‘I like doing the accounts and with no disrespect intended I know far better than you what the stables are making. Blaze’s new foal is a little beauty. He’ll fetch a fine price when he’s a bit older, but then you wouldn’t really expect anything else with his pedigree.’ Storm, the horse that Tom had fallen from, was the foal’s father and had turned into an excellent stud. People from miles around brought their mares to be covered by him. It was ironic, when Sunday came to think of it. Following Tom’s fatal accident, George and Ben had been all for shooting the horse, but it had been Sunday who had pointed out that the accident hadn’t really been the animal’s fault. He had just been young and wild, and Tom should have known that he wasn’t tame enough to be saddle-trained. So, he had been allowed to live and was now earning them a large portion of their income.

‘The thing is, if you take over doing the accounts again, I shall have to tell you every time we have a customer,’ Ben pointed out. ‘It’s so much easier if I just do it myself, and all the bills have always been paid on time, haven’t they? I give Cissie the housekeeping money every Friday morning as regular as clockwork, so what’s the problem?’

Feeling somewhat patronised, Sunday shook her head. She had truly felt it was time for her to become more involved in the business again but then she was also aware that Ben, as he had quite rightly pointed out, had done a good job of keeping things going and she didn’t want to offend him. ‘There isn’t a problem,’ she admitted. ‘I just thought … But anyway, if you’re quite sure you’re happy to continue as we are?’

‘I am,’ he said abruptly and, turning about, he stalked from the room.

Sunday frowned. Well, I made a right mess of that, she thought glumly. When she and Tom had first received the letter, quite some time after their marriage, informing them that Ben was Tom’s illegitimate son from another relationship, it had caused a rift in their marriage for a while and Sunday had felt a little jealous of the child. But not for long. Whatever Tom had done was not Ben’s fault and by the time she tearfully waved him off to war, she had thought their relationship was back where it always had been, and for her part, she still loved him as much as she always had. But when he returned, traumatised by what he had seen and the scars he had sustained, she had felt a rift between them once again. He had grown even colder towards her since the death of his wife and father. And the discovery that Tom had left the house to her had only seemed to deepen the problem.