Blood Brothers

by Anne McAllister

  Six

  Randall reacted to Honoria’s news with a roar of delight, which affronted her even more. She told him so, at length.

  “Hang on there,” he said when he could stem her tirade, “Gabe’s a grown man. He knows what suits him. If he’s found the right woman at last, that’s the best thing for him.”

  “The right woman? No name, and no money. You should come home and stop it.”

  “I’ll come home when I’m good ’n’ ready. As for trying to stop that crazy Gabe from doing what he’s set his heart on-forget it. I’m not ready to die.”

  “Oh, really!” Honoria made a sound that would have been a snort if she hadn’t been an “Hon”. “You’ve always had a streak of foolishness, and he’s made it worse.”

  “Either that or he’s brought out the best in me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No, I’m sure you don’t. You don’t really approve of me either, and you’ll disapprove of me even more as I am now.”

  “Whatever do you mean by that?”

  “Let’s say I’ve rediscovered my roots, and not a moment before time. All that society life you like so much, shopping till you drop, dressing to kill, spending hours mouthing polite nothings to people I never want to see again-it’s not for me. From now on I’m spending my days squelching through mud, breeding calves, smelling like a barnyard and loving every minute of it.”

  “You sound exactly like that creature who answered the phone,” she said in disgust.

  “Yes, I do, don’t I?” he said happily.

  “Well, I don’t know what’s come over you since you’ve been there.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s come over me, Honoria. I’ve become a cowboy. And you know what else? I enjoy being a cowboy. And I’m going to stay a cowboy when I get back to England.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that at all,” she said in a tight voice.

  “I didn’t think you would. ’Bye, Honoria. It’s lucky we found out in time.”

  When Honoria had slammed the phone down, Randall promptly telephoned Gabe. Instinct made him pick the dower house number.

  “You old son of a gun!” he greeted him. “So you got roped and branded at last.”

  “How do you know?” Gabe yelled. “I was going to enjoy telling you myself.”

  “Honoria’s just been on. She wants me to forbid the banns.”

  Gabe roared with laughter. But abruptly he became serious again. “Does Claire know?”

  “I don’t-” Randall remembered Claire’s distraught face as she handed him the phone and escaped. “I think so.”

  “She used to have a kind of crush on me,” Gabe said awkwardly. “She’s probably forgotten about it now.”

  “Yes,” Randall agreed, wishing he could be so sure.

  “Can you make sure she’s all right?”

  “Sure,” Randall said with more confidence than he felt.

  He met North in the yard. “Did you see Claire?”

  “She rode off.”

  “How did she look?”

  “Like she wanted to cry and couldn’t.”

  Randall got the directions from North and rode out after Claire. He found her after awhile, still sitting on the tree stump, with a mulish look on her face. His heart ached for her, but he knew better than to offend her with outright sympathy.

  “What the devil was that accent for?” he demanded, sitting beside her.

  “She thought I was a hick,” Claire said grumpily. “So I gave her hick.” She remembered that Honoria was Randall’s as-good-as fiancée. “Was she offended?”

  “No, she’s just mad at Gabe, and at me for not stopping him. As though anyone could stop Gabe doing what he wants.” He slipped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. Claire let him draw her close until her head rested on his shoulder, and he ventured to drop a soft kiss on her bright hair.

  Gabe was a fool, he reckoned, not to have snapped Claire up when he had the chance. Randall liked Freddie, but how dull she seemed beside Claire, who was fierce, thorny, sexy-and utterly adorable.

  “That’s right,” she said with a sigh. “Nobody ever stopped Gabe doing anything. Nobody ever made him do anything, either.”

  “Otherwise you’d have made him marry you ages ago,” he said. When she looked at him quickly he said, “I know, Claire. I’ve always known how you felt for Gabe.”

  “Made a fool of myself, you mean,” she said gruffly.

  “Will you stop putting yourself down? You’re a wonderful woman, and I think he’s crazy not to be in love with you.”

  She shrugged. “Freddie Crossman’s got something I haven’t. What’s she like, Randall?”

  He tried to remember. “Pretty, gentle…”

  “Sweet and feminine?” Claire challenged.

  “Well-yes-”

  “Charming?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I’m not any of those things. I tried to be what Gabe wanted. I can rope and ride almost as well as he can. But he just saw me as his sister-or his brother.”

  “Does it matter so much that he loves someone else?” Randall asked sadly. “What about us, last night? Was I just a substitute for Gabe?”

  “Of course not,” she said a little too quickly. “But you don’t love me either.”

  “Don’t tell me how I feel. Claire, listen.” He took hold of her shoulders and shook her a little. “You’ve got this fixation that you’re unlovable just because you didn’t get the man you always wanted. But did you ever lift your head and notice any other man? Did you give the rest of us a chance? This ranch isn’t the whole world, and Gabe McBride isn’t the only man in the universe. He just thinks he is.”

  She gave a watery, unconvinced smile. Touched, Randall caressed her face with his fingertips. “You were in such a rush to tell me that I don’t love you. Did you ever think you might have that wrong?”

  She shook her head. “Don’t, Randall. You should have told me about Honoria at the start-before we-”

  “Before we made love?”

  “Whatever it was that we did.”

  “It was love that we made. You know that, don’t you?”

  She looked at him defiantly. “Does your fiancée know it?”

  “My what?”

  “The Horrible Honoria. She as good as told me you were engaged.”

  “Oh, did she! And you believed her?”

  “She’d hardly have said you were engaged if you weren’t.”

  “She’s been saying it for years. It makes her mad that I won’t say it, too. But I’m not in love with her, any more than she is with me. It’s only the title she wants.”

  “I don’t understand that,” Claire said simply.

  And she really didn’t, he realized. Her directness and honesty were like fresh air after the society hothouse where he’d been trapped most of his life.

  “Can you understand this?” he asked urgently. “I love you, and I want to marry you.”

  Something leapt in her, but the next moment something else held back.

  “Randall, you don’t have to wed me because you bed me,” she said awkwardly.

  “Is that all you think I- Claire, sometimes I could wring your neck.”

  “Great! And you want to marry me.”

  “Yes, I do, you impossible woman. I love you, and I want you to tell me that you love me. Me, not Gabe. I want you to say it was me in your bed last night.” His jealousy rose up suddenly. “Go on, say it!” he shouted. “Say it was my face you saw, not his.”

  “How do I know when they’re both the same?” The terrible words flashed out before she could stop them.

  She could have bitten her tongue out. Yet it had to be said. Nothing in life had come easy to Claire. She’d never before needed to analyze her own feelings, and the effort confused her now.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, anguished at the sight of the pain on his face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know-yes, I do-I love you, Randall, I do, it’s
just-”

  “It’s just that you still love Gabe,” he said bitterly.

  “I don’t know,” she cried. “I’ve always loved him. When I heard that he was going to be married, I wanted to die. But when I thought you were going to be married, I wanted to die, too.

  “I can’t marry you. How can I be a proper wife, feeling like this. I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”

  “And you never will know if you stay here,” he said angrily. “Claire, don’t you realize, Gabe is bringing his wife home? How can you stay at the ranch, watching them together day after day, torturing yourself-?”

  “I won’t. Don’t worry about me. I’m not going to hang around like some damned poor relation. I’m good at what I do. I’ll never be out of a job.”

  “Fine,” he said angrily. “Spend the rest of your life drifting all over Montana with nothing and no one to call your own. It’s obviously better than a life with me.”

  Claire’s eyes blazed. “Well, I’ll be all right. I’m strong, I can cope with anything. And I don’t want you to marry me as an act of charity.”

  “I didn’t mean-”

  “Drifting all over Montana, as you put it, will be a great life. I’ll be me, what I really am, not pretending to be Lady Randall Stanton.” She saw his white face and added more gently, “That’s something I never could be, Randall. I couldn’t do all that fancy stuff, knowing what to call folk and where to sit them-”

  “Rubbish!” he said furiously. “You can learn all that, it’s just a veneer and it doesn’t matter. What matters is loving someone and being at one with them-knowing they value the same things you do-like us.”

  “Do you?” she asked wistfully. “You’ve been here six weeks. Maybe you’ve just lost your way. When you get back to England you’ll find it again.” She touched his hand for a brief moment. “I think you should go home soon, Randall. It’s been lovely, but we’re just too different.”

  “We’re not different at all. We were born and raised thousands of miles apart, but inside, we’re the same. Can’t you understand that?”

  Dumbly she shook her head.

  His heart was too heavy to speak again and they returned in silence. Claire wondered if Randall was angry, but he was past that. He was brooding over his appalling picture of her life to come, moving on from one place to another, rootless, lonely, never quite belonging anywhere. While the man who loved her pined uselessly on the other side of the Atlantic.

  As soon as he got back to the ranch he put through another call to Gabe.

  “Hell, Randall? Haven’t you got anything better to do than call me up? What’s wrong now? Is my best bull dead?”

  “Your bull’s fine. I’m not. It’s Claire. I’m in love with her.”

  “Oh, boy!”

  “I thought I could make her forget all about you. Hell, that shouldn’t have been difficult.” He heard Gabe’s appreciative chuckle down the line. “But I can’t.”

  “You mean you offered her the Stanton land and titles and she turned them down?”

  “That’s right. She turned them down. And me.”

  “Well, she always was prickly as a thorn bush.”

  “She damned well is not!” Randall said furiously. “That’s just an act she put on for you, and if you’d ever bothered to look at her properly you’d know that she’s sweet and vulnerable, and full of stubborn pride so she hates people to know how easily she’s hurt and-”

  “Whoa. Hold on there.” Gabe whistled through his teeth. “You’ve really got it bad, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it bad,” Randall said heavily. “This is one time the Stanton lands and titles are no use to me at all.”

  “Wait,” Gabe said quickly. “I’m thinking.”

  In his mind’s eye he was seeing two young boys, pricking their fingers, letting the blood mingle, and swearing eternal brotherhood.

  From the ends of the earth to save each other! Which one of them had said that? Did it matter?

  A glimpse of Freddie moving about the house reminded him just how much he owed his cousin. By sending him here, where he would meet the perfect woman, he’d saved Gabe from a life growing increasingly empty. With hindsight, he could see that.

  Now it was time for Randall’s blood brother to save him in return.

  “Don’t move,” he said urgently, “Stay right where you are.”

  When he’d put the phone down he reached for Freddie. “Fred, how’d you like to go to Montana a little bit sooner than scheduled?”

  “How soon?”

  “Now.”

  Waiting for Gabe at Bozeman Airport, Randall wondered how he’d let himself be persuaded to stay over. He should have been on the next flight back to England by now. But, as Gabe said, it would have looked rude if he’d vanished before the happy couple arrived. He had a feeling that Gabe was manipulating him, but he couldn’t work out how.

  As soon as he saw them he knew that Gabe was subtly different. Some of his brashness had gone and he radiated fulfillment and content. Beside him, Freddie was brimming with happiness.

  And the kids, Charlie and Emma! All over Gabe, acting like he was the greatest thing since sliced bread.

  Randall kissed Freddie on the cheek and congratulated her. “Of course I shall expect you to go back and work out three months’ notice,” he said, straight-faced.

  “Go jump in the lake,” Gabe told him amiably, and everyone laughed.

  But Randall had a strange ache in his heart as he watched them, so happy together. It seemed this kind of happiness was to be denied him.

  Somehow they all squeezed into the sedan. On the way back to the ranch Gabe sat with his arm about Freddie, who watched, enthralled, as the scenery unfolded. Here and there the snow was beginning to fade, offering the first hint of spring and new life.

  A new life for all of them, Randall thought, listening to the children’s excited exclamations, and the contented murmurs of the lovers.

  But not for him.

  Claire came out of the house as soon as she heard them. Gabe was coming home with his future wife. This was the moment she’d waited for, dreaded, for years.

  She saw Gabe get out and reach inside to give his hand to Freddie, saw the tender way he looked at her, and waited for the surge of pain.

  There was nothing.

  The pain came when she saw Gabe and Randall standing together. Now she could see that their likeness was superficial. Susan had been right of course. Randall was far the handsomer of the two. Plus he had a gleam in his eye that could turn her insides to water, and a touch that could make her forget everything in the world.

  She realized that Gabe was striding toward her, arms wide in greeting. She returned his hug, glad to see her brother again.

  Supper was a big bash, with everyone there to meet Freddie and the children. Claire showed her around the house. She found she liked her a lot.

  Nevertheless, Claire knew she would have to move on soon. She couldn’t live in this house with Gabe, who would remind her constantly of Randall.

  She went to bed early, leaving the rest of them talking downstairs. They wouldn’t miss her, she thought. She didn’t see Randall’s eyes follow her until she was out of sight.

  The next morning his bags were packed and he was all ready to go. But there was one last thing to do. He went to the study and lifted the phone.

  “Randall, m’boy,” Earl’s voice boomed along the lines from England, “nice to hear from you. Gabe says you’re coming home.”

  “That’s right. Today.”

  “It’ll be grand to have you back. Gabe’s done a fine job in Devon, and it’s given me some ideas for the next paper I’m going to take over-”

  “Earl, listen to me,” Randall interrupted him firmly. “I’m returning to England, not to the firm. Publishing just isn’t in my blood, but the land is. I know that now. I’m leaving the firm and going back to the farm I rent from you. I’m going to be a hands-on farmer, and make the place the best in the countr
y.”

  Earl snorted indignantly. “And I suppose you’ve got designs on the Abbey, eh? Want to be ‘hands on’ there too?”

  “The Abbey belongs to you.”

  “No, no, a man should do a job properly if he’s going to do it at all. You’ve got a contract with the firm. I could keep you there another six months. My condition for releasing you is that you take over the running of the Abbey. I’ll leave everything in your hands. Never liked country life myself, but you prefer it, don’t you?”

  “I always did.”

  He could have cheered at the way Earl had come up trumps. He was going back to his roots, the place he belonged. Only one thing was wrong. He’d found the perfect wife, both for himself and the way he wanted to live. But he wasn’t perfect for her.

  Claire hurried in. “You’re going right now?” she asked.

  “It’s best. You know why as well as I do. I guess there are some things that aren’t meant to work. Too much stands in the way, however much we might want-”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to sound bright. She was doing the right thing for Randall, she was sure of it. And yet…

  “You won’t mind if I don’t come to the airport, will you?” she said. “There’s a lot to do.”

  “Sure, I understand. North’s going to drive me in.”

  “Not Gabe?”

  “Gabe’s too busy showing Freddie and the kids around. Claire-”

  “It’s all right,” she said tensely. “It’s fine, honestly. Goodbye.” Her mouth twisted and she added, ironically, “Your lordship.”

  “Don’t call me that. There are no lordships between us.”

  “But there should have been. You have your life and I have mine. We shouldn’t have forgotten.”

  “No,” he said heavily.

  He felt crushed by disappointment. Whatever Gabe had hoped to achieve by coming home, it hadn’t worked. Claire’s love for him was a barrier that Randall couldn’t overcome.

  He went to find his cousin. Gabe and Freddie came out onto the step when North drove up in the truck and helped Randall toss his gear aboard.

  The goodbyes were stiff and awkward. Nobody felt at ease. Claire was the first to turn away and go inside.