‘He was talking about the Wolf Moon Lap. Do you remember it? Probably before your time.’

‘I remember it,’ Pax muttered. She turned to watch Beck again, edging along the hedge and calling to the Shetland, who ignored him, only his bottom now visible, poking from the hazel as he laid into it searching for old cobnuts.

‘It was one of my grandfather’s traditions, long abandoned,’ Ronnie told Luca. ‘Major Frank Percy was a great believer in setting personal challenges. It quite terrorised my poor father growing up, although he became an extremely good pundit because Frank would give him one shilling to gamble in the flat season and one over jumps and no pocket money in between.’

‘Sounds quite a character.’

‘They both were. They did so love their racing. Which reminds me, I’m out this evening, meeting up with an old friend after Newbury races. You two will be fine if I’m not back until tomorrow, won’t you? Probably dying to get rid of me.’ She winked.

‘Sure we will,’ he said smoothly.

What friend? Pax wanted to ask but held it in check because her mother would only offer a vague ‘you don’t know them’ and they both disliked lying. The conceit they constructed around Blair was laughable, and yet somehow necessary.

The Blair affair made Pax uncomfortable, aware she was complicit and her siblings disapproved as much as Lester did, but there was no denying the mood at the stud had lifted. Ronnie was recharged, the inner glow so bright she was like a moving brazier, irresistibly warming. Awkwardly, it had also put Ronnie in Cupid overdrive. As subtle as Mrs Bennet, she’d spent all week making her excuses to ‘leave you two to get on with it’ the moment Pax and Luca were within ten metres’ radius of one another, Kes or no Kes. Luca tolerated it far more genially that Pax who had to bite her tongue hard, as now, to maintain her customary cool.

‘There’ll be lots of opportunities coming up for you gorgeous creatures to have the run of the place without me getting in the way,’ she announced, running through a series of upcoming nights away that undoubtedly coincided with Blair’s work diary. ‘I’ll be absent quite a few weekends when Kes is with his father, so I’m relying on you to make sure Pax doesn’t mope, Luca.’

‘I’m too busy working to mope.’ Pax found Luca catching her eye, holding it.

‘On which, I’m not going to argue about the cost again, Pax; I’m getting in that girl, Carly whatnot at weekends. I’ve already called her to say so. You and Luca both deserve a Sunday lie-in.’

Pax let the doubling-up of the lie-ins pass, aware of Luca’s steel toe laying into a cobble. Tired arms joggling Kes as her mother started briefing them on all the things they must make sure to do tonight while she was gone, Pax guessed Luca must be troubled by Blair. He obviously had a pretty big thing about Ronnie. But his reaction was typically to smile it all quietly away.