Читать книгу Blood Brothers - Anne/Lucy Mcallister/Gordon - Страница 10

How hard could it be?

Gabe was determined to look on the positive side. There was no point, after all, in bemoaning his impulsive decision. He’d said he would do it, and so he would. No big deal.

Randall apparently did this sort of thing all the time—dashed in on his white horse—no, make that, sped in in his silver Rolls-Royce—and rescued provincial newspapers from oblivion, set them on their feet, beefed up their advertising revenues, sparked up their editorial content, improved their economic base and sped away again—just like that.

Well, fine. Gabe would, too. No problem. No problem at all.

The problem was finding the damn place!

Gabe scowled now as he drove Earl’s old Range Rover through the gray morning drizzle that had accompanied him from London, along the narrow winding lane banked by dripping hedgerows taller than his head.

He’d visited the ancestral pile before, of course, but he’d never driven himself. And he’d always come in the middle of summer, not in what was surely the dampest, gloomiest winter in English history.

He’d left way before dawn this morning, goaded by Earl having said something about Randall always getting “an early start.” He’d done fine on the motorway, despite still having momentary twitches when, if his concentration lapsed, he thought he was driving on the wrong side of the road.

It had almost been easier when he’d got down into the back country of Devon and the roads had ceased having sides and had become narrow one-lane roads. His only traumas then came when he met a car coming in the other direction and he had to decide which way to move. Finally though, he found a sign saying BUCKWORTHY 3 mi and below it STANTON ABBEY 2 mi.

He turned onto that lane, followed it—and ended up on a winding track no wider than the Range Rover.

He felt like a steer on its way to the slaughterhouse—funneled into a chute with no way out.

And there was an apt metaphor for you, he thought grimly.

The lane twisted again, the hedgerows loomed. The windshield wipers swept back and forth, condensation rose. Gabe muttered under his breath.

Where were the wide-open spaces when you needed them?

“Damn!” He rounded the next blind curve and found himself coming straight up the rear tire of an antiquated bicycle that wobbled along ahead of him.

He swerved. There was no time to hit the brakes. The rider swerved at the same time—fortunately in the opposite direction.

Gabe breathed again as he passed, leaving the bicyclist, who appeared to be an elderly woman swaddled in a faded red sweater over more clothes than were necessary to get through a Montana winter, staring after him, doubtless unnerved, but fortunately unscathed.

It wouldn’t have done to have flattened a local.

“I thought you intended to save the Gazette, not make headlines in it,” he could well imagine Earl saying sarcastically.

Earl had openly scoffed when Gabe had proposed to take care of things and be back in a week.

“A week? You think you’re going to turn ten years worth of sliding sales, bad management and terrible writing around in a week?”

“Well, two, then,” Gabe had muttered. How the hell was he supposed to know? He’d never saved a newspaper before. He barely even read them—beyond checking the price of steers and maybe glancing at the sports page.

“Two months,” Earl had said loftily. “If you’re clever.”

Two months? Gabe had stared. “I have to be back for calving and branding come spring!” he protested.

“Guess you’ll have to leave it to Randall then,” Earl had said with a bland smile.

Like hell he would!

He’d said he would rescue the Gazette. And damn it, he would. No matter how long it took.

He knew Randall, too, thought he’d blow it. He’d spent half the night before Gabe left giving him advice. “Just go in there and lay down the law. Speak authoritatively.”

“Be the lord and master, you mean?” Gabe said derisively.

“Exactly. Speak softly but carry a big stick.”

“Teddy Roosevelt said that.”

Randall blinked. “Did he? Well, he must have stolen it from us.” Then he’d clapped Gabe on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Everything will be right as rain if you just…well, no matter. If you can’t, you just ring me up.”

“No, I can’t,” Gabe said smugly. “You’ll be in Montana.”

That was the other part of the deal. Gabe would do his job if Randall would oversee the ranch.

“Nothing to it,” Gabe had reassured his cousin, though Randall hadn’t looked all that cheerful at the prospect. “Piece of cake.”

And this would be, too, he assured himself. And if it wasn’t, he’d get it done anyway. He’d show both Earl and Randall. He was tired of having everybody think he couldn’t last at anything for longer than eight seconds.

But one look at Stanton Abbey when he finally found it, and Gabe thought if he made eight seconds he’d be lucky.

He’d last visited Stanton Abbey when he was ten. He was thirty-two now. It hadn’t changed. Of course, twenty-two years in the life of Stanton Abbey was a mere blink of an eye.

The original building was seven hundred years old if it was a day. There had been additions over the years. The damp dark stone building sat on the hillside like a squat, stolid Romanesque stone toad with slightly surprised gothic eyebrows.

The surprise no doubt came in part from having had a Tudor half-timbered extension grafted onto one side and a neoclassical wing tacked onto the other. Since the eighteenth century nothing had been added, thank heavens. The upkeep on what was already there had kept two hundred years of Stantons busy enough.

Gabe had never really envied Randall the earldom. His first adult look at Stanton Abbey gave him no reason to change his opinion. In fact he wondered that Randall hadn’t said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” long ago.

When he was ten, Gabe had thought Stanton Abbey an endlessly fascinating place. He and Randall had chased each other down long stone corridors, had hidden from Earl in the priest’s hole and had raced to see who could first get through the garden maze.

Anyone who ventured into the garden now, Gabe thought as he stared at the brambles and bushes, had better mark a trail or he’d never be seen again.

Randall had tried to warn him.

“It’s a bit overgrown,” he’d said. “We keep up with the house. Got to, you know. It’s a listed building, grade one, and all that. And Freddie’s done a wonderful job with the renovations. Still, every time I go down it seems some timbers need replacing—and there’s been a spot of bother with the rising damp.”

Rising?

Drowning, more like. Gabe could feel it permeating his bones. Had he really committed himself to living here for the next two months?

In a word, yes. And he wasn’t about to turn tail and run. Earl would never let him live it down.

Well, if Randall could do it, so could he.

He’d just find Freddie the caretaker to let him in.

Frederica Crossman was not expecting visitors.

That was why she was still in her nightgown and down on her hands and knees on the stone-flagged floor of Stanton Abbey’s dower house at ten o’clock on Monday morning, trying to coax her son Charlie’s on-loan-from-school-over-the-Christmas-holidays rabbit out from under the refrigerator.

Charlie was supposed to have taken it with him, but he hadn’t managed to catch it before he left for school this morning.

“It absolutely has to be back today, Mum,” he’d told her, “or I’m toast.”

“I’ll catch him,” Freddie had promised blithely at ten minutes to eight. She’d been trying ever since.

Now she could almost reach the little creature. If only she had longer fingers…or the rotten bunny wasn’t terrified…or…

The knock on the door startled her. She jerked and banged her head on the desk next to the refrigerator. “Blast!”

Another knock came, louder and more persistent than the first.

Freddie didn’t want to answer. She knew precisely who it was—Mrs. Peek. Freddie had been expecting her ever since she’d learned yesterday that Stanton Publishing had bought The Gazette. Mrs. Peek, the village’s most ardent gossip, was bound to appear, eager for a cup of tea and the latest news.

Freddie was only surprised it had taken her so long.

When Lady Adelaide Bore, a member of another Family Of Note in the neighborhood, had run off with her groom, Mrs. Peek had known about it before the ink was dry on the farewell note.

A third imperious knock.

Irritably, Freddie pulled Charlie’s old mac around her like a dressing gown and, still rubbing the bump on her head, opened the back door.

It wasn’t Mrs. Peek.

It was a man. A lean, ruggedly handsome man with thick, ruffled dark hair and intense blue eyes. A memorable man.

Freddie remembered him at least. And she had no doubt that Mrs. Peek would, too.

It was Lord Randall Stanton. The heir.

Or was it? Suddenly Freddie wasn’t sure.

Freddie had met Lord Randall Stanton two or three times when he’d brought his grandfather down for a visit to the ancestral home. Lord Randall had always been charming, solicitous, unfailingly polite. Very public school. All his tailoring bespoke. She couldn’t imagine him being caught dead in blue jeans.

But blue jeans, faded and worn in exceedingly interesting places, were just what this man wore. Even more astonishing, he had a huge shiny gold object affixed to the center of his belt. A buckle? Freddie had seen serving platters that were smaller!

“Hi,” he said and gave her the famous Stanton grin.

His American accent settled one issue. Whoever he was, he wasn’t Lord Randall.

“Hello?” Freddie replied cautiously. She clutched Charlie’s mac tightly around her.

The grooves at the corners of his smile deepened. “I’m Gabe McBride. I’m looking for the caretaker of Stanton Abbey. Is he in?”

“He?”

It was not one of Freddie’s finer moments.

Caretakers were not always men. She suspected even the American Mr. McBride would be willing to admit that. But even he, she imagined, would expect a caretaker of either sex to be dressed by ten o’clock in the morning.

But before she could panic about that, she caught sight of the rabbit out of the corner of her eye as it dashed from beneath the refrigerator toward the old cooker. “’Scuse me!” Freddie exclaimed and plunged after it.

She expected Gabe McBride, obviously some relation to the Stantons as his likeness marched up and down the portrait hall at the abbey, to stand by and watch her make a fool of herself.

She was astonished when he joined her.

“Is it a rat?” He was on his knees beside her, all eagerness, his dark hair shedding drops of rain on the flagstone floor.

She shook her head. “A bunny.”

“A bunny? A rabbit?”

“Yes! Here, Cosmo! Cosmo, come here! There’s a nice bunny. It’s time for school, Cosmo.” She was crawling on the floor, trying to stretch toward the back of the cooker where she could see the rabbit hunched, its beady left eye looking straight at her.

“I’ll get it.” Gabe McBride flopped down on his belly next to her. He scrabbled forward, reaching for the bunny who, seeing he was outnumbered, feinted left, looked right and skittered right between the two of them and ran into the dining room.

Freddie bit off a very unladylike exclamation, leapt to her feet and, still clutching the mac around her, ran after it with Gabe McBride in close pursuit.

“You go that way,” he directed. “I’ll go this.” He jerked his head, directing her. “We’ll head him off at the pass.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He grinned. It was lethal.

It was a good job, Freddie thought, that she was on her knees already, else she’d be lying out flat on the flagstones that very minute. And letting the man have his way with you.

“Never!” she exclaimed aloud.

“What?” said Gabe McBride.

Freddie shook her head. “N-nothing. I was just saying we’re never going to catch him.”

“Sure we will. Just do what I told you.” He edged around the other way. “Be real still. I’ll flush him out toward you. Ready?”

Still reeling from her aberrant, wholly inappropriate thoughts, Freddie crouched, feeling like a goalkeeper at the ready, nightgown and mac draped around her.

Gabe McBride got on his belly again and stretched beneath the china cabinet. The rabbit watched worriedly. Gabe’s fingers got closer and closer.

“Yes,” she breathed. “You’re going to…”

Then all of a sudden, Gabe smacked his hands together in a loud clap. The rabbit shot out directly toward Freddie.

“Gotcha!” And she fell over on her rear end, clutching the rabbit gently in both hands. Her heart slammed against the wall of her chest.

From the exhilaration of the chase, she assured herself, not from the handsome American grinning down at her!

“Way to go!” He was breathing heavily, too, and his shirttails were pulled out and he had a button undone.

There came a knock. The door opened. “Yoo-hoo, m’dear?” called Mrs. Peek. “Anybody home?”

Freddie was a girl!

Well, actually she was a woman—and quite a woman at that, with her tumbling wavy dark hair and her flushed cheeks. Not to mention the womanly curves and heaving bosom Gabe had been treated to as they’d chased down the rabbit.

“I’m the caretaker,” she told him breathlessly as she carried the rabbit to its cage.

“You’re Freddie?”

“Frederica,” she said firmly. “My husband worked for Earl Stanton.” At his quizzical look she added, “Mark died four years ago.”

This entire conversation took place in the scant moments it took for them to return to the kitchen, rabbit in tow, and intercept an elderly woman in a red sweater who was making herself at home in the kitchen. She was, Gabe realized, the one with the bicycle he’d almost mowed down in the lane.

She was looking from one to the other of them, blue eyes alight with curiosity.

“This is Mr. McBride. Mr. McBride, meet Mrs. Peek,” Freddie-the-caretaker said briskly as she put the rabbit in the cage on the table.

Gabe nodded politely and shook the woman’s hand, but his attention never strayed very far from the delectable Freddie. He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off her since she’d opened the door to him wearing that ridiculous too-small raincoat over what looked to be a nightgown.

A soft flannel nightgown with sprigs of some kind of purple flowers on it such as, his fashion-conscious sister Martha would have said, only sexless grannies wore. Martha would have been wrong. Big time.

Gabe sucked in another careful breath.

“Have you got a pain, Mr. McBride?” Mrs. Peek asked.

“What?”

“You seems to be havin’ trouble breathing.”

Well, yes. But mostly he was having more trouble controlling what Earl would doubtless call “his baser nature.”

Freddie-the-caretaker was enticing as all get out. Still, he didn’t think his grandfather would look kindly on his throwing the resident caretaker down on the kitchen table and having his way with her. Especially not with the old lady in the red sweater avidly looking on.

Mrs. Peek, he decided after a few minutes’ conversation, was very well named.

Nothing happened in the village of Buckworthy that Mrs. Peek didn’t know about. She certainly knew about him!

“Come t’run the Gazette,” she said, bobbing her head in approval. Then her brows arched behind her glasses and she looked from him to Freddie-the-caretaker with her loose hair and mussed nightgown and said, “And a mighty fast worker he is, too.”

“Mr. McBride came for the keys to the abbey,” Freddie said firmly. But while she contrived to sound firm and businesslike, her hands fluttered around, as if she was torn between smoothing her disheveled hair or clutching the raincoat even tighter.

As she was managing to do neither, Gabe just stood there and enjoyed the view. The prospect of spending two months in Devon was looking brighter all the time.

“Us could do with a cup of tea,” Mrs Peek said.

Freddie put on the kettle.

Mrs. Peek smiled brightly. “You’re the young lord’s cousin, then? The American. Has the look of ’is lordship, he does,” she pronounced. “He were right han’sum, too. Th’ earl, I mean. Cedric.” Mrs. Peek’s voice softened and became almost dreamy. Her cheeks were already red from the cold, but if they hadn’t been Gabe felt sure that the thought of Earl might have contributed.

Earl? Make someone’s heart beat faster? Now there was a sobering thought.

“You know my grandfather, Mrs. Peek?”

The ruddy color on her cheeks deepened. She looked a little flustered. “Us was…acquainted.”

Gabe bet they were. And very well acquainted at that. Mrs. Peek had to be seventy-five if she was a day, and it was a little hard to imagine her and Earl getting it on. But then it was a little hard imagining Earl once looking like him!

“I’ll give him your regards when I talk to him,” he said. “I just came down from Stanton House where we celebrated his birthday.”

That, of course, required a detailed description of the birthday party. Mrs. Peek was all ears. Freddie, to Gabe’s dismay, excused herself after she’d poured the tea.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. “I just need to get more…presentable.” Her hands were fluttering still.

“Don’t bother on my account,” Gabe grinned.

Freddie clutched the raincoat across her midsection and said firmly, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“’Er’s a dear soul, our Freddie,” Mrs. Peek said the moment Freddie was out of earshot. “Always workin’, ’er is. Too much for one woman, keepin’ up wi’ the abbey, but can’t tell her so. Good job you’ve come. Right proper Stantons gettin’ the Gazette an’ old Cedric sendin’ his very own grandson to set things right. As well he should,” she said firmly. “This bein’ his old home, an’ all. Th’ neighborhood needs ’er gentlemen.”

Gabe looked over his shoulder, then realized the gentleman in question was him! He began to feel a bit of the responsibility Randall seemed to shoulder so easily.

“I’ll do my best.”

Mrs. Peek nodded eagerly “You’ve got plans?”

“Have to see it first. Check things out. Assess the situation. Develop a plan of attack.” He was pretty sure that was the sort of claptrap Randall would have come up with when pressed. “I’ll know more in the next few days.”

“That’s for sure.” Mrs. Peek smiled.

Gabe wasn’t sure what she meant by that cryptic comment. She finished her cup of tea, then got up. “Glad you’ve come, me han’sum. Wish’ee well.” Her blue eyes sparkled and Gabe had a glimpse of what Earl must have been drawn by all those years ago. Then, nodding with satisfaction, she added, “’Tis time.”

She was pedaling down the drive when Freddie returned.

Her hair was pulled up and pinned on top of her head, and she was dressed now in jeans and a bright blue loose-necked pullover sweater. She wasn’t quite as obviously delectable as she had been crawling around on the floor in her nightgown giving him a glimpse of long lovely legs, but Gabe had a good memory.

“Where’s Mrs. Peek?”

“On her way. She got what she came for.”

Freddie smiled. “She means well. She lives alone and she enjoys a cup of tea and a chat.” Freddie swished through the kitchen, picking up the cups and putting them in the sink. The jeans hugged her hips and thighs. Not bad. Gabe watched them sway, then dragged his gaze upward and his mind back to the point.

He cleared his throat. “I get the feeling she thinks I’m here for good. I’m not.” He wanted that clear right now. “I’m doing Randall…my cousin…a favor. I said I’d sort the Gazette out. I will. Then I’m gone. This is just a one-time deal. I have a ranch back in Montana. I’m a cowboy, not a lord.”

“A cowboy?” Freddie said doubtfully, as if it were in a foreign tongue. Her lips curved. She had very kissable lips.

Gabe wondered what they would taste like.

Had Earl wondered the same thing about Mrs Peek’s the first time he’d seen her? Had she been a pretty young thing, too?

Freddie wasn’t that young, he reminded himself firmly. She was a widow. She had kids old enough to go to school. That made her pretty old herself.

“How old are you?” he asked, unsure why he needed to know. He expected her to say forty or so. Mothers were. His own was nearly sixty, after all.

“Thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one?”

She was younger than he was! Gabe stared at Frederica Crossman, poleaxed. “How old are your kids?” It wasn’t a question as much as an accusation.

“Charlie’s nine. Emma’s seven.”

Gabe opened his mouth. He closed it again, having nothing at all to say. She was thirty-one and her kids were half grown!

That meant he could have kids that old!

No. He couldn’t!

He was barely more than a kid himself.

“It’s not polite to ask someone’s age,” Freddie said tartly, “especially if you’re going to stare at me dumbfounded when I give you an honest answer.”

Gabe flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…I’m just…surprised. You look so…so young.” He’d thought she was an incredibly well-preserved forty.

He shook his head, still trying to sort it out. He’d never thought about aging before. Not himself at least. Earl, yes. The old man was whiter and frailer, even though his voice still boomed and his spirit never flagged.

Randall, too, had aged. There were marked differences between the boy Randall had been at eighteen and the man he’d become.

But Gabe hadn’t really thought it had anything to do with age. He’d just thought Randall looked old because he worked so damn hard.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

Maybe they were all getting older. Earl at least had a life’s work to look back on with pride. And Randall, too, had something to show for it. So apparently did Freddie Crossman, mother of two half-grown children.

What about him? What about Gabriel Phillip McBride?

He looked down at his bull-riding championship belt buckle. Suddenly it didn’t seem like enough.