So that was it! Claire was carrying a torch for Gabe, and she was mad at Randall for being the wrong man.
Far from being offended, Randall found himself relaxing at being with a woman who wasn’t out to catch him. After the perfect manners of Lady Honoria and other hopeful damsels, Claire’s blunt disapproval came almost as a relief.
He was smiling as he climbed into bed, and asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Two
Randall slept poorly because he had to keep getting up for more blankets. When it got cold in Montana, he realized, it really got cold. With every possible blanket on the bed, he was still barely warm.
At the first gleam of light he rose and sat by the window, swathed in blankets, to watch the dawn come up. It was magic: dark gray at first, then lightening to pearl as it crept over the huge, silent landscape of a Montana winter. Randall watched with a sense of wonder.
The estate attached to Stanton Abbey was large, but it had nothing like the eerie vastness of the MBbar. As first one building, then another took shape, Randall had a sense of ghosts coming out of the mist. From somewhere unseen a horse whinnied softly.
At last the land appeared, gleaming white, for Claire had been right about the snow. It had fallen heavily during the night and now lay thickly on the ground and against the doors.
Randall wasn’t sentimental about snow, despite its beauty. He knew it could be a treacherous enemy, and more so than ever in an exposed place like this.
But this morning he would have more than snow to worry about. He was about to meet the hands. And he had no illusions about how important it was.
Gabe had given him a brief rundown.
“Frank’s the foreman. He and his wife have their own place on the ranch. He doesn’t say a lot, but he’s a great guy. There’s only three hands at the moment, and they live in the bunkhouse.”
He descended to find three men waiting for him, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands as though they’d just come in from the cold. Heads were raised as he came down the stairs. Eyes bored into him, watchful, sarcastic. It would have been unnerving if Randall had been easily unnerved.
The most prominent was a stocky, fair-haired individual in his thirties. He was handsome in a bullish, showy way, but he had a suspicious face. From Gabe’s description Randall guessed that this was Dave, the chief hand. Beside him stood a man with a long white beard, and a head of thick, white hair, whom Randall knew was called Olly.
“As long as I’ve known him he’s looked like the Oldest Living Inhabitant,” Gabe had said. “So of course he became Olly.”
Despite his white hair Randall noticed that Olly’s cheeks were ruddy, and his eyes brilliant and lively.
The third man stood slightly apart. He was youngish, maybe thirty, tall and rangy, with dark hair and eyes, and a lean face. When the other two moved forward he stayed back.
Claire appeared and made the introductions.
“This is Dave,” she said, indicating the stocky man who stretched his mouth in an unwelcoming smile. Randall felt his hand seized in a painful grip that he did his best to return with interest.
Olly’s smile was friendly enough, but his grasp too was powerful. Afterward Randall resisted the temptation to flex his fingers.
“And this is North,” Claire said, indicating the third man.
North kind of drifted forward and extended his hand vaguely, with an amiable smile. His handshake was firm without being a trial of strength. Of the three he seemed to be the only one without attitude, and Randall instinctively liked him.
Claire called, “Come and get it!” and the men converged on the kitchen.
Standing by the stove, stirring porridge, was a large, middle-aged Indian woman.
“Her name is Susan,” Gabe had told him. “We took her on last summer to help cook for the hands. But when winter came and most of them drifted away, she had nowhere else to go. So she stayed.”
And Randall had said, “Still collecting waifs and strays, I see.” Gabe’s casual kindness had always been the most endearing thing about him.
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.
