Freddie-the-caretaker was enticing as all get out. Still, he didn’t think his grandfather would look kindly on his throwing the resident caretaker down on the kitchen table and having his way with her. Especially not with the old lady in the red sweater avidly looking on.
Mrs. Peek, he decided after a few minutes’ conversation, was very well named.
Nothing happened in the village of Buckworthy that Mrs. Peek didn’t know about. She certainly knew about him!
“Come t’run the Gazette,” she said, bobbing her head in approval. Then her brows arched behind her glasses and she looked from him to Freddie-the-caretaker with her loose hair and mussed nightgown and said, “And a mighty fast worker he is, too.”
“Mr. McBride came for the keys to the abbey,” Freddie said firmly. But while she contrived to sound firm and businesslike, her hands fluttered around, as if she was torn between smoothing her disheveled hair or clutching the raincoat even tighter.
As she was managing to do neither, Gabe just stood there and enjoyed the view. The prospect of spending two months in Devon was looking brighter all the time.
“Us could do with a cup of tea,” Mrs Peek said.
Freddie put on the kettle.
Mrs. Peek smiled brightly. “You’re the young lord’s cousin, then? The American. Has the look of ’is lordship, he does,” she pronounced. “He were right han’sum, too. Th’ earl, I mean. Cedric.” Mrs. Peek’s voice softened and became almost dreamy. Her cheeks were already red from the cold, but if they hadn’t been Gabe felt sure that the thought of Earl might have contributed.
Earl? Make someone’s heart beat faster? Now there was a sobering thought.
“You know my grandfather, Mrs. Peek?”
The ruddy color on her cheeks deepened. She looked a little flustered. “Us was…acquainted.”
Gabe bet they were. And very well acquainted at that. Mrs. Peek had to be seventy-five if she was a day, and it was a little hard to imagine her and Earl getting it on. But then it was a little hard imagining Earl once looking like him!
“I’ll give him your regards when I talk to him,” he said. “I just came down from Stanton House where we celebrated his birthday.”
That, of course, required a detailed description of the birthday party. Mrs. Peek was all ears. Freddie, to Gabe’s dismay, excused herself after she’d poured the tea.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. “I just need to get more…presentable.” Her hands were fluttering still.
“Don’t bother on my account,” Gabe grinned.
Freddie clutched the raincoat across her midsection and said firmly, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“’Er’s a dear soul, our Freddie,” Mrs. Peek said the moment Freddie was out of earshot. “Always workin’, ’er is. Too much for one woman, keepin’ up wi’ the abbey, but can’t tell her so. Good job you’ve come. Right proper Stantons gettin’ the Gazette an’ old Cedric sendin’ his very own grandson to set things right. As well he should,” she said firmly. “This bein’ his old home, an’ all. Th’ neighborhood needs ’er gentlemen.”
Gabe looked over his shoulder, then realized the gentleman in question was him! He began to feel a bit of the responsibility Randall seemed to shoulder so easily.
“I’ll do my best.”
Mrs. Peek nodded eagerly “You’ve got plans?”
“Have to see it first. Check things out. Assess the situation. Develop a plan of attack.” He was pretty sure that was the sort of claptrap Randall would have come up with when pressed. “I’ll know more in the next few days.”
“That’s for sure.” Mrs. Peek smiled.
Gabe wasn’t sure what she meant by that cryptic comment. She finished her cup of tea, then got up. “Glad you’ve come, me han’sum. Wish’ee well.” Her blue eyes sparkled and Gabe had a glimpse of what Earl must have been drawn by all those years ago. Then, nodding with satisfaction, she added, “’Tis time.”
She was pedaling down the drive when Freddie returned.
Her hair was pulled up and pinned on top of her head, and she was dressed now in jeans and a bright blue loose-necked pullover sweater. She wasn’t quite as obviously delectable as she had been crawling around on the floor in her nightgown giving him a glimpse of long lovely legs, but Gabe had a good memory.
“Where’s Mrs. Peek?”
“On her way. She got what she came for.”
Freddie smiled. “She means well. She lives alone and she enjoys a cup of tea and a chat.” Freddie swished through the kitchen, picking up the cups and putting them in the sink. The jeans hugged her hips and thighs. Not bad. Gabe watched them sway, then dragged his gaze upward and his mind back to the point.
He cleared his throat. “I get the feeling she thinks I’m here for good. I’m not.” He wanted that clear right now. “I’m doing Randall…my cousin…a favor. I said I’d sort the Gazette out. I will. Then I’m gone. This is just a one-time deal. I have a ranch back in Montana. I’m a cowboy, not a lord.”
“A cowboy?” Freddie said doubtfully, as if it were in a foreign tongue. Her lips curved. She had very kissable lips.
Gabe wondered what they would taste like.
Had Earl wondered the same thing about Mrs Peek’s the first time he’d seen her? Had she been a pretty young thing, too?
Freddie wasn’t that young, he reminded himself firmly. She was a widow. She had kids old enough to go to school. That made her pretty old herself.
“How old are you?” he asked, unsure why he needed to know. He expected her to say forty or so. Mothers were. His own was nearly sixty, after all.
“Thirty-one.”
“Thirty-one?”
She was younger than he was! Gabe stared at Frederica Crossman, poleaxed. “How old are your kids?” It wasn’t a question as much as an accusation.
“Charlie’s nine. Emma’s seven.”
Gabe opened his mouth. He closed it again, having nothing at all to say. She was thirty-one and her kids were half grown!
That meant he could have kids that old!
No. He couldn’t!
He was barely more than a kid himself.
“It’s not polite to ask someone’s age,” Freddie said tartly, “especially if you’re going to stare at me dumbfounded when I give you an honest answer.”
Gabe flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…I’m just…surprised. You look so…so young.” He’d thought she was an incredibly well-preserved forty.
He shook his head, still trying to sort it out. He’d never thought about aging before. Not himself at least. Earl, yes. The old man was whiter and frailer, even though his voice still boomed and his spirit never flagged.
Randall, too, had aged. There were marked differences between the boy Randall had been at eighteen and the man he’d become.
But Gabe hadn’t really thought it had anything to do with age. He’d just thought Randall looked old because he worked so damn hard.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Maybe they were all getting older. Earl at least had a life’s work to look back on with pride. And Randall, too, had something to show for it. So apparently did Freddie Crossman, mother of two half-grown children.
What about him? What about Gabriel Phillip McBride?
He looked down at his bull-riding championship belt buckle. Suddenly it didn’t seem like enough.
Two
She should have invited him to stay with them.
It would have been the polite thing, the responsible thing, certainly the financially sensible thing to do! After all, Freddie often opened the dower house to holidaymakers looking for a B &B.