was shouting at them both to pull up.