Two months? Gabe had stared. “I have to be back for calving and branding come spring!” he protested.

“Guess you’ll have to leave it to Randall then,” Earl had said with a bland smile.

Like hell he would!

He’d said he would rescue the Gazette. And damn it, he would. No matter how long it took.

He knew Randall, too, thought he’d blow it. He’d spent half the night before Gabe left giving him advice. “Just go in there and lay down the law. Speak authoritatively.”

“Be the lord and master, you mean?” Gabe said derisively.

“Exactly. Speak softly but carry a big stick.”

“Teddy Roosevelt said that.”

Randall blinked. “Did he? Well, he must have stolen it from us.” Then he’d clapped Gabe on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. Everything will be right as rain if you just…well, no matter. If you can’t, you just ring me up.”

“No, I can’t,” Gabe said smugly. “You’ll be in Montana.”

That was the other part of the deal. Gabe would do his job if Randall would oversee the ranch.

“Nothing to it,” Gabe had reassured his cousin, though Randall hadn’t looked all that cheerful at the prospect. “Piece of cake.”

And this would be, too, he assured himself. And if it wasn’t, he’d get it done anyway. He’d show both Earl and Randall. He was tired of having everybody think he couldn’t last at anything for longer than eight seconds.

But one look at Stanton Abbey when he finally found it, and Gabe thought if he made eight seconds he’d be lucky.

He’d last visited Stanton Abbey when he was ten. He was thirty-two now. It hadn’t changed. Of course, twenty-two years in the life of Stanton Abbey was a mere blink of an eye.

The original building was seven hundred years old if it was a day. There had been additions over the years. The damp dark stone building sat on the hillside like a squat, stolid Romanesque stone toad with slightly surprised gothic eyebrows.