‘I’ll put a report in, then, just in case the dog you saw was this missing English setter,’ Brian told his brother-in-law. ‘And remember if you see him again to try and coax him down here to the farm...’
‘If I see him worrying my sheep again it won’t be coaxing him anywhere that I’ll be wanting to do,’ Harry told him grimly. It was bad enough being a farmer without having city folks’ dogs worrying his sheep.
* * *
It was much later on in the day when Ben, driven by tiredness and hunger, finally succumbed to the temptation the farm represented. From his vantage point on the hillside he could see down into the farmyard, where Mary Bowles was feeding her husband’s working dog accompanied by the elderly ‘no breed’ dog, Jack, who was her own pet.
Ben’s mouth watered as he watched them eating their food. He was hungry. Very hungry.
Stealthily he started to make his way down the hill.
The collie sensed his presence first, setting up a sharp volley of barks which Jack quickly joined in. Mary Bowles heard them from the kitchen and hurried out into the yard. Harry was in town on business, and she wasn’t expecting any visitors, but the sight of the one she saw sliding round the corner of the field wall made her gasp and call softly, ‘Ben... Ben... Here, good dog...’
A woman’s voice... Ben liked women. Eagerly he hurried into the yard, allowing Mary to fuss him and gratefully accepting the food she brought him, but when she tried to grab his collar Ben sensed danger and immediately darted out of her reach, heading swiftly back up the hill.
* * *
‘Are you sure it was him?’ Brian Jessop questioned his sister when she rang him.
‘It was definitely the dog you described to us this morning,’ Mary Bowles confirmed.
‘Right. I’ll tell them at the station, then. Pity you couldn’t catch him.’
* * *
It was Piers who took the call from the police whilst Georgia was outside in the garden hanging up the cover from Ben’s bed, which she had washed more to give herself something to do than anything else.
‘That was the police,’ Piers told her as she came back into the kitchen just as he was replacing the receiver. ‘They’ve had a report of a sighting of Ben...’
‘Where?’ Georgia demanded immediately.
‘In the Yorkshire Dales. A farmer’s wife saw him in the farmyard and fed him, apparently, and—’
‘He’s safe...’ Georgia breathed in relief, tears filling her eyes. ‘Oh, thank God.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up too high,’ Piers told her gently. ‘Ben—if it was Ben—ran off as soon as she’d fed him. It seems that the farmer had taken a shot at Ben earlier in the day. It’s sheep country up there, and—’
‘Where is this farm?’ Georgia asked him urgently. ‘I want to go up there. If Ben is there—’
‘If he is there...’ Piers agreed, and then stopped. He could tell from Georgia’s expression that she intended to go and hunt for Ben and that there was nothing he could do to stop her.
‘Look, I’ve got the farm’s telephone number. Let me give them a ring to ask them if they’d mind if we drove up and looked for Ben.’
Briefly Georgia hesitated. Her immediate instinct was to jump in her car and drive north just as fast as she could, but what Piers was suggesting made sense.
‘Very well,’ she agreed reluctantly.
It seemed to her that, by some unspoken mutual pact, both of them had decided to put their own feelings and the intense complex issues which made up their personal relationship to one side, to concentrate on Ben’s plight. The intimate events of the night had not been referred to by either of them during the long hours of the day whilst they’d waited for news of Ben, and now, even though she was not going to allow herself to admit it, secretly Georgia knew that she was glad to have Piers with her to share the anxiety and the wait. Not that she would ever admit as much to him, nor was she going to admit how relieved she was to have a respite from the hostility between them.
Piers’s manner towards her now was one of almost gentle concern, one of almost protective care, one of almost loving maleness.
Now, that she knew she had to be imagining, because Piers most certainly did not love her. But she loved him.
As she waited for Piers to ring the Bowleses Georgia tried not to let her emotions swamp her. She was still, she suspected, a little bit in shock. To have gone so swiftly from believing that Piers had deliberately abandoned Ben to finding out the truth had left her feeling not just wrong-footed and guilty, but emotionally far too vulnerable and susceptible. Last night in Piers’s arms...