How hard could it be?

Gabe was determined to look on the positive side. There was no point, after all, in bemoaning his impulsive decision. He’d said he would do it, and so he would. No big deal.

Randall apparently did this sort of thing all the time-dashed in on his white horse-no, make that, sped in in his silver Rolls-Royce-and rescued provincial newspapers from oblivion, set them on their feet, beefed up their advertising revenues, sparked up their editorial content, improved their economic base and sped away again-just like that.

Well, fine. Gabe would, too. No problem. No problem at all.

The problem was finding the damn place!

Gabe scowled now as he drove Earl’s old Range Rover through the gray morning drizzle that had accompanied him from London, along the narrow winding lane banked by dripping hedgerows taller than his head.

He’d visited the ancestral pile before, of course, but he’d never driven himself. And he’d always come in the middle of summer, not in what was surely the dampest, gloomiest winter in English history.

He’d left way before dawn this morning, goaded by Earl having said something about Randall always getting “an early start.” He’d done fine on the motorway, despite still having momentary twitches when, if his concentration lapsed, he thought he was driving on the wrong side of the road.

It had almost been easier when he’d got down into the back country of Devon and the roads had ceased having sides and had become narrow one-lane roads. His only traumas then came when he met a car coming in the other direction and he had to decide which way to move. Finally though, he found a sign saying BUCKWORTHY 3 mi and below it STANTON ABBEY 2 mi.