“Have you done any riding, Maddie?” Bill asked, right out of the blue. She couldn’t lie about that.
“Some,” she told him. “Not for a while, though.”
“Well, then,” Cass said, placing an apple pie and jug of cream on the table. “You can start again while you’re here. We’re always looking for exercise riders.”
“As soon as we get a suitable horse in for you, we’ll get you on board,” Jake agreed. “At the moment, they’re all only half-broken, or too difficult for a novice.”
Novice! Something deep in Maddie’s chest curled in objection. “I’m not—” she began before biting her tongue, “that bad. Just rusty, I guess.”
“I started on Carlotta,” Cass said. “She’s the best. Unfortunately, she’s in foal right now, or you could have tried riding her.”
“In foal to Grand Design,” Jake added, excitement rising in his voice. “We’re going to have one very special foal, I reckon.”
“I know that stallion!” Maddie exclaimed without thinking. “Big bay...quite tricky to handle, but so talented...” She trailed off as she realized her mistake.
Jake frowned. “How do you know that?”
Cass hesitated. Here’s another chance to tell the truth, her conscience told her. “My dad,” she blurted.
Jake sat back, hands behind his head. “Ah, into racing, is he?”
“Kind of.” Maddie got up to start clearing the table, remembering the elation of riding the big bay stallion out on exercise, when he was one of the three she used to “do.” Tears pressed against her eyelids, and she blinked to try to clear them. She had lost so much more than just the riding. She had lost the companionship of her charges, too.
“You okay?” Cass whispered as they bundled pots into the dishwasher.
Maddie nodded. “Yes...thanks.”
“Well, you might want to go a bit easy on my crockery,” she suggested, and suddenly Maddie was smiling again.
“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
When the men had disappeared out into the yard again, Cass eased herself down onto a comfortable chair beside the stove. “My back aches a bit,” she groaned. “I’ll just sit for a second.”
“You need to rest,” Maddie said. “How long is it now?”
“Just a matter of weeks,” Cass told her dreamily, touching her stomach. “Look, she’s kicking.”
When Maddie hurried over, Cass grabbed her hand and placed it next to hers. “See?”
“And it’s definite...that it’s a girl, I mean?”
Cass nodded, puckering her brow. “To be honest, I didn’t really want to know, and neither did Jake, but...”
“But what?”
“Well...” Cass let out a big sigh. “Robbie’s twin sister was killed in a road accident, along with his grandma. It was before I even came here, but obviously it’s had a huge effect on Rob. We wanted him to know what to expect...no surprises.”
“And was he pleased to find out it was a girl?”
“He was—is—over the moon about having a sister again.”
“And do you have a name for her yet?”
Cass nodded. “We’re going to call her Gwen, after Jake’s mum.”
As the unborn baby’s frantic movement slowed, Maddie withdrew her hand. “That’s lovely,” she said. “Like a brand-new start.”
“A brand-new start,” Cass echoed, her eyes gently drooping.
Maddie moved quietly away, not wanting to disturb her. There was so much love in this house where once there must have been so much pain. Jake Munro had gotten past his heartache, and that was what she wanted to do. Learn to live with the past and forge a new future. Would hers hold a family one day? She couldn’t help but wonder. It might, she decided, but not for a long time yet. She had to straighten herself out before she could include anyone else in her life...and anyway, look what happened the last time she started to dream of a future...with Alex. No, it was definitely just her and her demons, for the next few years at least.
ROSS CLICKED OFF his phone with a heavy heart. So Maddie had been telling the truth after all; she had paid for the cottage. Seemingly the solicitors hadn’t informed the rental agency of Anne Maddox’s death, and they’d rented it out, not knowing... So now what?
He’d felt so positive, coming back here to Little Dale, more positive than he had been since Jenny died. In those early years after her death, dealing with the weight of his own guilt and his mother-in-law’s accusations, the only thing that had kept him going was Meg.
He should have noticed how ill Jenny was, he realized that now, and he would have if she’d shown physical symptoms, but depression was way beyond his experience. It had been foaling time on the stud where he worked, too, but that was no excuse for all the hours he spent there...hours he should have spent trying to help his young wife overcome her illness and deal with their baby girl.
Later—way too much later—he had read up on postpartum depression and finally begun to understand just how real and painful the condition could be. He continued to keep reading about it to this day, again and again, as if for the first time, asking himself why. That couldn’t bring Jenny back, though, couldn’t get rid of the guilt that haunted him.
She had taken her own life because he was too selfish to put her before his work. Her mother had known it; Anne Maddox had blackened his name in their community so convincingly that some people had shunned him in the street. That was when he’d decided to take Meg and leave, go back to his native Scotland. And to his surprise, Jenny’s mother hadn’t even kicked up a fuss when he’d told her he was taking her only granddaughter so very far away. It seemed as if there was nothing left inside her but hatred and blame, and she hated him so much she would rather lose Meg than have him around. She’d done the right thing by her granddaughter in the end though, by leaving her the cottage. He would always be grateful to her for that.
He and Meg had been relatively happy in Scotland, even though he’d known that they would need to settle down somewhere eventually. He’d found plenty of part-time work on farms and studs, even working in forestry for a while. He and Meg had traveled wherever he was needed, though never so far away that he couldn’t get Meg to Tinytots in Kelso.
He’d tried a few different nurseries, but Tinytots, run by a warmhearted, middle-aged woman named Clare, was the only one that he really trusted with his daughter. When she wasn’t there, he looked after her himself, waking with her in the night, caring for her when she was ill or teething, playing with her and introducing her to the countryside he loved...wanting her to love it, too. He’d had no social life of any kind for years, to such an extent that some people nicknamed him the Recluse, but he didn’t care. He didn’t
