Country Wives Read Free

customer, and Lord Askew has a lot of influence. It’s not just him we’ll lose; he’ll tell half the county.”
    Dan, looking at her with a dead-straight face, replied, “You’re very wrong there, very wrong; he’ll tell
all
the county Nothing I did or said was out of order, believe me. I will not tolerate neglect. Must be off. This Tattersall’s Cop, is there anything I should know?”
    “Beautiful, beautiful setting. Lovely people, struggling to make ends meet. We try to be economical with their bills.”
    Dan raised his eyebrows. “Tut-tut! That won’t pay back the overdraft.”
    There he was again, catching her on the raw. Rather tartly she answered him with “That’s Mungo’s worry not yours.”
    “Indeed it is. Be seeing you at one.” As Dan went back into reception, he glanced around the seating area, catching the eye of a few of the clients and giving them a brusque nod of greeting.
    After the door had closed on his departure, one of the longstanding clients called out to Joy, “He looks a bit grim, Joy.”
    Between tight lips she answered, “His heart’s in the right place.”
    “Well, he certainly wasn’t in the right place when good looks were given out.”
    A general chortle broke out.
    “Bring back Scott, I say,” another client contributed to the debate.
    “All these bleeding hearts he’s left behind, nothing short of criminal.”
    “It was ’is ’ands I liked, sensitive they were.”
    “Did you ever see him in his shorts?” The client rolled her eyes in appreciation.
    “Oops! Steady, Bridget, you’ll be spinning out of control!”
    They all laughed and then resettled to discussing their animals’ symptoms.
    Joy silently agreed with them. Despite the broken hearts among her own staff, Scott had brought laughter and delight with him to the practice every day and that couldn’t be bad; added to which, the farm clients loved him for his expertise. She’d an idea they would appreciate Dan’s knowledge too, but they’d never appreciate the man. And neither would she.
    B Y a quarter to one Dan was eating his homemade sandwiches outside on the old bench by the back door. There was a powerful wind coming down from Beulah Bank Top, which seemed to slice through any clothing you chose to be wearing, but Dan preferred the peace and quiet to the banter in the staff room where most of the staff ate their lunch. Social chitchat had never appealed to him and still less now with so much on his mind. Though when he’d visited Tattersall’s Cop, his own problems had been momentarily forgotten. What a beautiful, neat little farm it was, loving care in every inch of hedging, in every ditch, in every farm building but … it seemed to Dan that Callum Tattersall dabbled first in this and then in that, neversticking at anything long enough to get real returns on his investment. He hadn’t enough acres, not enough guts and, to be honest, not enough commitment. Bad luck had played a big part in his life too, or so Callum had said as they shared a mounting block while they drank their coffee. A sick wife needing a lot of care, a one-in-a-thousand chance of disease decimating his entire turkey flock, his scheme for producing fresh farm yogurt failing, to say nothing of the race horse he had bought a share in which, after falling at the first fence, was never fit for racing again. But you dratted well couldn’t help but like the man. A shadow fell across his legs, and he looked up to find Mungo standing beside him. Dan put the apple he was about to sink his teeth into in his pocket and shifted farther along the bench to make room for him.
    Mungo broke the silence with, “Well?”
    “I was polite, controlled and well mannered, and absolutely right. Like you, I abhor animals having to suffer because their owners are too mean to get treatment for them; and that’s what it is: absolute, sod-awful meanness that makes that huge well-fed lord of the manor refuse to allow the stockman to call for help