“Who is this coach? Do I know him?”

“No one knows him very well. He’s kind of unapproachable.” Dino smiled confidingly. “Actually, I fancy one of his female jockeys. I figured if I was living there with permanent access, I might stand a better chance.”

Fen slumped in her chair, utterly deflated. She looked down at the tiny lamb cutlets that had just arrived and removed the blackened sprig of rosemary that lay across them. She was utterly heartbroken over Billy, but no girl likes an attractive reboundee whipped from under her nose before she’s even had a moment to try and rebound onto him. It would have been useful to have Dino in England if anyone asked her to bring a man to a party or to some official dinner. Moodily she poured too much salt onto the side of her plate, watching it turn green in the mint sauce.

“No, I don’t want any more to drink,” she said sulkily. “I’ve got a class at nine tomorrow.”

Dino took no notice and filled up her glass.

“Did you meet this girl on the circuit?” she asked.

“Last year at the World Championship.”

Fen glanced up suddenly and was amazed to see he was laughing.

“Jesus, you’re thick, Maxwell. You may win trophies at shows, but you’ve got the perception of a blindworm.”

“I don’t understand,” stammered Fen.

Dino took her hand again, turning it over, gently tracing the heart line with his thumb.

“I saw Jake this afternoon. He figures you’ve done a fantastic job, but it might help to have another guy around the barn to jump some of the horses. In return, he’s going to help me with Manny when he comes out of the hospital.”

Fen suddenly felt near to tears again. “So he thinks I can’t cope?”

“On the contrary, he thinks you’re too good to waste. He wants a gold for you, too. He’s only helping me because he knows there’s no way I can beat you.”

Fen sat on Jake’s hospital bed a fortnight later. “It is absolutely infuriating,” she grumbled, “but the entire household: Tory, the children, the grooms, the horses, even Wolf, are madly in love with Dino Ferranti. It’s a good thing you’re coming home next week to restore normality before they all defect to America with him.”

She got up and wandered restlessly around the room, looking at the inside of the hundreds of get-well cards, eating grapes, trying not to be upset by Jake’s hisses of pain as, with contorted, sweating face and gritted teeth, he battled on, endlessly bending and stretching to strengthen the muscles of both broken and wasted legs. She couldn’t help noticing how fragile and lacking in muscle they looked and wondered if he would ever ride again, let alone make the big time.

“The physiotherapist warned you not to overdo it,” she said reprovingly.

“Physiotherapists aren’t interested in medals,” said Jake, pushing his drenched fringe out of his eyes.

“Tory’s planning a surprise Thanksgiving dinner for Dino, so he won’t feel homesick,” Fen went on. “Sarah is actually putting on makeup first thing in the morning for the first time in history. Any minute Desdemona will start curling her pink eyelashes. I can’t think why he has to be so bloody charming all the time. Goodness, you’ve got a card from the Princess! You are a star. Are you looking forward to coming home next week?”

“Of course,” panted Jake, leaning back for a second against the bedhead.

“We’re all longing to have you,” said Fen.

Neither statement was strictly true. Jake, having dreamed of nothing but getting out of hospital for five months, was now thrown into a blind panic at the thought of facing the outside world. Learning to walk again was really taking it out of him — crashing over all the time, dragging himself up again, black with despair that neither of his legs would ever be strong enough to support him, and terror whether he’d ever have the guts to get on a horse again.

Night after night, he dreamed of tumbling poles and colossal horses crashing from great heights onto his legs, splintering them to spillikins, and woke up sobbing and screaming, until the night nurse arrived to calm him down. After his early animosity, he felt an almost slavish gratitude to the nurses and the Matron, who had all taken such a personal pride in getting him right. When they weren’t too busy on the wards, particularly at night, they would spend hours talking to him and he found himself unbending as he never did at home or with the other riders. There was one blond nurse for whom he had a special fondness: Sister Wutherspoon, who brought him fresh eggs from the country and always popped in to show herself off, radiant and scented, before she went out on dates. Jake suppressed a faint suspicion that she might return his interest. Desirable nurses were not attracted to bad-tempered cripples like himself.

Finally, he didn’t feel up to facing the whole slog of running the yard, driving miles to shows, raking the country for new horses. He longed for the children but didn’t know if he could cope with the decibel level of their shrill demands, or with the doglike devotion of good, shiny-faced Tory, heaving her eleven-stone bulk round the Mill House, as she waited on everyone.

All he wanted to do was to spend two months soaking up the sun on some Hawaiian beach, with Sister Wutherspoon in a grass skirt ministering to his every need. Grass skirts would be no good in Warwickshire; Macaulay would eat them. He was glad Dino was going to be there to shoulder some of the responsibility.

Fen, on the other hand, was in a muddle. Having run the yard virtually single-handed for five months, she was close to collapse, but she had been buoyed up by her hopes of Billy coming sweet, and by the feeling that she was being indispensable and splendid. Now Dino had moved in and taken over at least half of the reins. Everyone seemed happier and she couldn’t help being jealous. She felt she’d been demoted from head girl to the upper fourth and when Jake came home, she’d be back in the kindergarten.

She was irritated by the way everyone deferred to Dino. She couldn’t fault him as a worker. Despite the very late hours he kept, he got up at six like everyone else and spent at least seven or eight hours in the saddle, working not only his own horses but all of Jake’s novices. He had strange ideas about feeding his horses, arriving with a trunk full of vitamins and additives, but he was out of bed in a flash if there was any trouble with a sick horse in the night.

And, despite his languid, playboy image, he was amazingly domesticated. Fen nearly fainted one evening when she came home from an interview in Birmingham with ATV, to find him ironing his shirts.

“What are you doing?” she asked in amazement, “Tory can do those.”

“Why the hell should she? She’s exhausted.”

Fen watched the expert way he slid the iron along the folds of the blue silk sleeve into the cuff. “Where d’you learn to do that?”

“At college. All the money went on the horses. I couldn’t afford to send shirts to the laundry. I hate crumpled shirts, so I figured I better learn to iron.”

“You’ll make a wonderful wife someday,” said Fen.

At that moment Darklis appeared in a pink nightgown, looking disapproving.

“ ’Lo Fen. We saw you on the telly. Are you coming, Dino? You promised to read Green Eggs and Ham. Dino’s going to take me to Disneyland,” she added to Fen. “Come on, Dino.”

“I’ll be up when I’ve finished this lot,” he said, refusing to be bullied.

In the hall Fen met Tory wearing a dressing gown, pink from a hot bath.

“I’ve just left ‘Diana’ Ferranti slaving over a hot iron,” said Fen.

“Isn’t he marvelous?” sighed Tory. “I had a blinding headache and he just took over. He’s cooking supper, too. Gosh, it smells good. So nice to have a man who can tell the difference between rosemary and basil. Jakey wouldn’t notice if you gave him dog biscuits.”

“I’m beginning to think Dino’s more interested in Basils than Rosemarys, anyway,” said Fen pointedly.

She went out to the yard to check the horses. It was a very cold, starry night. An early frost had lurexed the cobbles in the yard and starched the golden willow spears which rustled underfoot and already clogged the stable gutters. As she adjusted a rug here and checked a water bowl or bandage there, Fen brooded on Dino’s deficiencies. In some painful way he reminded her of Billy. But while Billy was like a dog: loving, dependent, enthusiastic, Dino was feline, cool and detached. He was far tougher and more critical than Billy. He saw Fen’s faults only too clearly. But whereas Jake would bite her head off, Dino tended to mob her up.

Only last week he had caught her shouting at Sarah for giving Hardy, who was supposed to be on a diet, the wrong feed. When he told her to pack it in, she started shouting back at him, whereupon he calmly bundled her into a loose box and shut both doors on her until she cooled down.

“How can I have any authority with the grooms if you take the piss out of me all the time?” she complained furiously afterwards.

“They have to humor and nurse you before big classes, so bloody well treat them properly at home.”

Most irritating of all, despite saying how much he fancied her during dinner after the Sunday Times Cup, he hadn’t lifted a long, suntanned finger in her direction since he arrived at the Mill House. Perhaps living in such close proximity had put him off. Not that she cared a scrap; she was still hopelessly hooked on Billy. But she was irked that girls with soft caressing American accents always seemed to be ringing Dino up, and twice since he’d been living there, he’d disappeared off in his car after work and not returned until dawn was breaking. Occasionally Fen cried herself to sleep and wondered if Dino, who occupied the blue room at the end of the passage, ever heard her as he tiptoed past to bed.