Chapter 13

"Isn't it rare that calves are born in autumn?"

Callie gazed down at mother and calf in their stall. She'd had a hunch about the choking cow, and it had been correct. She'd been pregnant.

"It's uncommon, but not unheard of. Nature does as it wills, not as we humans will it." Mr. Hawkins stuffed the implements of his trade into a weathered green duffel bag. He was the only veterinary surgeon for miles around. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I must see to Farmer Kenning's sheep. They're in need of a good drenching."

With that, Mr. Hawkins left the cow house and Callie alone in the stall, unable to take her eyes off the calf suckling his mother's teat. In moments such as these, a profound sense of accomplishment and hope for the future of the Grange overwhelmed her.

Today, however, the thought didn't feel as wondrous as it had in the past. Nothing did anymore. Not since she'd made the bargain with the pirate, which now hung above her like the executioner's ax, poised to fall and separate her head from her body at any moment.

Many plans find a way of slipping out of our control.Oh, how the Viking's words haunted her. How had he known to speak them?

Her eye on the labor-exhausted cow and calf, her gut told her those cows hadn't wandered into the apple orchard by accident. But…

What reason could the pirates have for releasing the animals into the apple orchard? Their profits depended on the apples being converted into brandy, as much as hers did.

She exhaled her paranoia on a huff. If life on an agricultural estate had taught her nothing else, it was that coincidences and accidents happened. It was possible that a series of miscommunications, forgotten tasks, drunkenness, and plain laziness had led to the dairy cows finding their way to the apple orchard. Honestly, it was the only explanation.

Time to carry on.

She rolled up her sleeves, grabbed her bucket, and vacated the stall. Certainty in her step, she strode down the long, central aisle of the cow house to the other side that housed the dairy cows. It was time for their morning milking.

She enjoyed the everyday details of running the Grange. They gave a life purpose. She'd never understood why so many of her sex and class were content to lead such idle and boring lives. Not even their children occupied the women of her class, as they left much of the childrearing to nannies and governesses.

That wasn't the life for her. Maybe Georgie had been correct, and she was mannish and unnatural. But those descriptors, beyond their unnecessary cruelty, had never sat right with her. She didn't feel like a man. She just felt like a very different sort of woman.

Jane Smith came to mind. She, too, was a different sort of woman. She was a dutiful wife and mother, an exceptional seamstress and shopkeeper, and co-conspirator in keeping Callie outfitted for her midnight dashes across the moor. Her life had purpose and industry beyond her femininity. Yet Jane was the least mannish woman Callie had ever known.

But here was Jane's particular talent: she looked like every other conventional woman. It was a talent Callie didn't possess. She'd never learned the trick of appearing one way and being a different one.

As she drew near the milking stalls, the giggly murmurings of milkmaids busy at their morning's work increased in volume. Fortunately, the first stall she reached was empty, save a cow placidly chewing her cud. Callie pulled up a short, three-legged stool and felt along the cow's engorged udder until she reached a teat.

Oblivious to their mistress's presence, the girls chattered on, which suited Callie perfectly. Her presence made the girls nervous.

But here was the thing: that gaggle of giggly milkmaids made her nervous, too. They were so fresh and vibrant. Though they weren't much younger than she, they were so entirely her opposite.

But, oh, how she loved it when, like today, she was able to slip inside a stall unnoticed and be surrounded by their giggles and their gossip, which simultaneously informed Callie of the latest Grange tattle and provided entertainment. It wasn't that she was sneaking about, but she knew it would ruin their good time if they knew she was amongst them.

Today, they were bandying about a frequent subject of theirs: a young man.

"I'd say 'e knows 'is way around a hoe."

"Aye, 'e'd make my soil right loose and smooth after a day's plowin'."

Laughter echoed all the way up to the rafters. As these young lasses' employer and guardian of their good virtue, she should be shocked. But Callie couldn't quite muster the outrage today. Instead, she found herself stifling a laugh.

"I 'appened to see 'im loading cider barrels onto a wagon yesterday," one of the girls said.

"And?" asked a second girl.

"Don't keep us in suspense, Becky," spoke a third.

"Well, the work must've got 'im all het up, because 'is shirt was open down the front?—"

"Oh," sighed one maid.

"Was 'e all muscular?" whispered another.

"Aye, that 'e was, but that weren't all."

"What else could there be?" asked the sighing milkmaid.

"Becky, you know what else there be, no could about it!"

"You saw 'is?—?"

"Course not," said the maid who held all the information, "but listen to this. 'E rolled up 'is sleeves, and you know what I saw?"

Callie's breath suspended in her chest, and her pulse quickened.

"'E 'ad those markin's sailors get on their skin."

"Tattoos?"

"Mm-hmm, that 'e did."

Callie went still as stone. Today, the milkmaids weren't gossiping about just any young man. Today, they were gossiping about the Viking.

"Wouldn't mind seeing where 'e might be 'idin' any others."

Callie could tell the girl. Not that she would, but she could. In detail.

Her body heated up by a degree. These girls' wonderings and speculations, Callie knew. Biblically.

"You know what 'e looks like?"

A few whispery giggles floated on the air.

"A Viking."

That did seem to be the general consensus.

"And you know what Vikings do, don't'cha?"

"What?"

"Plunder."

Here was the thing about all this talk of Vikings and plunder. There was an ugly past when Vikings literally laid waste to entire English villages and took what they wanted with brute force. But when words like Viking and plunder were applied to Captain Nylander, well, they took on a different meaning. Any plunder that would occur between that man and the woman lucky enough to wander into his path would be entirely consensual.

The riot of raucous laughter the word elicited exhibited no signs of stopping until, suddenly, definitely, it did. Curious, Callie poked her head above the stall and immediately ducked down on an inhaled gasp, her heart a hammer in her chest. It was him, looking every inch these girls' fantasy.

Eyes fixed firmly on the cow's pink udder, she resumed milking, a steady squirt-squirt of milk resonating against the solid wood pail. Perhaps he would state his business and leave without noticing her.

It was possible.

Then the possible became the impossible when he appeared at the hind end of her cow. She kept her attention firmly fixed on her task. Perhaps he would receive her message and skulk away. Over her stall drifted the shuffle of fleeing feet as the milkmaids cleared out.

She was alone with the Viking. Again.

Sudden pique flared up as, at last, she faced him. There, he stood, watching her, an inquiring glint in his eye.

"It's you," she exclaimed, her frustration with this situation, with this man, at last, finding its vent. "Of course, it's you. It's always you."

Instead of hanging his head in apology, the blasted man did the opposite. He smiled.

And to add the insufferable to insult, her body warmed to his smile as if the full heat of the summer sun shone upon it. It was a smile a woman could bask in.

"Did you miss me?"

The cheek!

Still, a tidy question reared its annoying, little head: Had she?

Quick on theheels of Mrs. Bailey's command to fetch a bucket of milk from the diary, Nylander's feet hit packed earth, purpose in his step, a crisp, sea-salted breeze against his skin.

"You're a man used to work, so I may as well put you to it," she'd said. "There's no butter where there's no cream, so off wi' ya. Tell Becky it's for me."

He tilted his face toward the wide blue sky and let the English sun pour what little warmth it had into him. He missed the sun of a hot climate. A sun that gave one no quarter as it saturated every pore with its fire and turned a man's skin brown and vibrant.

The sun of the north Devon coast was a stingy sort, as if it had a scant allotment of light and heat that it must portion out like a miser. In the few weeks he'd been here, the days had grown shorter and the air had turned sharper. The sun was beginning to settle in for the winter.

But the oranges and yellows of autumn had something to say before winter reached out and encased this half of the world within its icy claws. Autumn energy possessed a specific crackle that set people into motion. The warm equatorial sun lacked its northern counterpart's ability to inspire such industry. He found himself warming to this crisp Devon sun, its particular energy soaking into him.

On the other side of the poultry yard, he caught sight of a youth loping toward him. This lad wasn't from the Grange. It wasn't only his cautious way of taking in his surroundings that marked him as different. His brown curly hair, golden-tipped and near the same color of his skin, did, too. He was of mixed African descent, and no one at the Grange, Upper Wyldcombe Lacey, perhaps all of Devon, resembled him.

Jack Le Grand had sent this lad his way. Nylander hadn't any doubt of it. Jack would send three invitations, three days in a row. It was ever the same when they shared the same stretch of air.

Wordlessly, the lad stopped before him, blocking his path, and extended a slip of paper. Nylander accepted the note and gave its contents a quick scan. He closed his fist, crushing it in his palm. "That's all the reply he'll get." His words, their tone, brooked no rebuttal. It was the same reply Jack always got.

"'E don't like that answer, not one bit." A cocky smile tipped at the side of the lad's mouth. He was possessed of the gangly arms and legs of a boy about to become a very tall man. Nylander had been the same at that age. Complete with cockiness, too.

"Off with you, now," Nylander said.

He watched the lad disappear down a hill and uttered a muted litany of curses. Jack Le Grand knew he was here. Bloody hell.

He should've seen this coming. Jack made it a point to have land connections in every port. It was the only way a pirate of his advanced years—all sixty-five of them, if memory served—kept his neck out of the hangman's noose. The man was likely better apprised of land matters than those who lived on it.

And then there was the not insignificant matter of the way he'd shadowed Nylander from Gibraltar. Jack had something he wanted to say to him. Too bad. He wasn't interested. That ship sailed five and twenty years ago.

He snorted a humorless laugh when, in reality, it wasn't funny at all. It hadn't been then, and it wasn't now.

He reached the cow house and stepped inside its wide open double doors. Its cavernous expanse smelled of dung and animal and rich, dense earth. The scent wasn't unpleasant. It was the essence of life, of beginnings.

He picked up a low drone of voices and followed the sound, which was punctuated by a giddy laugh every few seconds. He began to be able to pick out distinct, fully formed words. Words like plunder and Viking.

Viking?

He rounded a corner and found a neat row of four indifferent cows crunching idly on hay, each being milked by a different milkmaid.

"Would one of you be Becky?" he asked, setting off another round of giggles, but no direct answer to his question.

The gaggle of girls stood in unison, sidled around him as a group, one indistinguishable from the other, and fled the barn. For a moment, he thought he was alone. Then he heard it: the squirt of milk hitting the side of a bucket in the next stall. He peeked around the hindquarter of an unbothered cow, expecting to find Becky. Instead, he found Her Highness, actively, persistently avoiding his gaze.

He waited. She would have to acknowledge his presence, sooner or later. It did give him time to observe her profile. How pretty it was.

Thatnight flashed before him. Her silhouette limned by the soft glow of distant moonlight… Mouth open, short bursts of breath specific to the rhythm of coupling… A bead of perspiration catching a moon ray…

Her unsurprised gaze shifted to meet his, and a blush peeked above the high collar of her blouse. Redheads couldn't pretend indifferent when they weren't. It was their particular curse, but he felt glad for it. He liked the look of her. She was the very image of a dairymaid, wholesome and fresh, the energy of satisfying work filling in the space around her.

And, just now, when she spat annoyed words at him, he couldn't hold back a smile. He liked that she reacted to him, that he could burrow beneath her skin. It was childish, perhaps, this need of a boy to tweak the girl who thought herself too good for him. She broke their eye contact and squeezed the cow's teat, another hard stream of milk hitting the side of the bucket.

"I've been wondering why I couldn't find you in the early mornings."

"Well, you've found me." Her grip on the teat slackened. "Am I to assume you'll state your purpose sooner or later?"

He held up his bucket. "Mrs. Bailey won't allow me back in the house until this is full."

"You can take mine in a few minutes." She returned to her task.

Nylander watched the rhythm of her hands squeeze and release, the sound of the milk hitting the side of her bucket filling the space between them. Though she was hard and uppity, she was intriguing. "Do you milk the cows daily?"

She heaved an exasperated sigh. "You think I'm too good for this sort of work?"

"Not I, but?—"

"I would think so?"

"Most lords and ladies do."

"After Georgie died, that's what everyone around here thought, too. That I considered myself above it." She swiveled on her stool and faced him square. "Well, I'm not. No one is too good for this sort of work. I lo—" She stopped.

"You love it."

Her serious, coal-black eyes upon him, she nodded. No one could doubt her love for this place. A question occurred to him, the obvious one, one that should have been obvious to her, too. If this place was her life, her true love, then why was she gambling it with a man like Jack Le Grand?

She pivoted and gave him the hard angle of her shoulder. "A few more squirts and the bucket will be full."

"I don't have much experience with livestock."

She shrugged, her hands intent on their work, the cow utterly indifferent.

"I've always wondered what it would be like to milk a cow," he said, surprising himself.

She didn't miss a beat. "Can't imagine it would be congruous with life aboard a ship."

"Would you mind showing me?"

"Mind showing you what?"

"How to milk a cow."

Her hands stopped mid-squeeze, and the stall went silent, save the persistent sound of the cow chewing her cud. Wide eyes rounded on him. He'd made her go speechless.

He rather liked that.