“You don’t mean half the things you say,” Claire told him lightly. “I’ve learned that much.”
He didn’t answer in words, but raised one eyebrow quizzically. Suddenly she burst out laughing. It utterly transformed her face. Her eyes glowed, her cheeks were still rosy from the cold wind outside and for a moment she seemed the very essence of youth and life. Randall felt giddy. Gabe could have this fantastic, beautiful girl, and didn’t want her? Was he nuts?
“What are you laughing at?” he asked.
“You, raising one eyebrow. Do you remember when you were here before, Gabe envied you because you could do that? He could only manage both at once.”
“That’s right,” he said, remembering. “We had a contest.”
“I caught him practicing in front of the mirror, but he couldn’t manage it. He got so mad.”
She laughed again, and Randall joined in for the sheer pleasure of sharing it with her.
“The things that seem important when you’re eighteen,” he mused.
“Would you want to be eighteen again, Randall?” she asked.
He thought for a moment before shaking his head. “I guess not. I’m not sure why. I was happy enough then, the way boys are happy, without thinking.”
“And aren’t you happy now?” The question came out before she could stop it.
He might have made some meaningless answer, but he found himself thinking, then answering honestly.
“Fairly. Nobody ever gets back that carefree feeling, but you don’t need it. You grow into a different person and other things start to matter.”
“You don’t mean that, about becoming a different person.”
“When I look back so far, I hardly recognize myself. Do you?”
“Yes,” she said with a touch of defiance. “But I guess I’m not changeable.”
He spotted the danger and stepped back from it quickly. Damn Gabe! Why did he have to get in everywhere?
“Let’s get going while the light’s still good,” he said.
She took the road up into the mountains. It was the way they’d come the first day, but then they’d been in semi-darkness. Now he could look around him and appreciate the glowing blue, white and black of the earth and sky.
“Stop here,” he said when they were at the highest point before the road began to slope down.
He got out and went to survey the magnificence around him. Claire came to stand beside him.
“If you look far over there, you can just about make out the ranch,” she said.
It was cold after the heated truck. He felt her shiver and put an arm around her. In the same moment he felt the sky and the mountains begin to whirl around him. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
She held onto him. “The mountains affect some people like this.”
“Yes,” he said, opening his eyes.
“Randall, are you all right?” She touched his cheek lightly with her fingertips.
He took her hand in his and looked at it for a moment before drawing it against his mouth, and letting his lips brush against it lightly.
He hadn’t meant to do it-at least, he didn’t think he’d meant to-but he was still giddy, and not quite sure what he was doing. And then, suddenly, it was done, and he was aflame from the sweet touch of her hand on his mouth.
She was trembling in his arms and for a moment, standing on the edge of the snowy vastness, he could have done anything. Her lips were softly curved. Just looking at them drove him to madness, and in another moment they would be against his own-moving softly, enticing him, opening for him.
“Randall…” she whispered.
“Yes,” he muttered thickly.
“We-shouldn’t stand here in this wind-it’s dangerous.”
A tremor went through him. “You’re right,” he said at last, reluctantly. “We should be going home. It’s very dangerous here.”
Four
Where did the time go? One day he arrived at the MBbar, the next he went out with the hands, feeding stock, coming back aching all over. And then he fell into the rhythm of the work and the life of the ranch, so that it became not easy, but possible. A week slipped away, then two, and suddenly he’d been there a month.
Bit by bit he began to enjoy himself. In England he was subject to Earl’s endless demands that the business make more and more money. However long the hours he worked, he never felt he could satisfy the old man.
But here nobody expected anything of him. Or rather, they expected the worst, and there was pleasure in showing that he was as good a man as any of them, could fork hay as long and vigorously as they could, survive the cold, ask for no quarter. In Montana, Randall was finding his own level, not as the heir to an earldom, but as a man among men. It was a high level that gave him pride in himself.
And friendship. When had he last had time for that?
There was time now to make friends with Frank, a man he instinctively respected. Time to let Olly teach him to cheat at cards. Not that he would use that particular skill, but he appreciated the honor.
The friend he valued most was North. The young cowboy sought him out, asking questions about England and other countries Randall had visited, and listening avidly to the answers.
“Where do you come from?” Randall asked him once.
“Up north.”
“Hence the name? I mean, it’s not your real name?”
“Is now.”
Another time North observed, “Reckon you and me are alike. Neither one of us care what folks think.”
“Don’t I care?”
“Wouldn’t put on that dang fool voice if you did.”
“True.”
“Ain’t usin’ it now. Must have forgotten.”
“No use putting it on with you,” Randall pointed out. “You don’t fall for it.”
North merely grinned.
Randall began to be aware of the land. Though it was still hidden under the snow he found he’d developed a feel for it, almost as though it were his own.
Many a day he would rise and watch the dawn, when the world glowed pink and purple under the morning moon. And in the late afternoon he would slip out alone to see the sunset. The unbelievable beauty of the snow with the red and yellow light on it took his breath away.
Sometimes Claire would come and stand beside him, and they would watch together in silence. Once she asked, “Is it as lovely as this in England?”
“Yes,” he said. “But softer, more pastel colored.”
“Do you miss it?”
He thought of the pearly light over the corn, the gentle rustle of the stream he’d fished as a boy, the willow bowing its head into the water.
“Yes,” he said. “I miss it.”
And for once he wasn’t alive to her reaction, and didn’t see the look she gave him.
Another time, when the last light had almost gone, and a breathless hush lay on the land, Randall almost found the words to speak of the feelings that were growing in him, for her. But she spoke first, looking up into the sky.
“What do you think Gabe is doing now?” she whispered.
And his words died, unspoken.
His body, too long trapped behind a desk, grew iron hard under the rigors of winter work. He began to fill out, but it was muscle, not fat. There was a vibrancy about his flesh that made him alive to new sensations as he hadn’t been for years. And the sensation that plagued him most was his growing desire for Claire.
He’d wanted women before, but seldom felt such pressing desire for one he couldn’t have. The rare women who refused were casually asked and soon forgotten. But Claire was different. She mattered. Because she mattered, he minded that he couldn’t have her. And because he couldn’t have her, she mattered more than ever.
She enchanted him as no woman ever had. He loved-that is, he was attracted by-her defiant courage and her flashes of vulnerability. He was entranced at the way she tried not to find his British humor funny, and the little gurgle she gave when she was defeated. But what
made his head spin with total delight was the feeling that something was about to happen between them. He didn’t know what, or when. But it was going to be momentous.
One night Randall was awoken by a sound downstairs. He listened and it came again, a kind of scratching. Pulling on jeans and a shirt he made his way along the corridor and halfway down the stairs to where he could see the big main room, lit by only one table lamp, beside the leather sofa.
North was by the bookshelf, going from book to book, studying titles with such fierce concentration that he didn’t hear Randall. At last he found what he was looking for, pulled it out and went to stretch out on the sofa. He glanced up as Randall came down the rest of the way.
“Mrs. McBride don’t mind me looking at her books,” he explained. “She says nobody else ever does.”
Randall collected the whiskey bottle and a couple of glasses. “Charles Dickens,” he said, observing the spine. “Great Expectations.”
“Began on him when I came here last summer. Goin’ through, book by book.”
Randall was startled. In all his time at Eton and Oxford he’d never come across anyone who read their way right through the collected works of Dickens even for study, let alone for pleasure. He put a glass of whiskey by North’s elbow, and settled himself comfortably in a leather armchair. The fire had burned low but it was still pleasantly warm.
North jabbed at the book. “I tell you, this guy knew how to tell a story. That Miss Havisham, she was just like my Aunt Nell. Ol’ Nellie took a shine to this fellow, had the weddin’ all set, then he rolled in the hay with her cousin.”
“Did she live in her wedding dress for twenty years?”
“Nope, but she threatened and cussed every man she saw after that. Kept a shotgun in the corner, ’case a man showed his face.”
Randall eyed him, fascinated. “How long will it take you to get right through Dickens?” he asked.
“Maybe until next summer,” North said. “Then I’ll go. Don’t like to hang around.”
They sipped their whiskey in companionable silence. Randall leaned back in the armchair and studied the ceiling.
“You really gonna ride Nailer tomorrow?” North asked after awhile.
“Guess so.”
Another long silence.
“You’re a fool,” North observed.
“Must be.”
“Know why he’s called Nailer?”
“Probably for something I’d rather not know about.”
“’Cause he’s a brute who’ll ‘nail ya’ if he can.”
“Reckoned it was something like that.”
“Wouldn’t ride him if I was you.”
“Yes, you would,” Randall said with conviction.
North considered this. “Guess I would at that,” he said at last. “But then I’m used to him. I know he throws to the left, so you gotta lean to the right.”
“Then won’t he start leaning to the right?”
“Nope, ’cause he’s stupid. Mean and stupid. And he likes to get you off in the first two seconds, ’fore you can settle. If he doesn’t manage that it gets him good ’n’ mad.”
“But do I want to get him good ’n’ mad?” Randall asked plaintively. “I’m shaking with fear as it is.”
“Yep, I noticed that,” North said with a grin.
“So what else can you tell me about Nailer?”
“Well, he-” North stopped and a cunning look came over his lean, amiable features. “Make a deal?”
“Anything you like.”
“No kiddin’. There’s something I want real bad.”
“Anything in my power.”
“But no telling the others, right?”
“It’ll be just between us,” Randall assured him, growing more mystified by the minute.
“’Cause they wouldn’t understand, and I don’t want folks thinkin’ I’m strange.”
Randall tore his hair. “North, will you just tell me?”
The young cowboy put up a callused hand to scratch his forehead. In the firelight his face looked like teak. He leaned closer to Randall like a conspirator.
“Can you get me some Jane Austen?”
Next morning Randall logged onto the internet, found an online book store and bought a complete set of Jane Austen, using his own credit card. He grinned as he thought how Dave and Olly would react to its arrival. “British wimp” would be the kindest thing they’d call him. But he would keep North’s secret. He owed him that much after all he’d learned the night before. Jane Austen had come up trumps in a big way.
Claire came in just as he was logging off.
“Why are they bringing Nailer out into the yard?” she demanded, aghast. “Don’t tell me you’re fool enough-”
“Fool enough for anything,” he confirmed.
“You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m putting a stop to this.”
Randall rose quickly and grabbed her arm as she made for the door. “You’ll do no such thing,” he said, assuming his most lordly “British” air. “My dear gel, I’ve committed myself, and the Stantons never back down from a challenge.”
“But you’ll break your neck.”
He lifted his chin. “Then I shall go down with honor!”
“Will you stop talking like that, you-you aristocrat!”
“Is that the worst you can find to call me?”
“For the moment, yes, but I’m working on it.”
“Try ‘toffee-nosed git’,” he teased.
“Dammit all!” Claire breathed. “Can’t I ever say anything that you mind about?”
Randall’s eyes held a curious alert expression. “That would hurt me, you mean?” he asked.
“No, I-of course I don’t-what do you think I-”
He touched her cheek with a gentle finger. “If you want to break my heart,” he said quietly, “you could do it far more easily than that.”
He strode off without waiting for her reply. Claire looked after him. Her pulse was racing and she was suddenly breathless.
Full of shame, she realized that she had been trying to hurt him. She’d been trying to do that ever since he arrived, punishing him for not being Gabe. Punishing Gabe.
But Gabe was far away from her thoughts right now. All she could hear was the soft drawl of Randall’s voice as he said-what? What had he really meant by those mysterious words about breaking his heart?
Who cared about Randall’s heart? Her own heart belonged to Gabe.
But she couldn’t resist touching her cheek, which seemed to burn where he’d caressed it. Then she hurried out after him.
The hands were waiting in the corral. Dave and Olly sat gleefully on the fence, Frank lounged against it, while North held Nailer’s reins. The huge brute stood still and silent, but Randall wasn’t fooled. This was one mean horse.
“Don’t forget everything I told you,” North murmured, so softly that only Randall could hear.
He nodded, took a deep breath and vaulted up into the saddle.
“Let him go.”
North complied and stepped back hastily. The next moment Randall felt as if the earth had heaved him off. He landed back in the saddle with a crash, just remembering to lean to the right. He gripped with his knees, but Nailer bucked violently again and sent him back up.
On the second landing, he tensed his knees faster and managed not to be thrown up so high the next time. Nailer bucked and bucked, always unseating him a little, but not enough to get him right off. And, as North had predicted, he was getting good ’n’ mad at not succeeding at once.
Then Randall made his mistake. Allowing himself a small feeling of triumph he lost concentration, and suddenly he was flying through the air, to crash into the ground with a force that nearly knocked the breath out of his body. He gasped violently, and fought for control, forcing himself up before he was ready. Anything rather than let them see he was winded.
His head was spinning but he managed to get to his feet. North had gotten hold of Nailer who was standi
ng still again, apparently calm except for the heavy snorts that were coming from his nostrils. There was an evil glint in his eye, as though he was eager for another bout.
“He beat ya!” Dave chortled, getting down from the fence.
“The hell with that! I’m getting back on.”
“Look, we know you can’t make it-”
“Get out of my way!”
Something in Randall’s voice made Dave back off. As Randall vaulted back into the saddle North grinned and released the rein just in time to escape Nailer’s whirling hooves.
Now it felt like a battle to the death, with no quarter asked or given on either side.
Whenever Randall went down Nailer came up, colliding with him so hard that he wondered why his bones didn’t shatter to fragments. He gritted his teeth and hung on. Slowly, agonizingly he was getting into Nailer’s rhythm, and at last he could instinctively throw his weight into the right position for clinging on.
Despite the cold, the sweat was pouring down his face, into his eyes. Every part of him was aching. In fact he was hurting so much that he could no longer feel it. A twist of Nailer’s body brought Claire into sight. He had a brief glimpse of her with her hands pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide, before Nailer twisted again, and he lost sight of her. He must stay on. There was no way he was giving up in front of Claire.
It was stalemate. The horse couldn’t get rid of him, but he wasn’t tiring. Randall began to feel desperate. For some reason winning this battle was the most important thing in the world right now.
Nailer’s violent movements brought him back within Claire’s range. And now he wondered if the ordeal was making him hallucinate, for he could almost have sworn that she was cheering him on. She vanished from sight too fast for him to be sure.
On and on it went until Randall thought it would never end. Just when he felt he was about to black out, Nailer came up with his final trick. He gave in, not slowing gradually but stopping so suddenly that Randall nearly went over his head. He clung on, wondering what had happened to the world that seemed to have reversed and started spinning in the opposite direction. When his head cleared he realized that he’d won.
North and Olly were dancing with glee, filling the air with ear-splitting shrieks. Dave glared. Claire had buried her face in her hands, but as Randall sat there, brushing the sweat out of his eyes, heaving like a set of bellows and feeling as if his body was about to fall apart, she lifted her head.
Blood Brothers Page 14
