Disclaimer: Don't own these characters. Just for fun.

A/N: Sorry for the delay in getting this second chapter out...sometimes life cooperates with my fanfic habit, and sometimes it doesn't! Thanks to everyone for sticking around.

Chapter Two: Sweet Melody In Tune

The clatter of a pan on the stove woke Helen from a supremely satisfying dream in which she was cocooned in warmth with a pair of strong arms around her. She yawned, stretching, and then sat up abruptly, remembering everything that had happened the day before: James' unexpected proposal. Candy's foaling. The fog. And finally—her cheeks grew pink—their time in front of the fire.

Dressing quickly, she wondered what sort of a night James had passed on the sofa. Wondered if, like her, he'd lain awake, tracing the ghost of their kisses on his lips and remembering how it felt to have his lean body flush up against hers.

She nipped that thought in the bud, heading down to the lounge. Knocking once, she opened the door slowly, but James was already dressed, the blankets and his borrowed pajamas folded neatly on the Chesterfield.

"Mornin'," she said, a bit shyly. "You sleep alright, then?"

"Oh, aye." He strode over to her. There was something different about the way he moved this morning—a lack of hesitation, a happy confidence that showed when he slipped his arms around her, murmured, "Good morning, future Mrs. Herriott," and bent his head to hers. This was no soft peck, but a thorough kiss that brought all of last night's feelings roaring back.

"Oy!" came a girlish voice in the open door, and Helen and James sprang apart. "Eggs are gettin' cold."

"That girl!" muttered Helen, but James only grinned.

They followed Jenny through to the kitchen, full of the rich smell of coffee and sausages. The kitchen was normally Helen's domain, and she sank down in a chair, nonplussed, while Jenny bustled about with plates. James stood, gesturing toward the door. "I should probably be—"

"You'll not leave on an empty stomach," ordered the young handmaiden, setting a plate down and gesturing to the empty seat next to Helen's. Then she called up the back stairs, "Dad! Food's on!"

Helen looked over at James, amused. He offered her a secret smile of his own, and tucked into the eggs. Helen took a bite of hers, and found them…delicious. The sausages, too. Somewhere along the line, Jenny had learned to make a very passable breakfast. And that wasn't all. As Helen and James ate, Jenny listed all the chores she'd already done, only interrupting herself to go back to the stairs and chivvy her father.

"So, there's nowt more for you to do," she finished.

Helen recognized this unwonted industriousness for what it was: Jenny wanting to prove that she could take on Helen's responsibilities. That Helen could leave them—Jenny and her dad—and they would be okay.

A glance at James confirmed he understood this, too. A little misty-eyed, Helen stood. "C'mere you," she said, and hugged the girl tightly. "Thanks," she whispered into Jenny's hair.

"I'm off to school" was the laconic reply, though Helen could see a satisfied smile as Jenny ducked her head.

James stood then, too. "Jenny, I thank you for an outstanding meal. I doubt Mrs. Hall could do better, though let's not be telling her that." Jenny grinned. "I have to get back to the practice, but would ye like a ride to school? It's on the way."

Jenny accepted quickly, and James went to get the rest of his things. Helen followed him back through the lounge. "You'll 'ave made 'er day, takin' her to school," she said.

"It's no trouble."

"Just so you don't let 'er talk you into anything crazy," Helen smiled, thinking of the time James had helped Jenny train Scruff in a field full of sheep.

"What, like proposing on the spur of the moment?" James joked, and got a slap on the arm for his pains, before he pulled her to him one more time. "I'll be back to collect you at five."

"Oh?" she questioned. "That eager, are you?"

His brow furrowed. "My parents? We're having dinner?"

"Oh Lord! What with…everything else…I'd clean forgot!"

"Well, you don't have to—"

She interrupted him with a kiss. "Don't be daft," she said softly. "O' course I want to meet your folks, especially now."

"James!" called Jenny. "I'll be late!"

"Best go," James said, kissing her quickly. "See you at five." And he was gone.

Back in the kitchen, Helen found that Richard had finally come down. "Here, Dad, there's a plate for you." She grabbed a covered dish from the sideboard as he slowly sat down. "Rheumatism botherin' you again?" Helen kept her voice light.

"I'm only needin' to get the kinks out," Richard said irritably, then brightened as he saw his plate. "Well, this is a fine feast. You've outdone yourself."

"'Tweren't me—'twere our Jenny. And she fed and watered the horses and the chickens, too."

"Did she?" Richard's eyes twinkled. "Guess she's tryin' to tell you summat."

"Dad—" Helen began.

"Love," he said, and put his hand over Helen's where it rested on his shoulder. "'E's a grand lad, an' 'e loves you. You've earned some 'appiness, I reckon."

Helen spoke around the lump in her throat. "Well, it's not likely to be for months, so no sense worryin' on it. You'll not be rid o' me yet."

Richard raised one eyebrow. "You sure that's wise?"

"You reckon 'e'll change 'is mind?" she said teasingly.

"Heh," Richard scoffed. "That lad's been gone on yer since the first time 'e saw you…and unless me eyes 'ave stopped workin', you felt the same way, for all you tried to run from it."

For the second time that day, Helen felt her cheeks flush.

"That bein' the way o' things, I think we'd better get you wed afore—"

"Dad!" Helen got even redder, thinking of James' face in the firelight, and the way he'd said he wanted her.

"Don't bother actin' missish. Me and your mum were t' same way." Richard remarked, pushing back his chair and grabbing his cap. "Off t' top field." He stumped out of the kitchen and Helen was left with her thoughts and a sink full of dirty dishes.

The thing was, she mused as she started the hot tap, her father was right. How many times had she come around a corner, to find her parents in a filmworthy clinch—just the same way Jenny had walked in on she and James this morning? And now that James had decided she didn't need to be treated like a priceless bit of glass, what would happen next?

She nearly dropped the plate she was washing, just thinking about it. Get hold of yourself, lass. There were plenty of chores to do—though fewer than there might have been, thanks to Jenny—before James picked her up that afternoon.

The sun was high in the sky when she heard a car coming up the lane. It didn't sound a bit like the Vauxhall, but she couldn't help the little leap her heart gave at the thought that James might've broken up his day with a stop at Heston Grange.

One glance out the barn door, however, revealed a smart two-seater. Behind the wheel, a woman in a close-fitting green hat, blonde curls blowing in the breeze, tootled the horn merrily.

Margo.

As Helen came out onto the drive, wiping her hands on her dungarees, she saw that Hugh was in the passenger seat. "Hello, you lot," she greeted them, conscious of the muck on her boots and Margo's spotless crocheted gloves.

"Hello, Helen. Busy day?" asked Margo.

"Every one is, on a farm." Helen schooled her voice to friendliness; she had nothing against Margo, after all, and of course she was pleased that Hugh had moved on. "Come in for a brew, why don't you?" She gestured toward the front door.

Hugh and Margo looked at each other. "Oh, you're too kind," replied Margo, "but I'm afraid we have a meeting about the Derwent Hunt, over in Scarborough. They've asked Hugh to be Master."

"Oh!" exclaimed Helen, surprised. Hugh hadn't hunted in more than three years, since the accident that had taken his father's life. Well, good for him if he was giving it another chance. "That's—wonderful. Congratulations."

Hugh looked embarrassed. "Yes, well. We just stopped by with these yield figures for your father." He held out an envelope. "Uh, how's James?"

Helen took the envelope, stowing it under her arm as she considered how to respond. She and James hadn't had time this morning to talk about whether they would keep their engagement private…though surely he would want to tell his parents, and everyone at Skeldale House? And if Tristan knew about it, it would be all over North Yorkshire in no time. Perhaps it would be a kindness to tell Hugh herself—

Hugh and Margo were looking at her oddly, she realized. "Oh—sorry—'e's fine. Should be fetchin' his parents at the station about now—I'm meetin' them tonight at dinner. I'm in a bit of a state," she finished, by way of covering up her hesitation.

"How—exciting." Hugh cleared his throat, and went on more warmly. "I'm sure it'll go smashingly."

"Thanks, Hugh," Helen said, and meant it.

Margo's eyes narrowed. "Big step, isn't it? I didn't realize you two were so…"

It took all Helen's willpower not to snap back, "No bigger step than gettin' married." Instead, she said calmly, "They've never been to Darrowby yet, so of course he wants them to meet the people most important to him."

"Indeed," Margo replied, smiling thinly. "Well, I admire your fortitude. I'm certainly glad our families—" she took Hugh's hand—"have known each other for an age. Makes it so much easier."

But the dig perhaps brought Margo less satisfaction than she'd bargained, for Helen said with a grin, "Oh, aye, I remember!"

Hugh, apparently having had enough of this silent battle, squeezed Margo's hand. "Hadn't we better be off, darling?"

Margo smiled dazzlingly at him. "Of course, darling." Turning back to Helen, she gave a little wave. "Lovely to see you!"

"You too!"

As the little car sped away, Helen had to laugh. Things certainly worked out the way they were meant to, even if they took a few wrong turns first. The funny thing was, it might have been Hugh and Margo all along.

Hugh, Margo, Helen: they'd been quite a trio, once. As kids, there hadn't seemed much difference between them. Sure, Hugh and Margo lived in bigger houses and had fancier cakes for tea, but the three of them had run wild together all over the Dales, fishing and climbing trees and playing stickball with the other local children.

Then Hugh had gone off to prep school and Margo had acquired a governess. Hugh came home only in the holidays, and Margo put aside her dungarees and worried about getting "too brown." Helen might have been lonely, but she had a new baby sister at home and other friends from the village school.

Class distinctions in Yorkshire weren't quite as rigid as they were other places, and as the daughter of a prosperous farmer, Helen was welcomed everywhere. She, Hugh, and Margo still saw each other, only now it was at garden parties and cricket matches.

Then one year, Hugh didn't come home after the summer term, but went with his family to Italy. Helen and Margo didn't see him until Christmas, and in that time, Hugh had lost his puppy fat and grown into his large white teeth. He came back, well…handsome.

It was obvious that Margo noticed. She set her cap for him, looking up through her lashes when she spoke to him, covering her pretty mouth with one white hand when she laughed, and shaking her blond curls whenever he came near.

Hugh didn't pay much attention that first Christmas, but how long could a young man hold out against an onslaught of such charms? By the next summer, the two of them could often be found whispering over the tea table or taking long rides through the Dales. Helen was a fine horsewoman too, but work on the farm didn't leave much time for gallivanting.

That might have been that, except that in the autumn of 1934, two things happened: first, Margo left to spend the year in Switzerland at a fancy finishing school.

And then, hot on the heels of a particularly elusive fox, Hugh's father sent his bay mare flying over a stream, only to have her sink forelock-deep in the boggy ground left by a recent rain. Andromeda's leg snapped, and Arthur Hulton was jolted from the saddle straight into the nearest tree.

Hugh came down from Cambridge immediately, of course. He was devastated—he and his father shared a closeness born of a mutual love of their land and their horses, and their mutual grief over Mrs. Hulton's early death. Now, at 21, Hugh was responsible for a large estate, a dozen tenant farmers, and a stable of valuable racing stock.

Helen was still at Heston Grange, having quietly put her plans for secretarial college on hold. She took on more and more at the house, chivvying Jenny to do her homework and mending her school uniform. Her mother was "just tired" she said, and "needed a bit of a rest"…but day by day she faded a little more, until she slipped away entirely.

At the funeral, Hugh had been there, letting Helen grip his hand tightly so she wouldn't cry. He started coming over of an afternoon, talking crop rotation with Richard and throwing a ball with Jenny. When the chores were done, he and Helen would tramp over their old haunts. They shared their worries: which crops might fail, which stallions Hugh should breed, Jenny's struggles at school, the cow who had ringworm.

It didn't really surprise Helen, one chilly November day, when he turned to her and said, "You're the only one who understands." She did, and when he kissed her, it felt churlish to push him away. He was hurting, and she could help, and his lips were warm and pleasant (he didn't slobber all over her the way one or two other boys had tried to) and his arms felt safe around her.

She asked him, once, about Margo. He had looked disoriented, like her name was one he'd heard long ago. "There was never anything between me and Margo," he said, surprised.

"I'll warrant that's not what she thinks," replied Helen.

He mistook her concern for insecurity and reassured her that it was she, Helen, whom he wanted. It didn't seem worthwhile to correct him, especially since he was due back at Cambridge in a few weeks' time.

But then there was a problem with the wheat, and one of his horses turned up lame, and there was 'flu on the estate. Young as he was, Hugh didn't feel right about leaving it all in the steward's hands just so he could, as he put it, "swot over some useless Greek."

So he stayed. And rather than ending, their temporary romance went on. Soon they were known to be a couple, and Helen couldn't think it was a coincidence when news came that Margo was to spend another year abroad.

Being with Hugh was comfortable. It was easy. He treated her father with respect, despite the fact that Hugh was now Richard's landlord. He was good with Jenny, too, and he understood Helen's connection to the land.

It seemed like enough. It seemed, in fact, more than most people could claim in this life.

Until a certain veterinarian came all the way from Glasgow to their little village. A man who stood up to Siegfried. A man who wasn't ashamed to look a bit ridiculous, and who took his initiation at the hands of the locals in good humor. A man who gazed at her with a light in his eyes that she'd never seen in Hugh's…a light that was eclipsed by fathomless pain that she felt in her own gut when she told him she was marrying Hugh.

Of course she should've broken with Hugh sooner, only everything seemed to be moving too fast, and everyone kept telling her she was so lucky (everyone except Margo, finally back from Europe, who could barely bite out a "Best wishes"), and the invitations were sent and the cake was baked and…well.

If she had been braver, she supposed, it needn't have been so painful. But if it hadn't been so painful, she might not have been so grateful for the second chance she was getting. It looked like Hugh and Margo were getting a second chance, too.

All's well that ends well, she thought…just so long as James' parents didn't hate her for keeping him in Yorkshire.

By the time the Vauxhall pulled into the drive, Helen was in as much of a palaver as the chickens she was trying desperately to round up.

"Careful! You'll get messed up!" Jenny scolded her, as Helen folded one red hen under each arm. "James' parent's'll have us down as a right bunch of scruffbags!"

"Yeah, well, they need to be taken in—else they'll be roostin' all over the place!"

"Give 'em 'ere! Give 'em 'ere!" Jenny pulled the hens from her, just as James came around the front of the car.

"Ready to go?" he asked, looking amused.

Helen nodded. "Just got to see if Dad needs anythin' first."

"Don't worry," James said quietly. "They're going to love you!" Helen had her doubts about that, but smiled gratefully at him nonetheless. Then he said, "Is that..d'you have something on the back of your dress?"

She twisted round, sure she must have chicken feathers dusting her backside, but there was nothing. When she turned back, there was James, on one knee in the gravel with a ring box in his upturned hand.

She gasped.

"Who says I can't make romantic gestures?" he grinned.

How had he gotten a ring so fast? she thought, as her heart pounded madly. "Get up, you daft beggar," she said, to cover her emotion. As she held her hand out for him to slide the ring on her finger, she realized she had seen it before, hundreds and hundreds of times, as the work-roughened hand kneaded bread, scattered grain to the chickens, or stroked Helen's own cheek.

"Is that—is that me mum's?" she choked.

"It is."

Helen heard her father's boots crunch in the gravel and looked up. He nodded gruffly, and she knew there was no greater show of his approval than passing his beloved Joan's ring to James. It sealed them together—past, present, future—and she could see in James' eyes that he knew it, too. "Thank you," she said, pulling him close by the lapels of his jacket and kissing him fiercely. "Thank you...for understanding what this means to me."

James wiped away a single tear from her cheek. "Always."

Once they were in the car, she blew out a breath.

"You honestly don't need to be so nervous," he reassured her.

"What makes you think I'm nervous?"

James laughed. "You've smoothed your skirt down so many times, you'll rub right through the fabric." He reached over and took her right hand, resting it with his on the gear shift.

"I don't suppose you told them already?" Helen asked hopefully.

Now it was James' turn to look anxious. "No—I—thought it might be better to have them meet you first."

"Meet the woman who's stolen their son away, y'mean?" She put a hand over her eyes. "Your mother will never forgive me."

"Don't worry—I'll tell them it's not because of you!"

It was the best thing he could have said, because it restored her to her usual acerbity. "So you're just stayin' for Phyllis' cows and Gerald's dog, then?"

Bringing her hand to his lips, James kissed it. "Come now, mo chridhe, you smell a sight better than any of them."

He nearly swerved off the road when she slapped his shoulder, but at least she didn't feel so edgy anymore.

Well. It might have gone worse.

With truly unfortunate timing, they had arrived at Skeldale House just after Mrs. Herriott had announced that James would be leaving for the job in Glasgow. James hadn't even had a chance to respond to Siegfried's strangled rage when his mother turned to them and demanded, "Who's this, then? Aren't you going to introduce us?"

James presented Helen as his fiancée. Mrs. Herriott went white to the lips, and Helen feared she would faint.

Fortunately, Mrs. Hall's tact was up to the task, and she ushered Siegfried and Tristan out. Helen and James sat down with his parents, and wrestled the evening back from the brink of disaster.

Helen thought she'd done rather well, speaking fervently about the good James had done, and assuring them how much she loved their son. She'd won Mr. Herriott over, at least, and Mrs. Herriott was able to maintain a stiff upper lip about James' new life that lasted just until she boarded the bus back to Scotland.

She'd thought that the evening at the Drover's, full of toasts and congratulations, had set things back to rights, but James had been quiet all the way back to Heston Grange. Now, he sat silently at the table while she filled the kettle.

"Penny for 'em," Helen remarked, setting the kettle on the hob.

James started. "Wha—sorry," he stammered, looking guiltily at her. "I'm afraid I wasn't listening."

"Aye, away with the fairies, y'were." She took two cups from the draining board and set them on the table. "Are ye goin' to tell me what's got you in t'clouds?"

He rubbed one hand over his face. "It's nothing—it was only Tristan, having a laugh."

Helen thought back to the pub that night, and Tristan laughingly demanding if she was planning "to go through with it this time." Ruddy gormless twit.

"I'm only saying what we're all thinking," she quoted Tristan quietly. The kettle whistled in the background, and she could see on James' face that she'd hit the mark. "That what you were thinkin' too, then?" Helen kept her voice deliberately calm as she poured the tea.

"Not really." James looked at his hands. "It's just—well, it was rather sudden, and I—"

"Afraid I don't know me own mind, are ye?" she asked tartly.

"No!" he protested…but he sipped his tea to avoid looking at her. "I know you love me, but…are you sure you're ready for this?" With one finger, he traced Joan's ring, slowly bringing his eyes to hers.

There was such a mixture of fear, concern, and hopefulness on his face that her irritation melted. She turned her palm over, twining his fingers with hers, and spoke very low. "When Hugh asked me to marry him, it seemed that everyone was expectin' it. I thought about my dad and Jenny, how it would smooth everythin' out for them. I didn't think I had a good reason to say no." She paused, weighing her next words. "When you proposed, I don't think anyone saw it comin'…certainly not me—"

"Nor me." James smiled wryly.

"Aye, that was clear enough," she laughed, and then went on, a little shakily. "But when you said you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me, the only word in my heart was 'yes'."

Relief flooded James' face. He leaned forward and kissed her lingeringly.

"I hope you've learned your lesson," she said mock-sternly, when he let her go.

He gave her a heavy-lidded glance. "I'm not sure…perhaps you'll have to show me again." And he slipped an arm around her, pulling her onto his knee.

"Oh, I think you've had quite enough instruction in that," she chuckled, pushing him back lightly. "I meant that y'need to talk to me when somethin' is nettlin' ye. If you want to know ought, just ask me."

Something passed through his eyes then, a sharpening of focus, but he said only, "You're perfectly right. Now can I kiss you again?"

The tea grew quite cold, but neither of them noticed.

A/N: I made up Helen, Margo, & Hugh's backstory out of whole cloth...hope it worked! Thanks so much for reading, and I'd love to hear what you think. :)