was wearing the Daleman’s uniform of worn tweed jacket, checked shirt, and brogues, although in his case worn jeans had replaced her father’s generation of Dalesmen’s twill trousers.
‘I promise you, I’m quite safe,’ he told her, feeling her tense withdrawal and moving his arm until he was only steadying her.
His fingers felt slightly rough where they touched her wrist. He had reached out instinctively to grab her as she had stepped off the pavement, Kate recognised, and she gave him a faint smile.
‘I don’t bite, kick or stamp!’ he added with a grin. ‘I leave that kind of thing to my patients. I’m with the local veterinary practice,’ he added when she didn’t respond to his joke. ‘Tim Stepping.’
He released her to hold out his hand and shake her own. He had a handshake that was pleasant without being aggressive, and now that her shock was fading, Kate remembered her manners and smiled warmly at him.
It was like watching the sun chase the clouds across the Dales, he thought in bemused appreciation. She was one of the most lovely women he had ever seen: as delicate and fragile-looking as an orchid with her pale skin and lovely colouring, and yet at the same time he sensed a strength about her that intrigued him.
She had the stamp of the Dales on her and yet she was different: more sophisticated, more glossy, with that immaculate haircut, and hands that felt soft and smooth. And yet, for all her sophistication, there was an air of vulnerability about her.
‘Kate Seton,’ Kate responded.
‘Seton?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Not John Seton’s daughter?’
‘The very same,’ Kate responded lightly, wondering how much gossip he had heard about her.
John Seton’s daughter… Well, that would explain both the sophistication and the vulnerability. He glanced betrayingly over his shoulder, and Kate said drily, ‘My daughter is at the farm.’
His tanned skin flushed slightly, and he apologised. ‘I’m sorry, that was crass of me.’
‘Not at all,’ Kate said brittly.
Suddenly her self-confidence had deserted her, and she knew that it was not because of this pleasant, fair-haired man who was looking at her now like one of her father’s pups when it had been smacked, but because of the dark-haired man driving the Range Rover. How idiotic could she be, reacting like this to the sight of an unknown man? Heavens, she must have seen hundreds of dark-haired men during her years in London, and yet not one of them had affected her like that.
‘I’m coming up to your father’s place later on today. He’s got a ewe he wants me to look at.’
‘My daughter will be pleased,’ Kate told him, trying to make amends. ‘It’s the ambition of her life to become a vet, so I warn you now, she’ll probably pester you to death.’
She made to cross the road, amused and touched by the way that he walked with her, almost as though guarding her.
‘Are you sure you’re OK to drive this thing?’ he asked her, eyeing her tiny frame and the heavy bulk of the Land Rover. ‘That was quite a daydream you must have been in, to step off the pavement like that.’
‘Whoever was driving that Range Rover was driving far too fast,’ Kate defended. Inside, she was holding her breath and deriding herself at the same time. Why not simply ask him if he knew who had been driving it, instead of fishing so stupidly?
‘I didn’t see the driver,’ Tim admitted, ‘but it was one of the vehicles from the government experimental station.’
‘Do you go there much?’ Kate asked him.
He shook his head.
‘No, they have their own resident vets. They’re doing research into animal diseases that sometimes requires them all to go into quarantine—no one allowed in or out—and outsiders aren’t encouraged at any time. Very wise, probably, in view of the potential danger. I suspect they’re trying to find an antidote for rabies, but that’s only my own private feeling. And then, of course, there’s the continued problem of assessing the radiation fall-out from Chernobyl…’
‘All that on one fifteen-hundred-acre estate,’ Kate marvelled sardonically, but Tim shook his head again.
‘Don’t knock it. They’re doing one hell of a valuable job, and unlike some of the big pharmaceutical companies, their research isn’t at the mercy of shareholders and profit margins. Some of the villagers seem to think they’re testing bombs in there, but they couldn’t be more wrong. If only the people in there were allowed to announce it…’
His words gave Kate food for thought. Her father had told her that the establishment of the research station had caused resentment in the village, and despite the value of the work it was engaged on Kate suspected that that resentment would probably only increase if the local farming community suspected the station was engaged in experiments with rabies and other dangerous, contagious diseases.
She arrived back in time to help her mother after lunch, wondering how she could best broach the subject of the man in the Range Rover. To describe him physically to her mother was bound to elicit too much curiosity, and yet when she sketchily drew a verbally toned-down image of him when describing the incident, her mother shook her head and told her, ‘I haven’t met anyone from the station—they don’t mix locally. They even shop outside the area. It must be an odd sort of life, living in a community and yet separate from it,’ she added musingly.
Of course, there was no earthly chance that the man could have been Silas, but even so it disturbed Kate to know that there was any man in the neighbourhood so powerfully like her memories of him that even thinking about the incident now made her stomach churn. Odd that she could so easily forgive her father, and yet still feel so bitterly resentful of the way Silas had treated her. Perhaps because her father’s betrayal had been born of love and Silas’s of callous indifference.
After lunch, Cherry insisted on returning to the paddocks with her grandfather, and having assured herself that she was not going to overtire herself Kate allowed her to go, noticing as she did so the healthy glow that being outside had already given Cherry’s skin.
She had brought some work with her—assignments she wanted to prepare for the new school term—and she took her work upstairs to her room so that she could concentrate on it.
Kate loved teaching, which was odd, really, for she had never intended to go into it. Research had been her chosen field—library work; and yet she now acknowledged that, despite its constant heartaches and strains, teaching gave her considerable pleasure. She was lucky in being at a school where the parents were caring and concerned, the children mostly from immigrant families, who were keen to see their offspring succeed in the world, and who saw education as a passport to that success.
Children up here in the Dales came from families with a similar respect for education, although the children often had to travel many miles to get to school. The local village school no longer existed, and if she and Cherry moved…
Her heart thudded uncomfortably. Slow down, Kate cautioned herself… They were here on holiday, that was all. And yet, as she stood up and looked out of her window, she acknowledged that her soul had been starved for the sight of her home. She missed its grandeur and its freedom; London caged and imprisoned her, although she hadn’t realised how much until now. But coming home would mean such an upheaval. She would have to find somewhere to live…
‘Kate…’
The anxiety in her mother’s voice as she called to her took her hurrying to the top of the stairs.
‘Annabel’s gone,’ her mother told her worriedly. ‘Could you go and look for her? I’m right in the middle of baking.’
Annabel was the latest in a long line of nanny-goats her mother insisted on keeping, despite their destructive tendencies, for she claimed that their milk was far healthier than that from cows. As Kate went downstairs in response to