Chapter 12

Woman.

She'd spoken the word as if ice ran through her veins, yet Nylander sensed a brittle crack running the word's length. The slightest touch would surely break it open to reveal a raw, throbbing center.

"It isn't the first time, though," she continued, determined, recovered.

This woman—yes, woman—was tough. He would do well to remember it.

"I was wearing a dress at Lord St. Alban's manse in London."

He kept forgetting their brief encounter preceding the foyer's burst into pandemonium and his descent into fever. He reached back into his memory and located his first sight of her… And her welcoming scowl. Indeed, she'd been wearing a dress. In fact…

He gave her a quick up-and-down. She'd been wearing this dress, plain, brown, modest wool. Was it her only dress? What sort of woman was this Callie?

"I only wear trousers for estate work and—" She hesitated. "Other purposes."

Like her moonlit scarpers across the heath. But he wouldn't reveal that particular knowledge, nor that he wished she'd put them back on. They snugged to her in all the right places.

He couldn't help noticing more than a few askance looks from passersby. "Are we doing something wrong?"

"Such as?"

"The townsfolk. They keep casting confounded glances our way."

A laugh broke loose from her. "I am the town oddity, and you are a stranger. Together? We may be too much."

Nylander held out his arm at a ninety degree angle. "Perhaps we would excite less village gossip if you placed your hand on my arm while we stroll together." It seemed the most conventional course.

Her brow furrowed. She was weighing the wisdom of his words against her desire to be free of him. Eyes fixed firmly ahead, she lifted her hand and lowered it onto his arm, her palm lighter than the perch of a sparrow.

A few degrees of her heat penetrated the wool of his overcoat, the linen of his shirt, and found its way to his skin. As much as she would like to convince him and the world that she was an ice queen, this gave her away.

Familiarity stirred. He remembered her heat, the vitality of it, pulsing with life and passion, so opposite the woman she'd chosen to present him ever since. Which was the real Callie? He had a feeling he knew, and she didn't want him to.

"I'm surprised you can walk." She was referring to his dawn ride on Buttercup.

"I might've had a bit of trouble making it to the chamber pot the last couple of mornings."

He expected her lips to purse in the firm line of a silent scold. Instead, a reluctant smile played about her mouth. Emboldened, he said, "Most ladies would chastise me for the indelicacy of my speech."

She shrugged. "I don't mind plain words. I have four brothers, all of whom are older. There was no room in that house for missishness."

"Same on a ship." Interesting point of connection. "Did you enjoy growing up with brothers?"

"Very much."

He smelled an opportunity to peer into her past. "Yet you didn't return there after your husband's death."

"Wouldn't dream of it." She shot him an inscrutable glance. "It sounds harsher than it is. I could have returned to Kingsbridge, to my father's house, and perhaps I intended to, but it didn't work out that way. After Georgie's death?—"

"Your late husband?"

She nodded.

A thought occurred to Nylander. Was it possible her husband died between "I do" and the wedding night? Before they could consummate their marriage? Her virginity had begun to nag at him, and this would explain it. "How long was your marriage?"

"Three years."

"Three years?"

Her brow lifted in silent query at his outburst.

Three years of marriage explained nothing at all. It only unearthed more questions. The woman carried more secrets than a priest.

"After Georgie's passing," she continued, "I decided to stay on at the Grange. I'd grown too independent to return to anyone else's household." Her words came slower now, as confessions were want to do. "I quite like abiding by my own rules."

"Wouldn't your mother have welcomed her only daughter home?"

"My mother perished before I reached my thirteenth year." Hard and impenetrable was the statement, as if she'd built a fortress around it. "Besides, my father had no further use for me. I'd done my duty."

The same thick strand of bitterness wove through her words as from two days ago when this subject had first been broached.

"At the Grange," she continued, "I'm able to take charge and set ideas into motion and see them bear fruit, literally." She gestured toward an apple cart clamoring past. "I could never go back or take it for granted, not like you men."

"I take no part of my life for granted," Nylander all but growled, surprising himself with a sudden ferocity of emotion.

Wide eyes, less certain than they'd been seconds ago, rounded on him. "No?"

"I've striven tooth and nail for every opportunity, every bit of coin, every single possession I own."

Silent, she nodded. He detected empathy in her eyes. The moment elongated, and a specific intimacy permeated the air. It was the intimacy of understanding. He relaxed beneath it.

She averted her gaze and fixed her attention straight ahead, their forward-moving feet leaving the moment behind. Which he was only too happy to do. He'd revealed more of himself than he liked. Time to right this ship. "What do you consider your greatest achievement at the Grange?"

"Reclaiming the apple orchard from the wild when I arrived five years ago."

"Before your husband passed?"

"Aye. He cared not what I did to pass the time while he was in London."

A clearing appeared to their right, its only building a simple, clapboard structure. Fresh whitewash gleamed bright in the midday sun.

"This has the look of another improvement," Nylander observed.

"I don't consider upkeep of the village school an improvement. Rather, it was a basic necessity that wasn't being tended properly."

Their footsteps slowed to a stop when a group of a dozen or so children burst through the building's side door. Amidst the cacophony of wild shouts and laughter, the children played as if their very lives depended on them having as grand a time as possible in the limited time allotted. Nylander was certain he'd never felt that free in his life, especially not as a child.

The woman beside him went still and silent, her dark eyes luminous and watchful. What he saw in there was impossible to miss. Longing so naked and raw, he knew he should respect her privacy and look away. But he couldn't.

Instinct drove him to ask, "Why did you agree to your marriage?" The question, and his desire to know its answer, had nothing to do with the Grange or bargains with pirates. But for some unholy reason he needed to know if what he saw in her eyes was true. "You don't seem concerned with social standing."

"I don't give a fig what the world thinks." She shrugged one shoulder, her gaze inward. "Why not marry? Don't most women marry once in their lives?" Something sounded in her tone. Distaste.

"So you would never marry again?"

"I never said that."

A little pulse of confirmation shot through him, and he remained silent.

"Marriage has its pitfalls, but it has its benefits," she continued.

"Yet you don't seem to be interested in any of them."

"I wouldn't go that far."

"Name one."

"Children come of marriage."

There. What he'd seen in her eyes was true. She wanted children. He couldn't help the tug of sympathy with this difficult woman who looked at him like he was the spit beneath her shoe. And yet…

She'd been a virgin. The woman who'd married for children had been a virgin for the three years of her marriage. Her circle became more impossible to square at every turn.

"You'll have noticed there is no child," she stated on a humorless laugh. "The marriage didn't quite go to plan."

"Many plans find a way of slipping out of our control."

Her head snapped around, and she cut him a sharp glare. The silence that followed combined to speak volumes. He'd rattled the woman. Was she wondering if there was an undercurrent running below the surface of his words? If he could possibly know of a plan that might slip away from her?

Perhaps it would be kinder to put an end to this charade, to tell her that he knew she'd made a bargain with a pirate and that, although he didn't know the details of it, he knew with certainty it wouldn't go to plan.

But he wouldn't.

This woman hadn't made a deal with just any pirate, but with Jack Le Grand. Nylander needed more information before he confronted her with that particular truth.

She pulled her hand off his forearm. He'd hardly registered its loss before she was striding away, her feet beating a determined tattoo against stone. He jogged a few steps to catch her. She would have to do better than that if she wanted to shake him off.

"This is a damned long main street," he observed.

Her nostrils flared in annoyance. "It's just over one mile in length. The longest in England according to the locals."

Ahead, its end came into view, dozy waves of the bay lapping at the dark, sandy shore not a hundred yards distant. "It runs into the sea."

The observation was met with silence. He looked around and saw she no longer walked beside him. She'd stopped where the road met sand.

"I believe this concludes our tour for the day." She was finished with him.

Which left one problem. He wasn't finished with her.

"The tide is low."

Her brow lifted as if to say, You call yourself a master of the sea? Anyone can see that.

Implicit insults aside, he didn't want her to leave. "Those caves"—he pointed toward the limestone cliffs in the not-so-distant east—"are they only visible at low tide?"

"They become completely submerged with the tide. Every spring, youths must be cautioned about them. Before I arrived, there was a tragedy involving a pair of young—" She bit off the final word of the sentence.

"Lovers?"

She nodded. "Which means the rumor about the caves must not be true. Otherwise, they could've made it to higher ground."

Nylander cocked his head. "Rumor?" Experience had taught him there was always a nugget of truth located in local rumors.

"That they connect to the silver mine."

"Silver mine?" A tingle of foreboding crawled up his spine. "Those cliffs have a silver mine?" This conversation became more interesting by the word.

Callie shrugged. "Not in that cliff precisely. A little farther east. But they haven't been operational in over a decade. No one ever figured out how to run them at a profit."

Nylander needed to slow this conversation. Information was coming at him too fast. "You're saying the mine didn't stop operating because the silver vein ran out?"

"Not at all. It's not the sort of enterprise that I want to become involved with."

"What does it have to do with—" It hit him. "Where is the main vein located?"

"Beneath the Grange's lands, of course."

One thought tumbled over another: What game was she playing? Did Jack Le Grand know about this silver mine? Ridiculous question. Of course he did. Would her ladyship here know that Jack knew? Was that at the heart of their bargain?

"Who knows about these mines?"

Her eyebrows drew together in befuddlement, and a short, confounded laugh escaped her. "Everyone in Upper Wyldcombe Lacey, to be sure. Everyone in England, possibly. Silver from the mine was used in the crown jewels. Queen Charlotte wore a piece worked in Devon silver—a brooch, I believe—for an official portrait. It's rather a large source of pride for the area."

Nylander cared not one whit for any of that. "Why did operations cease?"

"The tunnels became unstable, and there were some deaths." Her head canted to the side, assessing, suspicious. "You're quite interested in this subject."

"As a man of the sea," he said, thinking fast. Think. "I'm fascinated by how goods are acquired on land."

With a single lift of an imperious eyebrow, she reminded him that she was Her Highness and that she didn't believe a word he'd just spoken. She cleared her throat. "I have work to get on with. Good day, Captain."

With that, she pivoted on her heel and stalked away, boots dangling by their laces at her side. Was that wool he'd glimpsed inside them?

Her back receding into the distance, Nylander found himself wishing she was wearing her ladies' trousers. She filled them out rather nicely.

Tearing his gaze away, he returned his attention to the caves. They were the key to Callie's bargain with Jack Le Grand. Nylander's gut churned with the certainty. But…

Did she know? Had the silver mine been an explicit part of the deal? Somehow, Nylander didn't think so. Callie's love for the Grange ran deep and wide. She wouldn't invite a renowned pirate to destroy it.

But that didn't mean the silver mine hadn't been part of the pirate's deal with her. It was all a matter of perspective. Every transaction with Jack Le Grand contained multiple subterranean levels. Nylander couldn't rid himself of the feeling that Callie didn't know about those levels.

Aye, she'd made a bargain with the man, but what bargain, he hadn't a clue. He needed to uncover the truth before it was too late and blew up in all their faces.

If Callie thought he'd become closer than her shadow of late, she hadn't seen anything yet.