скачать книгу бесплатно
‘A Church wedding?’ Sapphire’s head came up, her forehead creased in a frown. Somehow she had expected the ceremony to be conducted in the more mundane surroundings of a registry office.
‘It seemed less public,’ Blake told her carelessly. ‘Have you told your boyfriend yet?’
Sapphire shook her head. ‘No, but he’s coming up for his car, I’ll tell him then, it isn’t the sort of news I could break over the ‘phone.’
‘He’s going to get quite a shock.’
Why should she think she heard satisfaction beneath the cool words? ‘It’s only for a few months, once I’ve explained the situation to him …’
‘He’ll wait for you?’ Blake supplied sardonically, ‘Get your coat on and I’ll take you back to Flaws, I’ve got to be up early in the morning. We’ve got to get the sheep down off the high pastures, the weather’s about to change.’
They didn’t speak again until Blake stopped his car outside the back door to Flaws Farm. For a moment as she unfastened her seat belt Sapphire panicked. What if he should try to kiss her again?
But apart from opening her door for her Blake didn’t attempt to touch her. He walked with her across the cobbled yard, both of them stopping by the door.
‘I won’t see you tomorrow,’ he told her, ‘but I’ll be round the morning after. Our appointment with the Vicar is for eleven o’clock, so I’ll pick you up at ten.’ Giving her a brief nod he turned away and walked back to the car. He had reversed out of the yard before Sapphire had managed to pull herself together sufficiently to open the back door.
What was the matter with her, she chided herself as she prepared for bed. Surely she hadn’t wanted him to kiss her? Of course she hadn’t. So why this curiously flat feeling; this niggly ache in her body that was all too dangerously familiar? Stop it, she cautioned herself as she slid into the cold bed. Stop thinking about him.
IT WAS EASIER said than done, especially with twenty-four empty hours stretching ahead of her with nothing to fill them other than doubts about the wisdom of marrying Blake for a second time, no matter how altruistic the reasons.
She helped Mary with her chores, and spent the afternoon outdoors, but although she kept her hands busy she couldn’t occupy her mind. Her father noticed her tension when she went to sit with him.
‘Worrying about tomorrow?’ he asked sympathetically, closing the book he had been reading. ‘Blake is a fine man Sapphire,’ he told her gently, ‘I’ve always thought so. In fact in many ways I blame myself for the break-up of your marriage.’
When she started to protest he lifted his hand. ‘I wanted you to marry Blake, even though he thought you were too young. He wanted to wait, but …’
‘But you dangled the bait of this farm,’ Sapphire interrupted briefly, ‘and he couldn’t resist it.’ She bit her lip as she realised how cold and unloverlike her voice sounded. Deliberately trying to soften it, she added, ‘But that’s all over now, we’re making a completely fresh start. We’re both older and wiser.’
She couldn’t bear to look at her father. His fragility still had the power to shock her, but even so her mind refused to accept that soon he would be gone from her.
Downstairs she found Mary busily baking. ‘Blake just rang to confirm that he’ll pick you up at ten tomorrow,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Having a day out?’
Her curiosity was only natural and Sapphire forced a smile. ‘Yes … In fact you might as well know Mary, that Blake and I are going to give our marriage another try.’ She couldn’t look at the other woman. ‘I suppose it took something like my father’s … illness to show us both how we really felt.’ That at least was true, even if Mary was hardly likely to interpret her words correctly. The other woman’s face softened.
‘Yes I know what you mean,’ she agreed. ‘So you’ll be moving to Sefton House.’
‘Yes.’ Sapphire swallowed nervously. So far she hadn’t let herself think about the intimacy of living in such close proximity to Blake. No matter how non-sexual their relationship was going to be; the thought made her stomach tense and knot in anxious apprehension. What was she frightened of for goodness sake? Not Blake. She already knew that he felt absolutely no desire for her, but last night he had talked about taking her home with him and making her truly his wife. Sapphire shivered. Those had been words; nothing more; words designed to keep her tense and apprehensive; and in her place. No, she had nothing to fear from Blake. Or from herself? Of course not. She had suffered the agony of loving him once, it was hardly likely to happen again.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE AND BLAKE were husband and wife again; Sapphire could hardly believe it. She glanced down at the gold band encircling her finger. It was the same ring that Blake had given her once before. She had been stunned when she saw it. Somehow she had never imagined Blake keeping it, never mind giving it back to her.
‘It saved the bother of buying a new one,’ he told her sardonically correctly following her chain of thought. He glanced at his watch flicking back his cuff in a manner that was achingly familiar. It shocked her that her mind should have stored and retained so many minute details about him. ‘We’d better get back. I take it you don’t want to go out and celebrate our reunion?’
‘Can you think of any reason why I should?’ Her voice was as cool as his, her eyes locking with the gold blaze that glittered over her too pale face. ‘I’ve married you for one reason and one reason only Blake—my father’s peace of mind, and just as soon as …’ she gulped back the stinging tears that suddenly formed, ‘… just as soon as that reason no longer exists our marriage will be over.’
The silence that filled the car on the way back to the valley was not a comfortable one. Sapphire sat back in her seat, her head on the headrest, her face turned dismissively towards the window, and yet despite her determination to ignore Blake, she was acutely aware of him. Every time she closed her eyes she saw his face; pictured the lean strength of his hands on the steering wheel. For a moment, unnervingly she even pictured those hands against her skin, touching; stroking … Stop it, she warned herself. Dear God what was happening to her? Blake no longer possessed the power to affect her in that way. She was completely over him and the childish infatuation she had once had for him.
‘We’ll drive to Flaws Farm and pick up your things first.’ His cool voice broke into her thoughts. ‘I’ve got the vet coming out this afternoon to look at the mare, so we won’t linger.’
‘The fact that we’re married doesn’t mean we have to do everything together,’ Sapphire pointed out tartly, not liking the way he was taking control. ‘I can easily drive myself over to Flaws. In fact,’ she turned in her seat to look determinedly at Blake, ‘in view of my father’s illness and the fact that no-one knows that we’ve been divorced, I think it would be quite acceptable for me to remain at Flaws …’
‘Maybe it would,’ Blake agreed sardonically, ‘if your daughterly devotion wasn’t a bit late in coming, and I was prepared to agree. Oh no, Sapphire,’ he told her softly, ‘I want you where I can keep an eye on you. You’re not running out on me twice. Besides,’ he added, ‘if you don’t come back to Sefton House with me, your father’s going to get suspicious.’
His last words were undeniably true. Biting down hard on her lip to prevent her vexation from showing Sapphire turned back to stare out of her window, relieved when she saw the familiar turnoff for Flaws Valley. This tension between herself and Blake wasn’t something she remembered from the past. Of course, she had always been aware of him; but surely never like this, with a nerve-rasping intensity that made her muscles ache from the strain she was imposing on them.
‘You’re back early.’ Mary greeted them without any surprise, but of course as far as she was concerned she and Blake had merely had a morning out together. ‘Are you staying for lunch?’ Her question was addressed to Blake, but his arm tethered Sapphire to his side when she would have slipped out of the room. ‘We haven’t got time, I’ve got the vet coming this afternoon.’ He released Sapphire to smile down at her, his eyes so warm and golden that his glance was like basking in the heat of the sun. ‘I’ll go up and see your father while you pack.’
He was gone before Sapphire could speak, leaving her to face Mary’s raised eyebrows and expectant expression. Sapphire couldn’t face her. ‘I … I’m going back with Blake,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I … we ….’
‘Your father will be pleased,’ Mary assured her coming to her rescue. ‘Look,’ she added, ‘why don’t I make some coffee and then come upstairs and give you a hand with your packing. Not that you brought a lot with you.’
Sensing the speculation behind her words Sapphire said shakily. ‘N … I had no idea then that Blake …’
‘Still loved you?’
The words surprised her into a tense stillness, but mercifully Mary was too busily engaged in making the coffee to notice her startled response. It had been on the tip of her tongue to blurt out that Blake had never loved her, but fortunately she had caught the words back just in time.
It was over an hour before they were finally able to leave. Her father had been so pleased by their news. Sighing Sapphire tried to settle herself in the car, telling herself that her sacrifice must surely have been made worthwhile by her father’s pleasure.
‘I’m going to have to leave you to find your own way about,’ Blake told her tensely when he stopped the car in his own farmyard. ‘I want to have a word with the shepherd before the vet arrives. You’ll have to make yourself up a bed I’m afraid—unless of course you prefer to share mine.’ The last words were accompanied by a cynical smile.
‘Hardly,’ Sapphire told him crisply, ‘I’m no masochist, Blake; nor am I a naive seventeen-year-old any longer.’
‘No,’ he agreed bitterly, and for a moment Sapphire wondered at the deeply intense timbre of his voice and the drawn expression tensing his face, before dismissing her impressions as false ones and berating herself for allowing her imagination to work overtime. Blake had no reason to feel bitter—unlike her.
As she let herself into the kitchen she was struck by the fact that despite, or perhaps because of its gleaming appearance the room seemed oddly sterile; not like a home at all. The mellow wooden cabinets which should have imparted a warm glow, looked too much like a glossy, cold advertisement; there were no warm, baking smells to tantalise or tempt. Blake’s aunt had made her own bread, she remembered with unexpected nostalgia, and she remembered this kitchen best filled with its warmly fragrant scent. Of course if the smell of freshly baked bread was all it took to bring the place alive, she was more than capable of supplying that herself. Her culinary efforts so much despised by Blake’s aunt had improved rapidly in the security of her own small home. Alan often asked her to cook for important clients and among their circle of friends she had quite a reputation as a first-rate hostess. Alan approved of her domestic talents; Alan! Her body tensed. What was he going to say when he heard about all this? She could well lose him. Why was she not more concerned at the prospect; after all she had been planning to marry him? Pushing aside the thought she opened the kitchen door and stepped into the square parquet-floored hall.
On the plate rack encircling the hall were the plates she remembered from the early days of her marriage, the smooth cream walls otherwise clean and bare. The parquet floor glistened in the bright March sunshine, but the table was empty of its customary bowl of flowers and she found she missed their bright splash of colour. Whatever her other faults Blake’s aunt had been a first rate housewife, and she had obviously learned something from her Sapphire thought wryly, noticing the thin film of dust beginning to form on the hall table. The rich reds and blues of the traditional stair carpet carried her eye upwards. The house had six bedrooms and two bathrooms; a more than adequate supply for two people. Did Blake still occupy the master bedroom? It had been redecorated especially for them before their marriage she remembered, in soft peaches and blues that Blake had told her he had chosen with her eyes in mind. Her mouth curled into a sardonic smile. And to think she had been fool enough to believe him. The door handle turned easily under her fingers, but she stood still once it was opened. Everything was just as she remembered it; everything was clean and neat, but the room gave the impression of being unused.
‘Re-living old memories?’ Blake’s voice was harshly discordant making her whirl round in shock.
She said the first thing that came into her mind. ‘It doesn’t look used.’
‘It isn’t.’ His voice was still harsh, his eyes fiercely golden as they all but pinned her where she stood. ‘Let’s face it,’ he added cynically, ‘the memories it holds aren’t precisely those I want to take to bed with me every night. I sleep in my old room, but you can have this one if you wish.’
His old room. Unwillingly her eyes were drawn along the corridor to the room she knew he meant. She had only been in it once. She had come with a message from her father and finding the kitchen empty and hearing Blake’s voice had hurried upstairs. He had emerged from his room just as she reached it, a towel wrapped round lean hips, his body still damp from his shower. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him, she remembered sardonically; and neither had she been able to speak. Blake had drawn her inside the room closing the door. ‘What is it little girl,’ he had asked tauntingly, ‘haven’t you ever seen a man before?’ She had turned to flee but he had caught her, kissing her with what she had interpreted as fierce passion but which in reality could only have been play-acting …
‘Sapphire, are you all right?’ His voice dragged her back to the present.
‘Fine,’ she told him in a clipped voice. ‘I might as well use this room. The woman who comes up from the village, when …’
‘Three days a week, if you feel you need her more then arrange it. Don’t worry,’ he added sardonically, watching her, ‘I don’t expect you to soil your ladylike hands with housework, or cooking.’ If anything his mouth curled even more cynically. ‘I have too much respect for my stomach for that. I came up to tell you that I’ve brought your cases in. Once the vet’s been, I’ve got to go out and check one of the fences, some of the sheep were found on the road …’
He disappeared, leaving Sapphire standing by the open door, her face still scarlet from his insults about her cooking. So he thought she was still the same useless, timid child he had first married, did he? Well, she would show him.
Returning upstairs, Sapphire quickly changed into her jeans and an old tee-shirt. A thorough inspection of the kitchen cupboards revealed the fact that they were surprisingly well stocked and within an hour of Blake’s exit she had a large bowl of dough rising in the warmth of the upstairs airing cupboard—a trick she had learned in her London flat which lacked the large warming compartment of the old-fashioned stove at home.
She heard the vet arrive while she was making the pastry for Beef Wellington, but continued with her self-imposed task. Blake would soon discover that she was not the timid child she had once been, and she wouldn’t have been human, she told herself, if she didn’t take pleasure from imagining his surprise at the discovery.
She had half-expected Blake to bring the vet in for a cup of tea after he had inspected that mare—it was a cold day, and she was sure the older man would have welcomed a warming drink, but instead when they emerged from the barn Blake walked with him to his Range Rover. The two men stood talking for a few minutes and then the vet climbed into his vehicle and Blake turned back towards the stable, disappearing inside.
Sapphire had just put her loaves in the oven when the ‘phone rang. Wiping her floury hands on a towel she picked up the receiver, recognising Miranda’s slightly shrill voice the moment she heard it.
‘Is Blake there?’ the other woman demanded imperiously. ‘I want to speak to him—urgently.’
‘He’s in the barn at the moment,’ Sapphire responded coolly, suppressing the urge to slam the receiver down. ‘If you’d like to hold on for a moment I’ll go and get him.’
The interior of the barn, so dark after the bright sunlit afternoon was temporarily blinding. Sapphire was peripherally aware of the familiar barn sounds; the mare shuffling restlessly in her stall, the scent of hay, the rustling sound it made. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom she stepped forward calling Blake’s name.
‘Up here,’ he called back, making her start tensely and peer upwards into the dimness of the upper hayloft.
‘There’s a ‘phone call for you,’ Sapphire told him curtly, not wanting to think she had come looking for him on her own account. ‘Miranda.’
‘I’ll have to ring her back.’ Blake was frowning as he turned back into the interior of the loft, and although she knew she was being foolish Sapphire couldn’t quite control the sudden leap of her senses as she caught a glimpse of the tawny skin of his chest where his shirt had come unfastened. Enough, she berated herself, as she walked blindly towards the door. ‘You don’t even like the man—you loathe him, so how can you possibly … feel desire for him?’ Somehow the words insinuated themselves into her mind and wouldn’t go away, making her face up to the truth. Blake still had the power to disturb her; still held a sexual appeal for her, which although it had nothing to do with love, or indeed any genuine worthwhile emotion, did, nonetheless, hold a dangerously potent allure.
Deep in thought Sapphire recoiled with pain as she cannoned into one of the posts supporting the upper floor, the intensity of the unexpected pain almost robbing her of breath as she stumbled backwards.
She was aware of sounds behind her, of Blake’s peremptory command and then the firm strength of his arm supporting her against his body as she slowly crumpled.
‘Sapphire, are you all right?’
His voice was a roughly urgent mutter somewhere above her left ear; the heat of his body against her back drowning out her earlier pain and replacing it with a dangerous languor that reinforced every one of her earlier thoughts.
‘Sapphire?’
This time the urgency in Blake’s voice compelled her to make some response. ‘I’m fine,’ she told him shakily, ‘it was just the shock … It took my breath away.’
‘I know the feeling.’ She could feel the reverberations of his words rumbling in his chest, but the dry tone in which they were uttered made her lift her head and turn round the better to study his face.
‘Can’t you feel what having you in my arms does to me?’ he murmured rawly. ‘I’d almost forgotten it was possible to feel like this.’
Sapphire didn’t need to ask ‘to feel like what?’ Her own treacherous body was already reacting shamelessly to Blake’s proximity. You fool, she protested inwardly, he doesn’t care anymore about you than he did before; it’s just another act, another scene of the charade he insists we play. He doesn’t want you.
But Blake’s body was telling her otherwise. More experienced now than she had been at seventeen, she could clearly read the tell-tale signs; in the dim light of the barn his eyes glittered dark gold, searching her face as he cupped her jaw with one hand and turned her round to face him. There was a tension in his body that was betrayed by the fine tremor of his muscles and the harsh control he exercised over his breathing.
The knowledge that she had aroused him was infinitely exciting; dangerously intoxicating, so much so that she was drunk on it. There could be no other explanation for the suicidal desire she suddenly experienced to trace the deep vee of Blake’s open shirt with the tip of one finger, nor for giving into it.
Apart from one deep inhaled breath Blake kept absolutely still. His skin felt warm and surprisingly vulnerable, the difference in texture between his skin and the crispness of his dark chest hair deeply erotic. She had never touched him like this in the past; had never dared to initiate any intimacy between them. A pulse thudded at the base of his throat, his fingers tensing into her waist as he looked down at her.
‘Sapphire!’
Her name seemed to well up from the very depths of his soul, spilling into the silence of the barn as a tormented groan. Her shocked senses barely had time to register it before the hard fingers cupping her jaw were tilting her face up and his mouth was consuming hers, burning it with a kiss of such fierce intensity that her senses took fire from it, liquid heat running moltenly through her veins, making her melt into him with a feverish need to meld with him and become part of him.
When his tongue stroked her lips, coaxing them apart Sapphire surrendered willingly, an ache that was partly desire and partly pain flowering to life inside her. Never once had he kissed her like this before; like a man who had hungered desperately for the feel of her mouth beneath his; who burned with a totally male desire to conquer and possess.
His free hand stroked down her body, finding the soft curve of her breast his thumb finding the newly burgeoning peak and caressing it with a feverish intensity that was echoed in the taut tension of his body.
Everything in her that was feminine yielded beneath the force of such a rawly masculine need and as though his body sensed the responsiveness of hers, Blake slid his hand beneath her tee-shirt, searching for and finding the aroused swell of her breast.
Which of them made the small murmur of satisfaction Sapphire didn’t know, all she did know was that by the time Blake’s mouth left hers, to investigate the creamy curve of her throat, she was totally acquiescent; mutely encouraging the exploration of warm male lips and slightly calloused male hands.
‘Sapphire if you don’t stop me now, I’m going to end up making love to you where we stand.’
Blake groaned the words into her skin, using his superior strength to urge her against the hard arousal of his body, muttering thick words of pleasure as his hands slid down to her hips, moulding her against him, but his words had penetrated through the dizzying heat of desire welling up inside her and Sapphire pulled away. He released her almost immediately, the desire she had seen so recently in his face draining away to be replaced by sardonic comprehension.
‘You forgot who I was, is that it?’ he taunted, watching the emotions chase one another across her mobile face. ‘You forgot that I wasn’t your precious boyfriend, is that what you’re going to tell me? Well I’ll save you the trouble,’ he told her. ‘That was me you responded to Sapphire, me who set you on fire; me who you wanted to make love to.’
‘Oh yes you did,’ he insisted when she tried to speak. ‘You wanted me Sapphire, whether you’re honest to admit it or not.’
‘Whatever there once was between us is gone,’ Sapphire protested, bitterly aware that he was right; she had wanted him and with an intensity that, now that she had herself under control again, shocked her.
‘But you can’t deny that you responded to me,’ Blake pressed softly, watching her, making her feel trapped and tormented.
‘I can’t deny that I responded to your masculinity,’ Sapphire agreed in a face-saving bid … ‘I’m a woman now Blake, with all the desires and needs that that implies.’ Heavens was this really her saying this? Inwardly she was trembling, praying that he wouldn’t see through her pitiful attempt to deny the effect he had on her.
‘Meaning that you would have responded to any man in the same way?’ Blake asked her sardonically. ‘I don’t think so, Sapphire. In fact, judging by your response to me, there must be something lacking in your boyfriend’s lovemaking. You responded to me as though you were starving for …’
‘Stop it,’ Sapphire interrupted his cruel speech. ‘I won’t listen to this, Blake.’ She hurried to the barn door, wanting only to escape from him and the turbulence of her own emotions, completely forgetting the original purpose of her journey to the barn, until she got back to the kitchen and found the receiver still on the table. There was no-one at the other end and so she replaced it, busying herself in the kitchen, trying to find some balm to her disordered senses in the warm scent of baking bread that filled the room, but instead only able to remember the rough sensuality of Blake’s mouth on hers; the urgent caress of his hands on her body; the unashamed arousal of his as he kissed and caressed her, but no, she mustn’t think of these things. She must concentrate instead of remembering why she was here; how Blake had trapped her.
She was busily clearing away the remnants of pastry from the table when Blake walked in, checking on the threshold, frowning slightly as the warmly rich scent of her baking filled his nostrils. She ought to have been pleased by the startled expression on his face, but instead all she could think of was the way his mouth had felt against her own, and it took an almost physical effort to draw her gaze away from the slightly moist fullness of his lower lip.
‘Bread?’ he quizzed her, obviously surprised.
‘Alan liked me to bake it for him,’ Sapphire responded, knowing that she was deliberately invoking Alan’s name as though it were a charm which had the ability to destroy Blake’s powerful pull on her senses. Blake’s face hardened immediately, as he strode across the kitchen and picked up the ‘phone. Watching him punch in a series of numbers, so quickly that he must know them by heart, Sapphire was pierced by a feeling of desolation so acute that it terrified her. She mustn’t become emotionally involved with Blake again. She had travelled that road once and knew all too well where it led; she wasn’t going to travel it again.
Her desolation turned to sick pain as she heard him say Miranda’s name. The other woman must have said something because Blake laughed, a deeply sensual sound that stirred up the tiny hairs on the back of Sapphire’s nape, making her spine tingle.
‘No, she must have forgotten to give me the message,’ Sapphire heard him say, his eyes hard, his gaze unwavering splintering her with pain as she turned to face him. ‘Umm … well how about dinner tonight? Yes I’ll pick you up.’
Sapphire turned away, Blake was taking Miranda out to dinner? She glanced at the ‘fridge where the pastry and fillet steak she had prepared for their evening meal lay, and her mouth compressed in a bitter line. Hadn’t she already learned her lesson?
By the time Blake had replaced the receiver she had decided what she would do. Let Blake take his … mistress out to dinner if he wished, but she wasn’t going to sit at home, moping, waiting for him. She would go over to Flaws and spend the evening with Mary and her father.
It wasn’t until she heard the door close behind Blake that she realised that she had been holding her breath. Her lungs ached with the strain she was imposing on them, her body so tense that her muscles were almost locked.
Why on earth had she allowed Blake to kiss and touch her as he had? And why had she responded to him so … so ardently. She didn’t love him any longer; but she still desired him; part of her still felt the old attraction; that must be the explanation. Like an amputee suffering pain from a limb that no longer existed she was still experiencing the pangs of her youthful love for Blake even though that love had long ago died.
SAPPHIRE WAS IN HER ROOM when Blake went out; she had gone there, deliberately avoiding him, and only emerged once she had heard his car engine die away.
Despite the fact that the heating was on the house felt slightly chilly—a sure sign that the threat of bad weather hadn’t gone. In the living room a basket of logs stood on the hearth of the open fire, and Sapphire glanced longingly at them, acknowledging that it was pointless lighting a fire just for herself, especially when she didn’t intend staying in. Why, when she knew where Blake had gone; when she knew how he had manipulated her, did her imagination insist on filling her mind with pictures of Blake as she had always wanted him to be rather than as he was; of herself at his side; their children upstairs asleep while they sat side by side by the warm glow of the fire; happy and content. Suppressing a sigh Sapphire walked into the kitchen, still redolent with the fragrance of her newly baked bread. On the table one of her loaves stood on the breadboard surrounded by crumbs. Blake had obviously cut himself a slice, and probably given himself indigestion she thought wryly, touching the still warm loaf.
Knowing that if she remained alone any longer in the house she would only brood, Sapphire picked up her jacket and headed for the Land Rover. Spending the evening with her father would stop her thinking about the past; about useless might-have-beens, she decided firmly, as she swung herself up into the utilitarian vehicle. She was just about to start the motor when a sound from the barn stopped her. Tensing she listened, wondering if she was imagining things, and then she heard it again; the shrill, unmistakable whinny of a horse in pain.
Blake’s mare! But he had told her that the vet had said she probably wouldn’t start to foal for at least twenty-four hours. Frowning Sapphire glanced towards the barn door, her conscience prodding her to get out of the Land Rover and go and investigate. She wasn’t a stranger to animal birth; and as she hurried into the barn, snapping on the light, her experienced eye quickly took in the mare’s distressed state and knew that the vet had been wrong. By the looks of her the mare was already in labour.
Despite her long years in London old habits reasserted themselves. Soothing the mare as best she could, Sapphire left her to race back to the house. To her relief the vet’s wife answered the ‘phone almost immediately. Quickly Sapphire explained the position.
