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Randall’s head jerked around. “What engagement?”
“To Lady Honoria, or Lady Serena or Lady Melanie Wicks-Havering, or whoever. Time you did your duty to the House of Stanton, my lad.”
“Stop sounding like Earl,” Randall said in a harassed voice.
Gabe laughed. “So you’ve evaded the pack so far? But how long can the fox stay ahead? Tally Hoooo!” Gabe’s imitation of a hunting cry was excruciating.
“If I had my hands free I’d ram something down your gullet,” Randall muttered. “We can’t all flit from flower to flower with no thought for tomorrow.”
“Like I said, the ol’ green-eyed monster seems to have bit you but good.”
“Go to hell, McBride!”
“Oh, I reckon I will,” Gabe said cheerfully, and settled back as if satisfied that he’d done his bit for international relations.
Earl was looking older.
Of course Gabe had seen him last three years ago when the old man had come to Montana for a month’s visit. Then he’d seemed spry and ageless, his thick shock of white hair framing a relatively unlined face, his bright blue eyes brimming with enthusiasm and his every word outlining some new plan—mostly, Gabe remembered, ones that involved work for Randall.
But now he saw lines in the old man’s face. He saw a faint tremble in Earl’s fingers when, at the eightieth birthday bash, the old man had raised his glass at his grandsons’ toast to “eighty more years as adventure-filled as the last eighty.”
He saw that some day Earl wouldn’t be around anymore.
But he also saw that it was just possible that Randall would die first—of overwork.
Gabe had been in England two days, and while he’d spent a fair amount of time with the earl, he’d barely seen his cousin after Randall had dropped him off at Stanton House in Belgravia and had left.
“Got to be in Glasgow for a meeting,” Randall said apologetically. “Catch you later.”
But he hadn’t. Since Gabe’s arrival, Randall had been variously in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and Penzance. The most Gabe heard from him was a phone call or another apologetic message. He barely even made it to Earl’s birthday bash.
He rang to say he’d be a bit late, and when he finally blew in, he stayed long enough for the toast and a piece of cake, and then he excused himself to make calls about a buyout.
Gabe, on the other hand, had a wonderful time. He discussed horseflesh with a couple of his grandfather’s cronies, wrapped himself around a fantastic meal. He danced with all the pretty ladies—of whom there were plenty—and flirted with the prettiest of the lot—a stunning blonde called Natasha, who looked at him with big violet eyes and said, “You’re not much like your cousin, are you?”
“Nope,” Gabe replied cheerfully. “Thank God.”
When the party finally ended, Randall still hadn’t returned. He was probably off somewhere making more money for Stanton Publishing or stopping the cash from flowing out of the Stanton ancestral coffers.
Gabe glanced at his watch. “Have you ever considered giving him a day off?” He and the earl were in the library, cozily ensconced in deep leather chairs, quaffing the best single malt scotch Gabe had ever tasted, and Gabe thought the old man looked mellow enough to allow him to consider broaching the subject.
“Day off?” Earl snorted. “Day off? Nobody ever gave me a day off! Earls don’t get days off.”
Gabe smiled thinly. Poor old Randall. “Reckon I’m glad I’m just a lowly commoner then.” He raised his glass in toast. “To the rabble. Long may we loaf.”
Earl made a harrumphing sound. “You needn’t be so almighty proud of it, my lad. Most men, by your age, have something to show for their lives.”
“You, for instance?” Gabe knew damned well the old man had been a wastrel in his salad days. It had taken a very determined Lady Cornelia Abercrombie-Jones to take Cedric David Phillip Stanton in hand, get a marriage proposal out of him and put an end to his frivolous ways.
“We aren’t talking about me,” Earl said huffily.
“You’re not,” Gabe agreed, “because you know it will undercut your case. I don’t care that you were a hellion. In fact, I’m all for it, as you know.” He grinned. “I just think you ought to allow Randall a shot at a little hell-raising—before you croak and make sure he never gets a day off.”
“You think I’m about to stick my spoon in the wall?”
“Does that mean die? No, probably not. But someday you’re going to. And if Randall hasn’t lived, who can tell what he might do with the Stanton legacy, with all those ‘burdens’ and ‘responsibilities’ you keep loading on him. He might just throw it all away!”
Earl’s face turned bright red. “Randall would never—!”
“How do you know? Have you ever let him out past ten o’clock? Except on business?”
Gabe never heard the answer to that question because the next moment the library door opened and Randall returned. A satisfied smile lit his often sober face. “We’ve done it. We’ve got the Gazette!”
“Another Gazette?” Gabe groaned. “How many Gazettes, Echoes, Advertisers, Recorders and whatever else does that make?”
Stanton Publishing specialized in local newspapers, and owned eighty, all over the country.
“This is the Buckworthy Gazette,” Randall said triumphantly. “We’ve been after it for years.”
“Ah.” Gabe nodded in comprehension. The family seat was situated near the little town of Buckworthy, right down south in the county of Devon. It had always galled the Stantons that they couldn’t get their hands on the paper for their own locality. Now, at long last, Randall had triumphed.
Earl, of course, was over the moon. He leapt from his chair, rejuvenated, and slapped his grandson on the back, hollering his delight. “About time! Another few months and it would have gone right down the drain. Now you can turn it around, make it shine.” He glanced at his watch. “If you leave early enough tomorrow you can be down there by midday. It’s a Thursday paper. You’ll be in time to have some input on this week’s issue. No time like the present to begin putting things to rights. Sales haven’t been what they should be. You can start up an advertising campaign, too. And some sort of weekly contest. The one you did in Thrush-by-the-Marsh worked like a charm. Something like that!” Earl rubbed his hands together in glee.
But as Gabe watched, the enthusiasm seemed to drain right out of Randall, as if it were being choked off. As it probably was—by the added tug on the noose of even greater responsibilities.
“Whoa. Hey, hold up. You’ll choke him!” He looked at Randall and slid a finger around the inside of his collar.
Randall hesitated. His hand crept up and loosened his tie. His mouth opened. And closed again. He didn’t say a word.
Idiot! Gabe glared at him. Was he going to let the old man run him into the ground? Randall glared back.
Earl looked from one to the other of them. He frowned. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem,” Randall said at the same moment Gabe said, “Big problem! Here you go pushing more work off on him! I just told you, he needs a break!”
“And I told you there’s work to be done!”
“Get someone else!”
“Someone else?” Earl sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He was working himself up, breathing hard and going red in the face. “The Buckworthy Gazette is the Stanton paper,” he roared. “Ours by right. And failing badly. It’s going to take a Stanton to turn it around.”
“But why does it have to be this Stanton?” Gabe demanded.
“Because Martha is on the other side of the world.”
“Martha is not the only other Stanton!”
“Well, no, there’s you,” Earl said witheringly, “I’d as soon ask a fourteen-year-old to run a bank as send you to turn the Gazette around!”
“You don’t think I can do it?”
“It’s work,” Earl pointed out.
“You don’t think it’s work to raise cattle? You don’t think it’s work to sort and ship and doctor a herd?”
“Your father worked hard,” Earl allowed.
Big of him! Gabe gritted his teeth. “I worked with him!”
“You lent a hand when you passed by.”
“Who do you think did it since Dad died last year?”
“You?” Earl almost seemed to chuckle. “I thought that’s why your mother hired Frank as foreman. Or maybe Martha did it or that little orphan girl, Claire. Your mother says she lives in jeans and does the work of three men. Who needs you?”
Gabe’s teeth came together with a snap. “Think again.”
“You don’t say you’re actually good for a job of work, surely?” Earl regarded him with tolerant amusement.
“I’m good for anything he’s good for,” Gabe snapped, indicating Randall.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Earl scoffed.
“Don’t ho-ho me, old man—”
“And don’t call me old man—”
“Look—” Randall ventured.
As one, the other two turned on him. “YOU KEEP OUT OF IT!”
“Whatever needs to be done, I’ll do it,” Gabe said defiantly. “And you—” to Randall “—give me the details of this paper, and go take a vacation. Or ‘a holiday,’ I suppose you’d call it.”
“What I’d call it is madness.” Randall shook his head fiercely. “You’ll bankrupt us.”
Gabe slammed his glass down on the table. “Sez who? You think I can’t run things? I’ll show you. I’m off to Devon in the morning!”
There was silence.
Randall and Earl looked at each other. Then at Gabe.
Gabe glared back at them. And then, just as the adrenaline rush carried him through an eight-second bull ride mindless of aches, pains and common sense, before it drained away, so did the red mist of fury disperse and the cold clear light of reality set in.
And he thought, oh hell, what have I done?
Slowly, unconsciously, he raised a hand and ran his finger around the inside of the collar of his own shirt.
Much later the cousins put Earl to bed, then supported each other as far as Gabe’s room, where he produced a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“Seriously,” Randall said, “it’s a crazy idea…”
“Yep, it is.” Gabe poured them each a glass and lifted his. “To the Buckworthy Gazette!”
“You don’t have to do—”
“Yes,” Gabe said flatly. “I do.” He downed the whisky in one gulp, then set the glass down with a thump and threw himself down onto his bed to lie there and stare up at his cousin. Randall looked a little fuzzy.
Gabe felt a little fuzzy, but determined. “Seriously,” he echoed his cousin. “Remember when we were kids and you came to Montana for the first time. We became blood brothers, swearing to defend and protect each other against all comers. Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Randall shook his head. “I don’t need protecting!”
Gabe wasn’t convinced, but he wasn’t going to argue. He shoved himself up against the headboard of the bed and reached for the bottle again. Carefully he poured himself another glass, aware of Randall’s tight jaw, his cousin’s years of hard work and legendary determination.
“There’s another thing, too. You’re not the only Stanton,” he muttered.
Randall blinked. “What?”
Gabe looked up and met his cousin’s gaze. “I can do this.” Though, as he said the words, Gabe wondered if he was saying them for Randall’s ears or for his own. “It will be fun,” he added after a moment with a return of his customary bravado.
“But you don’t know what you’re getting into.”
Gabe held up his glass and watched the amber liquid wink in the light.
“That,” he said, “is exactly why it’s going to be fun.”
One
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.
