Page 34 of A New Family at Puddleduck Farm (Puddleduck Farm #6)

Love wasn’t the big romantic gestures you made when you were trying to impress someone. Love was a series of daily acts, carried out dozens of times; it was cleaning up after people you adored. Doing stuff they didn’t like. Without fuss. Without complaint. That was what love was really about.

* * *

Sam finally got the chance to go to Brook Riding Stable to see Marjorie about the possibility of resuming some teaching in the third week of February.

It was a cold frosty Saturday. Maggie and Eddie were looking after Lily.

Phoebe was working. And in between work, no doubt she’d be plotting with Maggie about Mission Cat Rescue.

They’d got Rufus on board now and they had a plan, which was all a bit hush hush.

Phoebe had told him that even she didn’t know all the details.

Apparently Maggie thought it was better that way.

Which probably meant something nefarious was going on. Sam knew he’d find out more on a need-to-know basis, which suited him fine. He adored Maggie, but she had always been a maverick rule breaker and age hadn’t slowed her down. If anything, it had made her slightly more reckless.

He and Phoebe hadn’t discussed any more of the detail about setting up an indoor school at Puddleduck.

Sam had got as far as pricing up some of the practicalities, and as he’d suspected the costs were astronomical.

The expenditure of building a suitable construction, that’s if it even made it past the planning permission stage, was eye-watering.

A decent floor surface was much more than even he had anticipated.

It ran into thousands, not hundreds, and then there was the whole matter of electrics.

They would need floodlights if the school was to be used out of daylight hours, through the winter, which was of course the beauty of an indoor school. People worked in the daytime, so evening availability was key.

All of this was before you even thought about the annual rates that would be payable, once it was actually up.

Insurances, health and safety; the list was endless.

It would take years of private riding lessons even to make a dent in the amount he’d need to borrow.

No self-respecting bank was going to stump up that amount of cash.

He was trying not to feel despondent about it all.

The dream had been fun while it lasted. The one thing he could do though was to resume teaching at Brook Riding School.

It was a less lofty ambition but it was much more doable.

So he’d given Marjorie a call about this and she’d suggested he come over for a proper chat.

As he drove through the forest on that Saturday morning, which was frost-silvered and beautiful, Sam felt his heart lighten.

He arrived just as the ten o’clock hack was about to go out and he walked into a buzz of activity.

It felt great to be back in the yard amongst the smell of horse.

The sensory overload of Sam’s happy place was all around him.

The jingle of tack and the creak of leather, the clatter of ponies’ steel-shod hooves on concrete as they milled about, the white clouds of breath, both human and horse, rising into the cold air and the buzz of chatter from six or seven excited riders, their coats and riding jackets bright splashes of colour.

Marjorie was in the yard speaking to one of the ride leaders, identifiable by her fluorescent-yellow high-vis vest, and Sam waited until the hack had trooped out of the yard in a clip-clopping line before he went over to talk to her.

After the mass exodus of ponies and riders it was suddenly peaceful.

Now there were just the sounds of birdsong in the air, the scrape of hooves on the concrete yard, as a left-behind horse stamped his disapproval, and the distant sound of a car horn on the road.

‘Hi, Marjorie. Is now a good time?’

‘It’s perfect.’ Her face creased into a smile.

It was hard to tell how old Marjorie was.

She’d always been one of those ageless people who looked the same however many years went by.

She had grey hair which she kept coiled up in a wispy bun on the back of her head, weather-beaten skin from being outdoors most of her life and kindly button brown eyes.

Although because he hadn’t seen her for a while Sam fancied she looked a little more tired than usual, and maybe a little more stooped.

‘It’s good to see you, Sam. How’s the little one doing?’

‘She’s a joy,’ Sam said. ‘And hard work.’

‘Ah, they are, Sam. Horses are easier than little ones.’ He realised suddenly that he didn’t even know whether Marjorie had children of her own.

They never discussed anything personal really; their conversation revolved around horses and students who came to ride, and occasionally segued into dogs or money.

Sam had kept Ninja at part livery for years before he’d moved him across to Puddleduck Farm.

Marjorie must have picked up his questioning glance.

‘When my Peter was small, I remember thinking, when will this end? And when he was grown up I remember looking back and thinking that his childhood had gone by in a flash, and that those times were some of the happiest of my life. Enjoy it, Sam. It’ll go really quickly. ’

‘Thanks.’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned Peter before…’ He left the unspoken question in the air, thinking she could pick it up if she wanted to – or not.

‘There’s not usually a lot of time for chitchat around here,’ Marjorie continued as she beckoned him through to the office.

He followed her, his eyes making the adjustment from the brightness of the February day outside to the relative gloom of the concrete-floored barn. Marjorie rubbed her hands together as she strode over to her desk, which was, as always, strewn with papers.

‘Peter lives in Arizona. He went there on his gap year, met a girl, and never came back.’ Marjorie’s voice was light. ‘I’d had high hopes when he was small that he’d love horses and grow up and help me with this place.’

‘But he didn’t,’ Sam finished softly.

‘Well, he did and he didn’t. Peter’s middle name is “adventure”. He grew up loving horses, and he met a horse-loving girl, who’d been brought up on a ranch in Arizona, and guess what happened?’

‘They settled down there.’

‘You’ve got it in one. I can’t say I really blame him. Where would you rather settle, Sam? On a thousand-acre ranch in Arizona, with scorching summers, or in a riding school in the damp New Forest?’ She stamped her feet on the wooden floor of the unheated building.

Sam took a breath. ‘That would be a hard one,’ he said, even though he knew that deep down he’d probably have gone with the New Forest himself. But then his middle name wasn’t ‘adventure’.

‘Anyway, you didn’t come here to talk about my family. You came here to talk about doing a few riding lessons again, didn’t you?’

‘If that’s possible. I’d love to. I’ve really missed this place.’

‘And if you’re sure you can spare the time, Sam, then I’d love to have you. We don’t see so much of the young Lord Holt as we used to, but we’ve still got a few of your old clients left, I believe.’