Cotswold Wool
"Rare breed shepherd Margaret tends Cotswold sheep on historic common land. When knitwear designer James needs authentic fleece, she gives him more than wool."
Cotswold sheep had made this region famous—golden fleece that built wool churches and manor houses, the medieval equivalent of oil money. Now there were barely a thousand left, and I kept a flock of thirty on common land that had grazed sheep since Domesday.
"Ms. Fletcher?"
The man approaching had city written all over him, but his eyes held genuine interest in my sheep.
"Margaret. And mind where you step—lambing season."
"James Morrison. I design knitwear using heritage wools. I've been searching for authentic Cotswold fleece."
"Most designers want something easier."
"Most designers want something cheaper. I want something real."
Real became our shared language. Over months of visits, James learned what heritage breeding actually meant—not just keeping sheep, but maintaining genetics, preserving bloodlines, fighting the economics that said his easier designers were right.
"Why do you do this?" he asked during month four. We were sharing dinner in my stone cottage, sheep visible through the window.
"Because someone has to. Because the breed shaped this landscape—the walls, the villages, everything you see came from wool money." I gestured outside. "If the sheep disappear, we lose the reason this place looks the way it does."
"That's heritage as living practice."
"That's common sense. Heritage that doesn't live isn't heritage—it's museum."
"That's exactly what I've been trying to say with my designs." He reached across the table. "Margaret. Meeting you has changed how I think about my work."
"I'm just a shepherd."
"You're a guardian. Of genetics, of landscape, of things that matter." His hand found mine. "I want to be a guardian too."
We kissed in my cottage while the sheep settled for the night, his designer mouth warm against my shepherdess lips. The centuries of breeding behind my flock seemed to approve.
"The bedroom's through there," I said.
"Show me how shepherds live."
We made love while the flock dreamed outside, our bodies finding warmth that wool had provided for millennia. James touched me with designer's appreciation—understanding texture, valuing what work had built.
"You're beautiful," he said.
"I'm built for lambing."
"You're built for nurturing." He kissed down my body. "The most beautiful thing I've touched."
We came together while sheep genetics continued their ancient work, both of us finding completion that felt like conservation—preserving something valuable. When I gasped his name, it was with the same satisfaction I felt at healthy lambs.
"Stay," I said.
"On the common?"
"In my flock. In my life." I touched his face. "The fleece goes to London. You could too—back and forth. Or you could just stay."
He stayed. His designs now feature Cotswold wool prominently, and the story behind them makes them sell for prices that actually support conservation. The flock has expanded; the breed is safer.
"We're breeders together now," James said one night.
"We're conservators together."
"Is that different?"
"It's better. Breeding is biology. Conservation is choice." I pulled him closer. "We chose each other. That's what matters."
The sheep still graze. The wool still grows. And now there's a designer who became a shepherd's partner, who found in golden fleece everything he'd been weaving toward.