He understood the meaning of “rising damp” now. It was what got you up to go find more covers.

Central heating had come along a good six hundred years after the abbey, and though it did its best, it couldn’t rise to the occasion. The pipes hissed and moaned. They sputtered and rattled. Gabe turned it off again.

After all, he wasn’t a sissy. He could cope.

He considered starting a blaze in a fireplace. But the fire-places were big enough to roast an ox in. Gabe reckoned he’d have to move right in with the wood to get the benefit of any warmth. In the end, he piled on every piece of clothing he’d brought, buried himself beneath every blanket he could find, and huddled next to the stove for the night.

He was sure Earl would call it bracing.

He called it ridiculous. But he didn’t seriously consider other options until he drove past the cozy warmth of the dower house on his way to the Gazette office in the morning.

All of the dower house chimneys appeared to be working. He remembered the kitchen had been cheerful, not echoing, the parlor welcoming, not forbidding, and the occupant…well, he’d been thinking about her all night.

He cast a longing glance over his shoulder as he drove past-and noticed a discreet little sign at the end of the dower house drive.

B &B FULL BREAKFAST £15. DINNER AT EXTRA COST.

He smiled. “Well, now why didn’t she mention that?”

Fixing the Buckworthy Gazette would best be accomplished, Gabe had decided by lunchtime, if he simply lobbed a bomb into the building, blew up the whole place.

Unfortunately that solution was out of the question.

“I say we set fire to it, throw ’em out on their ears, and start over,” he told Earl when the old man rang up later that afternoon. “The place is falling down around their ears, and they don’t give a rat’s ass. There’s not a computer in the building. The printing press looks like it came over on the Mayflower-”