Darkest Before Dawn by Gwen Kirkwood Read Free Book Online Page B

Your mother has always been there, and willing, when I needed an extra pair of hands, as your grandmother was for your grandfather at Bengairney.’
    ‘I suppose you think I’m not likely to get a wife at all if I’m a peg-leg farmer,’ Billy snapped. He thought about Fenella Lennox. She had promised to visit him again in hospital but she hadn’t come back. Neither had she visited him since he had come home. Of course, she was only a schoolgirl but deep down he was hurt by Fenella’s absence because she was one of the few people who really understood what had happened that fateful night. More than that, she knew how much he missed Liam. He had thought they could share their loss. He shrugged. He would stand on his own feet. He gave a mental grimace. He didn’t have feet any more, only a foot.
    ‘Of course, I didn’t mean you wouldn’t get a wife,’ his father denied hastily. ‘At least not on account of your leg. I meant most modern women prefer a career away from the farm these days. We all have to face facts, Billy. It’s breaking your mother’s heart to see you so frustrated. All our plans and dreams were foryou to take over the farm from us and carry on. Now we count our blessings and we’re thankful you’re alive.’
    In his heart Billy knew his parents only wanted what they thought was best for him. After all, the continuing future of Martinwold had been his father’s dream, as well as his own, and they’d had plans to continue breeding and improving the Martinwold herd.
    Uncle Alex, Aunt Tania and his father had grown up at Bengairney and his mother had spent all her spare time there too. She had always said what a happy home it was when they were young. It was a rented farm but Uncle Alex had continued to live there with his parents until they died. He didn’t have a wife to help him, but he had built up one of the best herds in Scotland, especially since he had farmed alone. Billy knew his own parents had moved into Martinwold when they married but the two farms had been run together as one business until the rift between his father and uncle.

    Billy knew his father had borrowed enough money from the bank to buy Uncle Alex’s share of Martinwold and the two farms had been run independently since then. Having been bought out, Uncle Alex had ample capital to make improvements at Bengairney if he wanted.
    ‘I haven’t made any changes,’ he explained to Billy during one of their discussions at the hospital. ‘I know your father thought I would but I have no wife or family, except for you, laddie, and Bengairney is a rented farm. Improvements would increase the valueof the farm and if it ever comes to sell I’d like to be the one to buy it. There will be time enough for changes if that happens. Meanwhile I reckon land is about the best investment a man can make, especially if he’s a farmer.’ Their discussion had helped Billy understand the rift but he was sorry he had been the unwitting cause.
    On another visit his uncle had admitted the money from selling his share of Martinwold had come in useful in some respects.
    ‘I spent a good bit of money buying in new bloodlines for the Bengairney herd but I’m reaping the rewards now. They are proving a great success. In fact if I sold my herd now I could afford to retire, but I enjoy the challenge too much to give up farming yet.’
    ‘You couldn’t possibly give up, Uncle Alex,’ Billy said. ‘You’re too young and you’d be miserable without your cows.’
    ‘Aye, I suppose I would, though I don’t think that when I’ve to get up in the middle of the night to calve a heifer when its blowing a blizzard.’ They grinned at each other, knowing everything had its ups and downs. Alex Caraford was well known in markets all over the country and his animals continually brought in the highest prices. Two of the Bengairney bulls had been approved for artificial insemination and they had brought in yet more income from semen sales.
    Billy knew his