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.

But it wasn’t summer. It was January, as cold and bleak and wintry as it ever got in Devon. Her favorite time of year because for once she had time for herself and Charlie and Emma.

Nothing said she had to open her home to Gabe McBride-just because she owed his grandfather more than she could ever repay.

He’d never asked for repayment. He’d never so much as hinted.

But Freddie knew she owed him. The earl felt guilty about the death of her husband, Mark, though she had assured him over and over it was Mark who’d made the decision to sail the earl’s boat home that night; it was Mark who had taken the foolish risk; no one-least of all Lord Stanton-had commanded him to.

But the earl didn’t see it that way.

“He was working for me,” he said. “I take care of my own.”

The feudal blood in Lord Stanton’s veins ran deep. It didn’t matter that Freddie was earning a living, albeit meager, as a renovator and could make ends meet. She and her children were, he informed her, his responsibility. He would see to their welfare. Next thing she knew he arranged for them to move from their little flat in Camden to the Stanton Abbey dower house.

“I don’t know anyone in Devon!” she’d protested.

“You’ll meet them.”

“My business-”

“Will thrive. You renovate. Renovate the abbey.”

“My children-”

“Can go to school in fresh air and have acres and acres to play in.”

For every argument she had, the earl had had an answer. No one ever said no to the earl. Certainly Freddie never managed to.

So she was very grateful now that he hadn’t asked her to put up his grandson!