A Place in Hartcote: the Heart of Country Vet: Book 2

Dr Rachel Webster came to Hartcote for six months. That was three months ago, and she is still here - knowing every farmer's name, every dog's temperament, and the exact number of minutes it takes to drive the back lane to Elmshaw Farm before the sun clears the ridge. She did not quite plan this. Hartcote, it seems, had other ideas. When a seventeen-year-old grey Welsh cob mare called Perpetua begins to show a lameness that refuses to declare itself, Rachel finds herself drawn into the most demanding case of her time at Larkspur Veterinary Surgery. The owner - a retired botanist with very strong views on equine management and a habit of preparing questions in advance - is not the easiest client she has ever managed. But Perpetua is a horse worth getting right, and Rachel is a vet who does not give up on a puzzle simply because it declines to be straightforward. Meanwhile, Hartcote does what small Cotswold towns do best: it pulls her in, quietly and without asking permission. A Sunday service she did not quite intend to attend. A Year Five class with a great many questions and one particularly thorough guinea pig owner. A midnight call on the Copperton road that requires both her skills and her growing knowledge of a place that has begun, without ceremony, to feel like her own. And somewhere in the background, Police Sergeant Tom Fleming keeps crossing her path with the suspicious regularity of a man who describes a five-mile detour as passing. Rachel Webster has not yet decided whether she is staying. But Hartcote, it turns out, has been deciding for her - and *A Place in Hartcote* is the story of what happens when she finds she agrees.