‘Right,’ he said, and rolled up his sleeves.

It was even harder than he’d thought. He had muscles, built from years of gym work at his well-equipped city hospital, and those muscles didn’t help now. Up to his elbow was easy but then he had to shove hard and it hurt, and even then he could only just touch.

‘Jump!’ the woman yelled, and he and the lamb both jumped-which gave him access to an extra inch of ear. He got a hold.

They were now lying sprawled over the cattle grid with a lamb’s ear each. Neat, Fergus thought, and turned to grin at her.

She wasn’t grinning. She was pressed hard against him, her body warm against his, and she was concentrating solely on sheep.

‘Let go and you’re dead meat,’ she muttered. ‘On the count of three, we pull our ears up.’

‘We’ll break its neck.’

‘I only want to pull him up a couple of inches or so, in a nice smooth pull-no jerking-and then I’ll grab his neck. If I try and pull by one ear, I’ll break his neck. Ready, set… Now!’

What happened to the one, two, three? But he was ready and he’d gone beyond arguing. He tugged the lamb upward, she grabbed-and somehow she had a handful of wool at the back of the little creature’s neck.

Then she had more orders.

‘Shove your hand under its belly,’ she gasped, as she tugged the creature higher, and he did and thirty seconds later they had a shivery, skinny, still damply newborn lamb rising out of the pit into the late afternoon sun.

‘Oh, hooray,’ the woman whispered. She struggled to her feet, cradling the lamb against her, and for the first time Fergus managed to get a proper look at her.

She was in her late twenties, he thought, deciding she wasn’t a whole lot younger than his thirty-four years. She was five feet four or five, dressed in ancient jeans and an even more ancient windcheater. Her tousled curls were blowing everywhere. Freckles were smattered over a pert and pretty nose. She was liberally mud-spattered, but somehow the mud didn’t matter. She was patting the lamb, but her clear brown eyes were assessing him with a candour that made him feel disconcerted.