The Little Dale Remedy

When she woke again, the pale light of dawn was creeping through her window. She had opened the curtains a crack when she went to bed, not liking total darkness; now she could see the Lakeland hills looming into the sky with rugged splendor. For a moment, she was disoriented. Where was she?

Memories flooded into her confusion: Alex when he loved her... Alex when he’d turned away, stony faced. He was such a successful jockey, groomed for stardom by his trainer dad, Josh Andrews. Maddie had been totally over the moon when he’d first asked her out and unable to believe it when he’d asked her to marry him. Theirs was to have been the biggest wedding of the decade, he’d insisted. That was the first time she’d questioned their relationship; he didn’t seem to take into account that she just wanted a small wedding, and that had sowed a seed of doubt.

When she’d had her accident, a month or so later, he’d been at her bedside every day at first...until the weeks turned into months. When they’d told her she would never ride again, she’d been distraught, and if she was honest with herself, she might have taken her frustration out on Alex. It was easy to be bubbly and fun when you lived life in a whirl of success...not so easy when your whole future had crumbled and your dreams were shattered. His visits had had become less and less frequent until he admitted that he’d found someone else.

In a way, Alex’s betrayal had been a relief. After that, she hadn’t needed to try, and she’d been able to wallow in her own self-pity. She wasn’t proud of it, the depression that had left her without motivation. Then one day she’d looked out the window at the glorious sun-filled sky and realized there was still so much beauty in the world. That was the day she’d made a promise to herself to get her life back...no matter what.

A cockerel shrieked out its morning call, and Maddie pulled her covers over her head. They had a cockerel for goodness’ sake! Oh, well, at least she wouldn’t need an alarm clock while Ross and Meg were around. Today, she was off to Sky View again, and she couldn’t wait.

After eating a light breakfast of tea and toast, Maddie locked the cottage door and pocketed the key, deliberately not looking at the trailer as she walked up the pathway and opened her car. When something nudged her from behind, she turned with a start to see Red gazing up at her happily, his long pink tongue hanging from the side of his mouth to reveal a set of dangerous-looking fangs. Somehow, though, she felt totally unafraid. “Hello, boy,” she said, holding out her hand. The giant dog nuzzled her gently, belying his fearsome appearance.

Maddie noticed Meg watching solemnly over by the trailer. She waved, but when Meg just wiggled her fingers in return, obviously afraid to show a response because of her dad, Maddie felt a rush of anger at his unfairness. Where was this little girl’s mother, and why were they living in a trailer, anyway?

It was none of her business, she decided, so she got in her car and drove off. Besides, she wasn’t even interested in Ross’s way of life.

* * *

AT SKY VIEW, Cass Munro was waiting impatiently. “Sorry,” she said as Maddie came in through the kitchen door. “I forgot to ask if you could come a bit earlier today. I have a doctor’s appointment and I’m running late. Jake brought a client in for breakfast and I haven’t even had the chance to load the dishwasher, so if you wouldn’t mind taking Robbie to school and clearing up the breakfast dishes after... He’s all ready to go.”

“Of course.” Maddie smiled, placing her hand on Cass’s arm. “It’s what I’m here for. You just take your time.”

As if on cue, Robbie ran in through the back door with Choco at his heels. “We’ve been right up to the top of the hill,” he cried. “I’ll just get my school bag.”

“And remember to wipe your face,” Cass called after him as he raced off up the stairs.

Forty-five minutes later, Robbie duly dropped off at the village school, Maddie surveyed the pile of clean breakfast pots beside the sink with satisfaction. She was needed here, and it felt good to be needed after being unable to do anything useful for so long.

Her mother had called last night, stressing about how she was eating and whether she was doing too much. Maddie had to admit it was nice to know her mum cared. Here at Sky View, no one knew just how badly injured she’d been. For a long time after the accident, she’d been in a vague, formless, pain-filled place. Then the depression had descended, taking over her every thought...until, after eighteen long months, as she watched a swallow skim across the glorious summer sky, she suddenly remembered that she, too, still had a life—her life. She needed to live it and not just go through the motions. After that day, she’d let nothing hold her back from her ambition to make enough of a recovery to stand on her own two feet and have a future again.

To her surprise, she was glad that Alex was no longer around to hold her back. This was her fight, hers alone, and it had finally begun.

Despite her satisfaction, even by midmorning Maddie was finding it tough to keep going. The nagging pain in her leg and back had become a throbbing ache, and she longed to sit down and take a rest.

“Does it hurt a lot?” Cass asked in a casual tone when she got home from her appointment. “Take a break if you like.”

“No!” Maddie shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m here to work.”

“Then make us a drink and we’ll both take a break,” she suggested.

As they sat at the kitchen table five minutes later, sipping coffee in companionable silence, Cass looked across at her with a puzzled frown. “So...what happened? The accident, I mean.”

Unused to such a direct line of questioning, Maddie hesitated. “I was cycling to work one morning, and someone knocked me off my bike,” she eventually began. “To be honest, I can’t remember much about it, and I’m okay now...except that my leg sometimes aches.”

Cass stirred sugar into her mug then met Maddie’s gaze with sympathy in her eyes. “And that’s all?”

Unable to bear seeing the same sad expression everyone gave her back home, Maddie gritted her teeth. Before she knew it, the Munros would be talking about her in lowered voices, going quiet the moment she walked into a room. Poor Madeline, her whole career ruined...and she was doing so well.

“It’s hardly anything, really,” she said, forcing a bright smile onto her face. “Just a bit of a nuisance. It doesn’t hold me back at all.”

She stood and went back to peeling carrots, pretending she hadn’t seen the concerned look on Cass’s face.

At midday Jake, his dad, Bill Munro—a tall, thin man whose current project was fixing up the holiday cottages—and Jed, the young lad who helped Jake back the youngsters, came in to eat. They sat at the large kitchen table, laughing and joking and talking about their plans. Maddie handed out food and poured tea, desperately trying not to limp as she moved around the large, homey kitchen.

“Sit down and join us, lass,” said Bill, smiling in Maddie’s direction. “You have to eat, too.”

Jake nodded in agreement, pulling out a chair, and she sat, feeling awkward.

“I already told her,” Cass told them. She turned to Maddie. “Get your lunch—I can see to dessert.”

“It’s okay,” Maddie insisted, not wanting the fuss.

“Sorry, lass, you’re overruled,” Bill said, stroking his neat, white beard, his eyes crinkling in a smile. She settled into the chair with a sigh as Jed passed her a plate.

When the talk turned to horses, Maddie found it difficult not to join in. This was so stupid. Maybe she should just come clean and let them all in on the truth, tell them about her ambition to ride again. They’d help her; she knew they would. She didn’t want help, though, did she? She didn’t want people to make allowances, to see the pity in their eyes as they watched her struggle to be even half of what she used to be. She wanted to be respected for what she’d achieved on her own merit; that was why she’d come here—to be treated like a normal human being again.

“Have you done any riding, Maddie?” Bill asked, right out of the blue. She couldn’t lie about that.

“Some,” she told him. “Not for a while, though.”

“Well, then,” Cass said, placing an apple pie and jug of cream on the table. “You can start again while you’re here. We’re always looking for exercise riders.”

“As soon as we get a suitable horse in for you, we’ll get you on board,” Jake agreed. “At the moment, they’re all only half-broken, or too difficult for a novice.”

Novice! Something deep in Maddie’s chest curled in objection. “I’m not—” she began before biting her tongue, “that bad. Just rusty, I guess.”

“I started on Carlotta,” Cass said. “She’s the best. Unfortunately, she’s in foal right now, or you could have tried riding her.”

“In foal to Grand Design,” Jake added, excitement rising in his voice. “We’re going to have one very special foal, I reckon.”

“I know that stallion!” Maddie exclaimed without thinking. “Big bay...quite tricky to handle, but so talented...” She trailed off as she realized her mistake.

Jake frowned. “How do you know that?”

Cass hesitated. Here’s another chance to tell the truth, her conscience told her. “My dad,” she blurted.

Jake sat back, hands behind his head. “Ah, into racing, is he?”

“Kind of.” Maddie got up to start clearing the table, remembering the elation of riding the big bay stallion out on exercise, when he was one of the three she used to “do.” Tears pressed against her eyelids, and she blinked to try to clear them. She had lost so much more than just the riding. She had lost the companionship of her charges, too.

“You okay?” Cass whispered as they bundled pots into the dishwasher.

Maddie nodded. “Yes...thanks.”

“Well, you might want to go a bit easy on my crockery,” she suggested, and suddenly Maddie was smiling again.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

When the men had disappeared out into the yard again, Cass eased herself down onto a comfortable chair beside the stove. “My back aches a bit,” she groaned. “I’ll just sit for a second.”

“You need to rest,” Maddie said. “How long is it now?”

“Just a matter of weeks,” Cass told her dreamily, touching her stomach. “Look, she’s kicking.”

When Maddie hurried over, Cass grabbed her hand and placed it next to hers. “See?”

“And it’s definite...that it’s a girl, I mean?”

Cass nodded, puckering her brow. “To be honest, I didn’t really want to know, and neither did Jake, but...”

“But what?”

“Well...” Cass let out a big sigh. “Robbie’s twin sister was killed in a road accident, along with his grandma. It was before I even came here, but obviously it’s had a huge effect on Rob. We wanted him to know what to expect...no surprises.”

“And was he pleased to find out it was a girl?”

“He was—is—over the moon about having a sister again.”

“And do you have a name for her yet?”

Cass nodded. “We’re going to call her Gwen, after Jake’s mum.”

As the unborn baby’s frantic movement slowed, Maddie withdrew her hand. “That’s lovely,” she said. “Like a brand-new start.”

“A brand-new start,” Cass echoed, her eyes gently drooping.

Maddie moved quietly away, not wanting to disturb her. There was so much love in this house where once there must have been so much pain. Jake Munro had gotten past his heartache, and that was what she wanted to do. Learn to live with the past and forge a new future. Would hers hold a family one day? She couldn’t help but wonder. It might, she decided, but not for a long time yet. She had to straighten herself out before she could include anyone else in her life...and anyway, look what happened the last time she started to dream of a future...with Alex. No, it was definitely just her and her demons, for the next few years at least.

CHAPTER FIVE

ROSS CLICKED OFF his phone with a heavy heart. So Maddie had been telling the truth after all; she had paid for the cottage. Seemingly the solicitors hadn’t informed the rental agency of Anne Maddox’s death, and they’d rented it out, not knowing... So now what?

He’d felt so positive, coming back here to Little Dale, more positive than he had been since Jenny died. In those early years after her death, dealing with the weight of his own guilt and his mother-in-law’s accusations, the only thing that had kept him going was Meg.

He should have noticed how ill Jenny was, he realized that now, and he would have if she’d shown physical symptoms, but depression was way beyond his experience. It had been foaling time on the stud where he worked, too, but that was no excuse for all the hours he spent there...hours he should have spent trying to help his young wife overcome her illness and deal with their baby girl.

Later—way too much later—he had read up on postpartum depression and finally begun to understand just how real and painful the condition could be. He continued to keep reading about it to this day, again and again, as if for the first time, asking himself why. That couldn’t bring Jenny back, though, couldn’t get rid of the guilt that haunted him.

She had taken her own life because he was too selfish to put her before his work. Her mother had known it; Anne Maddox had blackened his name in their community so convincingly that some people had shunned him in the street. That was when he’d decided to take Meg and leave, go back to his native Scotland. And to his surprise, Jenny’s mother hadn’t even kicked up a fuss when he’d told her he was taking her only granddaughter so very far away. It seemed as if there was nothing left inside her but hatred and blame, and she hated him so much she would rather lose Meg than have him around. She’d done the right thing by her granddaughter in the end though, by leaving her the cottage. He would always be grateful to her for that.

He and Meg had been relatively happy in Scotland, even though he’d known that they would need to settle down somewhere eventually. He’d found plenty of part-time work on farms and studs, even working in forestry for a while. He and Meg had traveled wherever he was needed, though never so far away that he couldn’t get Meg to Tinytots in Kelso.

He’d tried a few different nurseries, but Tinytots, run by a warmhearted, middle-aged woman named Clare, was the only one that he really trusted with his daughter. When she wasn’t there, he looked after her himself, waking with her in the night, caring for her when she was ill or teething, playing with her and introducing her to the countryside he loved...wanting her to love it, too. He’d had no social life of any kind for years, to such an extent that some people nicknamed him the Recluse, but he didn’t care. He didn’t believe he deserved a social life. His lot in life, he had long ago decided, was to make it up to Jenny by giving their daughter the best that he could.

When Anne Maddox died, leaving her granddaughter the cottage where he and Jenny had lived for the short time they were together, he knew that giving Meg the best meant bringing her home to Little Dale to claim her heritage.

The last thing he’d expected was to find someone living there; he’d been so angry, truly believing the woman was lying. So now what? Dealing with people had never been one of his best skills, and the lonely years in Scotland had left him even more awkward with strangers, especially those of the opposite sex. There would never be anyone in his life again after Jenny—he was sure of that. He’d failed his wife, and he didn’t deserve another chance at that kind of happiness. What right did he have to destroy yet another woman’s life?

He wasn’t going back to Scotland, though, wasn’t going to give up and give in. This Maddie person would just have to put up with them for the next three months; he had no money to give her, even if he wanted to.

Having settled on his course of action, Ross decided to spend the day putting down roots. He laid a row of paving stones up to the trailer door to keep their feet out of the mud. He went to town with Meg and bought a plastic storage container from the local DIY store to put their dirty boots in, and he passed the afternoon building a barbecue area out of bricks just under the shelter of the trees. When their unwanted tenant came back, she would see that he had no intention of moving on. Maybe that would persuade her to move on herself...sooner than she’d planned, at least. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable with his presence, maybe even a little threatened, and he didn’t have any intention of trying to change her mind about that. All he wanted was to be settled with Meg in the cottage...and to land a decent job, of course.

That was another thing he packed into his busy day: traveling around to some local farms in the hopes of finding part-time work, at least. Unfortunately, he had no luck, but tomorrow he had an appointment with the principal of Little Dale Primary School. Once Meg was settled in there, he’d have more free time to pursue his job prospects.

Putting on the kettle, he called for Meg, who was sitting at the table drawing. She loved to draw. “You might be going to proper school soon,” he told her.

“Will there be lots of kids to play with?” she asked, pencil poised above the paper.

“I guess so,” he said.

“Will they be nice?”

For a moment he just stared at her, his small, innocent, beautiful daughter, and the weight of responsibility made him shudder. He’d tried to bring her up to be independent and strong in a hard, tough world, but he knew she could never be tough enough. She had her mother’s sweet, soft personality, and that would never change. It was Jenny’s own personality that had let her down at the end, the inability to stand up to pressure. She’d needed looking after, and he hadn’t seen that.

That was one thing that drew him to Maddie, he supposed. Despite his determination to dislike her, she had that same vulnerability...and yet she’d stood up to him so bravely, holding her ground. That was what he wanted Meg to be able to do.

“I hope so, love,” he said finally.

“Are you all right, Daddy?” Meg asked, huge eyes gazing solemnly up at him.

He blinked, smiling. “Why, yes...”

“You look funny...kind of sad. Are you sad?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted, holding out his arms. She ran into them, and he held her tightly, twirling her around. “We all get a bit sad sometimes.”

“Is it because someone is living in our house?”

“Yes... I guess so.”

“Maybe we could live there, too, if there are enough bedrooms.”

“I don’t think she’d like that,” he said. “No...we’ll be fine in here until she moves out, and then we’ll decorate the whole place. You can choose any color you want for your room.”

“Pink and purple,” Meg exclaimed, clapping her hands as he put her back down.

Red jumped up, pushing against her, and she wrapped her tiny arms around his huge neck.

“Can Red come to school with me?” she asked. “He’ll sit quiet—I know he will.”

Ross studied his daughter’s bright little face, his heart aching. “I’m sure he’d love to, and I wish he could, too, but I don’t think dogs are allowed in school. Don’t worry, though—I’m sure you’ll make lots of friends really soon.”

* * *

MADDIE DROVE HOME from Sky View as the day drew to a close, feeling tired and drained but happier than she had in a long while. It was nice to be taken at face value again, and she was glad that she hadn’t given in to the temptation to own up about her riding experience.

When Jake had told her she could start riding when they had a “suitably quiet horse,” the idea had rankled her. She, Maddie Maguire, the person who used to take pride in being able to ride anything, lowered to novice status? But she’d soon realized she had to think like a novice if she was going to get back on a horse again—which the doctors had told her was impossible. Her balance wasn’t what it used to be, and she didn’t even know yet how capable her body was. She had to take it one step at a time if she wanted to get anywhere at all. And if that meant being a novice for a while, then she just had to swallow her pride and get on with it.

Her stomach lurched when she spotted the trailer through the trees. Would Ross come over and try to bully her out of the cottage again? There was something very disconcerting about him, a primal ferocity that overrode modern etiquette. How he’d ever managed to father such a lovely little girl was beyond her. Anyway, he was in for a shock if he thought he could frighten her away; she was made of tougher stuff than that. He had turned her offer down, so now she just had to stand her ground for the next three months—which, despite her delicate appearance, she knew was well within her capabilities. You didn’t get to ride highly strung young Thoroughbreds, let alone win races, without being able to stand up for yourself.

Trying to stand tall, Maddie walked slowly and determinedly toward the front door of Rose Cottage, staring straight ahead and refusing to even acknowledge the fact that Ross might be watching. She slammed the door and bolted it, giving in to her nerves for a moment by leaning back. From outside, she could hear music and Meg’s high-pitched laughter. What was the little girl laughing at? she wondered with a sudden tug of loneliness. Unable to resist the temptation, Maddie went across to peer through the window that looked out on the trailer. Ross was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Smoke curled up from some kind of barbecue, and he was playing a guitar—actually playing a guitar!—as if everything was okay, when he had disrupted her whole life.

Suddenly, as if aware of her gaze, he looked up, meeting her eyes from across the distance. Maddie froze, her heart hammering in her chest, and then she turned abruptly away. It was certainly going to be a long three months if this was what she was going to have to put up with every night.

Maddie made herself a cup of coffee and sat down, cradling the mug in her hands as she went over the day’s events, remembering how the talk had turned to horses. Finding out that Jake Munro’s mare, Carlotta, was in foal to Grand Design had brought her past tumbling back and reminded her sharply of Alex.

They’d nicknamed the colt Dennis, though his real name was Grand Design. He had been one of her three charges at Apple Tree Stud, and it was Alex who had persuaded his dad that she would be able to handle him. She’d struggled with Dennis at first and been bitten more than a few times, not to mention the episode when he dumped her on the gallops. But eventually her resilience had paid off. She and Dennis had reached an understanding, a companionship that had lasted until he’d been sold. She’d cried all night when he left, and the stable yard at Apple Tree had felt empty without him.

Suddenly realizing she was sitting in darkness, Maddie got up and headed for the switch, hesitating as she passed the window. She could see lights on in the trailer, and then the door opened, light silhouetting the man’s big frame. What was he doing here? Why was he all alone with his little girl, and was this really his cottage? He must have found out that she had every right to be here or else he’d have been over here to give her a hard time again. His demeanor had unnerved her at first, but she didn’t feel quite so threatened now. The way he was with Meg...and Red, who never seemed to leave his side, made her believe he couldn’t really be a bad person...could he?

The little girl had looked so much like him when she’d questioned Maddie about her taking their house, so fierce and angry. Perhaps tomorrow she should try to talk to her again. If they were going to be living next door for the next three months, then she didn’t like the idea that Meg thought she was mean.

She’d have an early night, she decided, to build up her strength for tomorrow. She was so relieved by how well she seemed to be getting along with everyone at Sky View. Then again, they were all so welcoming and easy to talk to...even Jake Munro, who she’d been a bit in awe of.