Claire was about to introduce him but Randall forestalled her, holding out his hand to the Indian woman and giving her his most charming smile.
“Hi, I’m Randall, and you must be Susan. Gabe told me all about you. He said you cooked the best gooseberry pie in all Montana.”
She looked delighted but said nothing, showing her pleasure, instead, by heaping porridge into Randall’s bowl until he had nearly twice as much as the others.
“You’re going to need plenty inside you,” Claire said, confirming Randall’s thought that this was Susan’s way of welcoming him.
He’d noticed that Dave took care to grab the seat beside Claire. As she moved about his eyes followed her.
Randall didn’t blame him. Her face was prettily flushed from the stove, and the heat had made her hair float in soft wisps about her face. Randall regarded her, entranced, unaware that he was smiling at the picture she presented, until Claire noticed and frowned at him. He concentrated on his food.
Dave was eating fast.
“It’s not going to run away, Dave,” Claire told him, laughing.
“Sooner we’re finished, sooner we get to work,” Dave said flatly. “I’m still cold from the first time out.”
He glared at Randall as though he was personally responsible.
“Last time I was here it was summer,” Randall observed. “I’m looking forward to seeing the MBbar in winter.”
He was making polite conversation, but it was the wrong thing to say, he knew that as soon as the words were out. Dave snorted his contempt.
“Snow ain’t there for entertainment. It’s there to make life hard. Guess you don’t know that.”
“We have snow in England,” Randall said, refusing to be ruffled. “Just before I left I took some pictures of Gabe shovelling it away from Earl’s front path.”
“Earl?” they all chorused.
“My grandfather. We call him Earl because he’s-an earl.”
Their expressions told him he’d said the wrong thing again. But what was the right thing? Was there one?
“My grandfather was a miserable old sod,” Dave observed. “But we didn’t call him that. Leastways, not to his face.”
“Perhaps you should,” Randall said at once. “It might have improved him.”
North gave a snort of laughter. Olly grinned. Dave scowled.
North said, “Thought earls had servants to clear their paths.”
“He does,” Randall confirmed. “But he said since he had a pair of lazy lummoxes for grandsons, they could make themselves useful.” Hoping to lighten the atmosphere, he added, “I’ll get the pictures.”
Once out of sight upstairs he leaned back against the wall and let out a long breath. This was going to be tougher than he’d thought. Well, at least it would make life interesting.
He found the photographs and headed back downstairs. As he descended he heard the sound of laughter, followed by Claire’s voice, reproving but on the verge of a chuckle.
“Cut it out, Dave. He’s not that bad.”
Dave’s donkey bray of laughter made Randall wince. He stayed where he was, shamelessly eavesdropping.
“Not that bad?” Dave roared. “He’s the best entertainment we’ve had around here in months. Did you feel his hands? Not a callus anywhere.”
“He’s a lord,” Claire observed. “They don’t have calluses.”
“Then he sure came to the wrong place,” Dave observed.
“He won’t last here,” Olly said. “Fifty dollars says he’s on the first plane out tomorrow.”
“You don’t have fifty dollars,” North observed mildly.
“No sweat. I won’t need it.”
“Give him a chance.” That was Claire.
“Sure we’ll give him a chance,” Dave said. “A chance to ride Nailer.” He brayed again.
“No way,” North broke in, his mild voice sounding unexpectedly firm. “Claire, you can’t let him ride Nailer. Not until you know if he can ride.”
“All aristocrats can ride,” Claire said. “But you’re right. I don’t want to have to explain to Gabe how his cousin got a broken neck.”
“That Gabe!” Olly chuckled. “Trust him to think of a joke like this. Boy he must be laughing!”
“Did you hear his voice?” Dave chortled. “Did you hear his voice?”
He seemed totally overcome with mirth, which turned into a coughing fit. There was the sound of hands slapping a back, as if the rest were trying to stop Dave from choking to death.
“Don’t try too hard, folks,” Randall murmured.
He stayed sunk in thought for a moment. By the time he went down the rest of the stairs he’d come to a decision. If that was how they wanted to play-Fine!
He returned to the table, seemingly unaware of how the talk stopped at the sight of him. He laid the pictures down with an air of lofty indifference. Dave grunted, but the others spread them out with interest.
“Who’s Santa Claus?” North asked, pointing to a gleeful, red-cheeked figure.
“That’s my grandfather, Lord Cedric, Earl Stanton, Viscount Desborough, Baron Stornaway and Ellesmere, hereditary lord of the manor of Bainwick,” Randall said coolly.
“Don’t look like an earl,” Olly observed.
“That is not necessary,” Randall observed in his most disdainful voice. “What matters is to possess the lineage, and to have people know that you possess it, eh? What?”
That would show them, he thought. If they expected him to talk as though he was chewing nettles, then that’s what he’d do. Eh? What?
Claire was frowning at him as though wondering why he’d suddenly started to talk the kind of English normally heard only in bad stage productions. He was going to wink at her and share the joke, but North claimed his attention, and when he looked back she’d returned to the kitchen to get bacon and eggs.
“Sleep well?” she asked him when she returned.
“Excellently!” he said in a robust voice. “Except for being rather too hot. But after I threw off a couple of blankets I was fine.” He saw the others staring at him, and said blandly, “We learned to be hardy at Eton, dontcha know?”
“You’ll need to be hardy out here,” Dave said. “Can you ride?”
“Dave!” Claire muttered in an undervoice of protest. “I told you-”
“I was in the army, old bean,” Randall declared in a bored voice. “In the Household Cavalry. Guardin’ the Queen.”
Dave looked about to be overcome with mirth again, but a glance from Claire kept him quiet. Susan went around refilling coffee cups, doing Randall’s first, and the moment passed.
At last they all got up from the table. Randall went upstairs. North and Olly went to the bunkhouse. Dave stayed behind muttering to Claire.
“Even Susan’s all over him because he’s a lord.”
“It’s not that,” Claire said. “I think it’s because he spoke to her so nicely. Some people act like she’s part of the furniture.”
She turned a significant eye on Dave, who was the chief offender. He grunted and quickly moved off. Claire had to admit that she’d been impressed by the way Randall had put himself out to be pleasant to Susan.
Just like Gabe, she thought quickly. In fact, Gabe probably advised him to do it.
Susan bustled in to clear the table, casting an appreciative eye on Randall’s empty plate. “What a nice boy.”
“Of course, he’s Gabe’s cousin,” Claire reminded her.
“He’s more handsome than Gabe,” Susan said slyly.
Claire bristled. “He is not.”
Susan chuckled and withdrew under a mountain of plates. Claire looked around, then reached into her shirt where she’d hidden the picture of Gabe that she’d secreted from the pack. Susan’s switch of allegiance gave a new poignancy to the face that laughed back at her from so many thousand miles away.
Randall, coming downstairs a moment later to retrieve the photographs, stopped, held by the sight that met his eyes.
/> Claire was standing there, regarding Gabe’s picture with a look more piteous than words. For once her face was soft, defenseless, and Randall felt as though he’d had a blow to the heart.
Poor Claire, he thought. What a rotten thing to happen to her, being landed with me. I shouldn’t have come.
Randall wasn’t more sensitive than the next man, or especially in tune with the feelings of women, as several ex-girlfriends could have testified. But something about Claire’s dumb anguish got under his radar, and reached his heart before he knew it.
He’d never felt this kind of empathy for anyone. She was almost alone in a household of men. His Aunt Elaine, though a kindly soul, had a robust attitude to life that might make her hard to confide in. From what he recalled of Martha, she was much the same. Besides, she wasn’t around now. Claire was isolated, trying to be one of the boys while coping with a woman’s feelings, knowing them unrequited.
She was rough, awkward, bristly. But she was also unhappy and lonely, and his heart went out to her.
She moved and he quickly retreated back up the stairs. It would be fatal for her to find him intruding on her private sadness.
In his room he finished getting dressed, and was about to leave when an impulse made him turn back and pick up the phone by his bed. It would be late afternoon in England, and Gabe ought to be ready to take calls.
“May as well see if he ever managed to find the place,” Randall muttered with a grin. Slightly to his surprise Gabe was not only there but he answered the phone with a terse “What now?”
Randall stared at the phone. That was never his happy-go-lucky cousin, surely. He sounded as if the pressure had gotten to him already.
“Gabe?” he responded cautiously. “How’s it going, then? Are you all right?”
It was amazing how Gabe’s voice changed when he knew he was talking to Randall. “Of course I’m all right,” he said too quickly. “What do you think?”
“I just…thought you might need a little moral support,” Randall said cautiously.
“Well, I don’t. I’m fine. No problem,” Gabe said airily.
Randall ground his teeth. Trust Gabe to use his charm and get all the locals dancing to his tune on the first day.
“Nothing to worry about,” Gabe went on. “A child could do it.”
I’ll bet that’s meant as a dig at me, Randall thought.
“How are things at your end?” Gabe asked.
“Fine,” Randall declared, imitating Gabe’s airy tone. “Couldn’t be better.”
Couldn’t be better, he thought, except that Claire hates me for not being you, and the hands crease up every time I open my mouth, and the only one who doesn’t wish me dead is Susan.
He hung up with Gabe’s parting injunction, “Don’t call me again,” ringing in his ears. He wondered if Gabe could tell he’d been lying through his teeth.
Come to that, how much truth had Gabe been telling? He’d probably been lying, too.
The thought made Randall feel suddenly better. It might be uncharitable, but at least he wasn’t suffering alone. He was grinning as he picked up his jacket and headed for the door.
He opened it to find Claire standing there. “I came to see if you’d dressed up right,” she said.
“Gabe’s thickest shirt, old bean.” He held out his arms in display, and she came right into the room.
“What are you wearing underneath?” she asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
She began to unbutton his shirt. For a moment Randall thought his wildest dreams were about to come true, but her brisk manner dispelled his hopes. She took his undershirt between her fingers, testing to see how many thicknesses she could find.
“You’re only wearing one undershirt,” she accused him.
“My dear gel, that’s winter long johns. Gabe warned me. And it’s cashmere, the warmest wool in the world.”
“Put two more on top of it. You want pneumonia? Socks cashmere as well?”
“The very finest.”
“Three pairs. You’ll need ’em.”
“You wouldn’t care to undress me and put them on, I suppose?” he asked. “I forgot to bring my nanny with me.”
“So I see.” She hesitated and added, as if reluctantly, “Be careful about Dave. Don’t get him mad.”
“I’m a big boy, Claire. I survived in the army. I think I’ll survive the hands.” He added wryly, “Whether I’ll survive you is another matter.”
“Is that an example of British humor?” she asked suspiciously.
“No, it’s called black humor. It’s for when your neck’s on the line.”
She was too cautious to answer this directly. “Hurry up. We want to be setting off.”
She departed in a whirlwind.
“Yes, ma’am!” Randall murmured, beginning to strip off.
As he worked he ground his teeth, annoyed with Gabe, annoyed with Claire but mostly annoyed with himself. The feel of her fingers unbuttoning his shirt had caused a flare in his loins that he would have denied if he could.
But he couldn’t. He tried to dismiss it: a knee-jerk reaction, inevitable when a woman opened your shirt, because your subconscious was remembering other occasions. Nothing at all if you looked at it rationally. But it had been there, a swift spurt of pleasure, fierce, hot and totally crazy. He was wearing long johns, for pete’s sake. And so was she, probably. Three pairs. Old men’s underwear.
But how would she look without it?
He pulled himself together and tried to think pure thoughts. But the memory of Claire’s womanly shape got in the way and the thoughts took on a life of their own.
Thank goodness it was freezing cold outside, he thought desperately. It needed to be.
When he’d added several extra layers of clothes he went down.
Monk, the horse they’d given him, was big and lively, but he’d handled tougher beasts in the Household Cavalry, and he and Jackson soon came to an understanding.
A white moonscape stretched before them as far as the eye could see. Beyond it were the mountains. The sun was brilliant on the snow. But the cold was bitter, and he silently gave thanks to Claire for making him put on the extra clothing. When he saw her glancing at him in mischievous enquiry he grinned and gave her a thumbs-up salute. Dave watched them through narrowed eyes.
Four gigantic horses stood ready, harnessed to a huge sled full of hay. A signal from Dave and they were off, over the silent landscape, now brilliant in the sun.
Randall began to enjoy himself almost at once. The Stantons had been landowners for centuries, and he was a countryman born and bred. Years spent in offices, staring at figures, seemed to fall away from him as he rode out that morning.
The haystacks were huge, and the hay had to be forked off them by sheer human effort. It was back-breaking work, but it reminded him how enjoyable it could be to feel his body alive with effort, the blood pounding through his veins as though he’d just come back to life after a long sleep.
The cattle knew why they were there, and crowded forward eagerly. Randall remembered his own cattle, his in the sense that he owned them, but in no other sense. Other men and women fed and tended them, knew them. Until this moment, he hadn’t felt that as a deprivation. Now he knew it was.
Sentimental nonsense! he tried to tell himself. But the thought wouldn’t go away.
On the way home Jackson made one last effort to be the boss. Randall gave him his head, controlling him lightly, enjoying the gallop. Then he heard hooves pounding beside him and realized that Claire was drawing level, making a race of it. He grinned and urged Jackson on.
Out of the corner of his eye he managed to watch Claire, controlling her enormous horse with confidence and grace, her eyes alight with purpose. Nothing fazed her, he realized with admiration.
He thought of Honoria, who insisted on riding only well-mannered horses, and would turn back halfway through the day because she’d broken a fingernail. Randall, who enjoyed a robust ride in the c
ountry, had found it irksome.
Suddenly Claire’s horse stumbled on some unseen obstacle in the snow. Alarmed, it reared up. Claire fought for control, but she’d been taken by surprise, and she fell to the ground, landing on her back with a crash that made Randall wince in sympathy.
“Claire!” he cried and turned back.
“I’m all right,” she yelled. “Get my horse.”
He seized the bridle so that she could let go and concentrate on scrambling to her feet. She wasn’t all right, he could see that. She moved like someone who was hurt and determined not to show it. But he guessed that any show of sympathy would madden her.
She remounted, patting the horse to show there were no hard feelings.
“I’m surprised you could get up at all,” Randall said.
She tried to shrug, and had to give up the attempt. “It’s nothing.”
The others caught up with them, and Dave pushed ahead to ride at Claire’s side. All the way back his voice was raised in a dreary recital about something or other. Randall didn’t bother listening to the words. His attention was for Claire, who was drooping slightly in her saddle.
He longed to push Dave aside and tell her she could lean on him. But he knew better than to try.
Three
Getting into bed that night Randall moved very, very carefully. He enjoyed an active life, but the day’s exertions had used muscles he wasn’t familiar with, and he ached all over.
At last he gave up the struggle to find a comfortable position and hauled himself painfully out of bed. Somewhere in this place they must keep some liniment. Preferably lots of it. He should have asked before he came upstairs, but he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
Easing on his dressing gown he crept out into the corridor, wondering where was the best place to look. But as he made his way past Claire’s room he realized he’d reached the end of his search. The smell of liniment came unmistakably from behind her door.
Now he could hear painful little gasps, reminding him of how she’d fallen onto her back. She was trying to get to places she couldn’t reach, and it was hurting her.
He tapped softly. “Claire.”
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