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secretary and PA, Mary Poe, who was at present on holiday.
    Mary was probably, Linc thought, both the most valued
and
undervalued worker on the estate. She had taken up her position at around the same time as Marianne had come to Farthingscourt as a young bride, and, although she was a few years younger than the Viscountess, they had soon become great friends.
    After Marianne’s death, Mary was the one who had stepped in to look after Linc and his younger brother Crispin, while their father shut himself away with his grief. Without her, the family would quite possibly have fallen apart.
    Aside from the loss of his mother, Linc’s childhood had been a fairly happy one, but looking back, he recognised that running through it there had always been a thread of conflict between his inherited passion for horses and his desire to live up to his father’s expectations.
    It wasn’t something that had left him emotionally scarred for life. After all, a sizeable portion of his teenage years had been spent away at school, and there it had been fairly easy to arrange to ride in his spare time. But his relationship with his father had never been all that Linc would have wished.
    It had not been solely in an attempt to please
him
that Linc had studied business management, marketing and commerce at university. He had known from an early age that Farthingscourt would one day be his and had always embraced the prospect with enthusiasm. He loved the house and land, and wanted to be involved in the running of them, so it seemed as though fate was taking a hand when the estate manager gave in his notice a month before Linc was due to graduate. As soon as he’dcompleted his course he hurried home to plead his case.
    Lord Tremayne ignored his pleas and gave the job to an outsider.
    Twenty-two years old, his newly gained qualifications spurned, as he saw it, Linc packed his bags and left.
    He walked out with no clear idea of where he was going or what he was going to do. He wasn’t ready to acknowledge the truth of his father’s argument that he lacked the necessary practical experience for the top job; all he wanted was to put some distance between them and find a way of showing that he could get on, with or without his father’s help. In defiant mood, his first spell of employment was in a top eventing yard where he quickly rose to the status of stable manager. The job gave him a chance to further his competition experience and it was during his second year there that he bought Noddy, the first horse he had ever owned.
    Linc was almost completely happy working with the eventers.
    Almost, but not quite. Farthingscourt was inextricably a part of his life and, no matter where he found himself, the urge to return was always tugging at his subconscious. However strong the pull, though, he was not about to go back, cap in hand; the Tremayne pride wouldn’t allow that. He was prepared to admit that his father had been right, but not until he’d made up the deficit. With that in mind, Linc reluctantly left the stables and trawled a succession of large country estates for work.
    He finally found a position as an assistant estatemanager and settled down to learn everything he possibly could about the job. Over the next four and a half years he returned home infrequently, saying little of what he’d been doing, and it wasn’t until his younger brother Crispin wrote to tell him of the impending retirement of the Farthingscourt estate manager that he handed in his notice and returned to Dorset with Noddy still in tow.
    The fatted calf could rest easy.
    If Sylvester Tremayne was overjoyed to see his son and heir return, he hid it well. It took weeks of stubborn persistence by Linc to bring his father to the point of offering him a trial period as estate manager. Mary, desperate to see them settle their differences, added her subtle persuasion to the cause, and Linc even produced references for his father’s