Chapter 15

Nylander leaned over green baize and gazed down the length of the billiard stick. His arm reared back in short practised strokes, once, twice before striking the cue ball with too much force and sending another ball flying, red-stained ivory ricocheting off a wood-paneled wall before sinking to a stop in dense Persian wool.

Third time tonight.

Disgusted by his lack of concentration, he let the stick clatter to the billiard table and ambled toward the dart board. He took a dart in hand, aimed, and threw. He repeated the sequence three times, all the darts flying wide of the bull's eye.

He'd never developed the knack for landlubber games. He spent, at minimum, three hundred days a year on water. What use was a billiards table on the rocking horse roll of the open sea?

He prowled the length of this room, the house's gentleman's retreat, back and forth, bored, hoping to find something of interest that he'd missed these last several nights. He'd even tried to convince the footman, Ollie, to join him for a round of billiards. The man had refused, citing work obligations, but Nylander understood the truth of it. The man was afraid Her Highness would sack him.

All her servants gave her a wide berth. When they looked at her, they saw a strange woman, a Wyld Hare, someone they could neither understand nor predict. After all, she wore men's trousers. They couldn't see through that exterior to the woman below. But he'd glimpsed her.

And those men's trousers… Well, she was correct. They were ladies' trousers, on her. Devoid of vanity, she saw them as nothing more than a functional item of clothing, necessary to the demands of her work. She hadn't the faintest notion of how those trousers presented her body, specifically the womanly curves of her arse, in full, loving glory.

He'd give himself a cockstand if he wasn't careful. A cockstand and nowhere to go with it.

The back of his hand still tingled with awareness from her touch earlier. The pulsing heat of her skin, the humidity of it. The entire essence of his being concentrated into the place where her skin touched his. He'd never felt so animal, so male, and so outside of himself, as if he'd both transcended his physicality and sunk deeper into it at once. It was as if he'd had a spell cast on him. By her.

Except he knew the spell she wove wasn't intentional, rather the opposite. He'd never encountered a woman so unwilling to own her desire, so at odds with it, the struggle evident in her sway forward, her pull back, the repetition of the cycle.

It intrigued him. She intrigued him, this woman who saw him as nothing more than the dirt beneath her boot. Remnants of the anger that had surged in the cow stall prickled back to life. How he'd wanted to strip a confession from her. He still wanted it, if he was being dead honest.

But it was a reckless desire, this need to be a sin acknowledged, and one that would get him nowhere with that confounding woman. And she really was confounding. She was capable and brave. She cared deeply about the land and everyone who lived off it. Considerations which had him swinging full circle to the question that had been bedeviling him for days: Why had she struck a deal with Jack Le Grand?

While these days spent tracking her movements hadn't turned up any substantive answers, they had yielded some curious scraps. The cows in the orchard, who had certainly been intentionally let loose there. The silver mine, whose deposit wasn't fully exhausted. No doubt, Jack would be interested in that morsel of information. And the wheel mill accident today…

It hadn't been an accident. A dense concentration of small holes had been painstakingly bored into the wooden plank connecting the stone wheel to the central pivot, compromising its integrity so that the combination of the stone's weight and the pull of the horse would snap it clean through when put to work. Those holes were too perfect and symmetrical to have been caused by insect or rot. They were man-made.

Her Highness had a problem. While the specific nature of her problem hadn't made itself clear, he understood it in a general sense.

Jack Le Grand.

Nylander would wager the entirety of his hard-won fortune on it.

He found himself at the far end of the room, a pair of buff leather chairs and two cases of bookshelves flanking either side of the fireplace. He scanned a row of books at random and stopped dead on one title. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. He pulled the book and thumbed through its thousands of pages, scanning plays and character lists until he found the one he sought.

As You Like It. The one with the heroine who wore trousers. Mayhap Shakespeare could provide instruction on how to deal with one such woman.

He sank into cushioned leather and dove into the play. The Dowager Viscountess St. Alban was similar to her Shakespearean counterpart in more ways than one. Aside from their penchant for trousers, they were both noble, headstrong, and intelligent.

A throat cleared behind him. The smile that had found its way to his lips, dropped. He glanced over his shoulder to find Ollie returned. "Change your mind?" he asked, annoyed at being pulled from the play. He snapped the book shut.

"Her ladyship requests your presence in her study."

Nylander's brow lifted in surprise. "She does, does she?"

"If you will follow me."

Within minutes, they'd reached the study door, a golden stream of light running up its cracked-open length. Nylander stayed Ollie just as the footman's hand reached for the handle.

"No need for announcements." Nylander fancied observing Her Highness inside her inner sanctum, unobserved.

"But, her ladyship?—"

A hard glower silenced the younger man and sent him hurrying off. At times, Nylander's massive size had its benefits. He pushed the door open on silent hinges and stepped inside the room.

Stretched before him lay a long, cavernous room lit at the far end. Scents of leather and wood, even the hint of cigar, lingered in the air from the men who'd once populated it. But no more. Now, this room had a mistress. One who hadn't bothered to make a single feminine change to it.

There she was, flame strands wisping about her face, nightrail shut tight at her throat, brilliantly lit as if she were a stage performer, bent over a large oak desk with, at least, six books open, fingers moving from one to the other, her gaze darting in a measured rhythm as if she was reading all six at once. She really wasn't an ordinary lady.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

The sort who made deals with pirates, in fact.

He cleared his throat. Her head startled up, and she gasped. Recognition, deep and elemental, spiked through him, and his lust from earlier sparked to life.

"Who's there?" she called out, squinting into the shadows, nervous fingers tucking those loose tendrils behind her ears. He wished she wouldn't.

He stepped into the light and left the thought behind. This was Her Highness he was dealing with, a woman determined to keep the shame of him her dirty secret. The ugly strand of annoyance that skated the edge of anger earlier pulled taut, reminding him of its presence. He could ignore it. He had years of experience. "'Tis the man you summoned."

Her body visibly released in relief. "You certainly have a way of entering a room. You must do the world a favor and consider tying bells around your ankles."

He approached the desk and perched a hip on its edge. She drew back, startled at his audacity. Good. She needed someone to set her back on her heels every once in a while.

"How is Jess's shoulder?" she asked.

"Set." He'd spare her the sickening details. He flipped idly through the pages of the nearest book at hand. "I see you're settled in for the night with a bit of light reading."

She reached out and snatched the book away. "I'll thank you not to disturb my place, sir."

He pointed toward a drawing in the center of the desk. He pointed toward the blueprint. "What is this?"

"It's a survey of the estate. I commissioned it last spring."

He leaned over, settling his weight more fully onto the desk, and took a closer look at the books surrounding the survey. Each was an illustration of various types of linking geometrical patterns. "What are these?"

"Pasture designs." She spoke haltingly, as if the words were being pulled from her. "Some are English, some American. I was hoping to find differences that would be of use, but mostly they're the same."

"Allow me?"

She gave him a long look before relenting and sliding two texts toward him. "Rectangles, gates, and such. Some useful-looking new types of gates that I'd like to implement, but not much by way of new designs. I need more control over my sheep and cattle."

She was referencing the cows in the orchard. Silent, he studied the texts, while her gaze rested hot upon him. He pointed toward the blueprint. "May I?"

She slid the large, flimsy paper across polished oak. "Of course."

"And those if you please?" He indicated the pencil and paper at her elbow.

Her brow gathered in question, parallel crease lines between her eyebrows. Still, she acquiesced.

Half an eye on the survey, his pencil began scratching across blank paper, an idea fleshing out as quick as it formed in his mind. She followed every movement and mark. Minutes passed, and the idea took solid shape. At last, he drew back and laid pencil to rest. "How about this?"

She sidled around the desk to get a better look. Her scent of citrus and fresh air met his nose, and he inhaled. He couldn't help himself.

"What precisely am I looking at? Is it a flower?"

He shook his head. "What if you get rid of all the rectangles and, instead, arrange all the pastures like petals, if you will, around this." He pressed his forefinger dead center. "A central holding yard. All the individual pastures would lead here. Of course, the animals will need to go to the barn periodically or move to other areas, which would necessitate an aisle that runs from the holding yard to the exterior. For example, if the milk cows got through their individual pasture gate and managed to squeeze through the holding yard gate, too, the worst thing that could happen is they would make their way down the aisle and into a barn. You could implement versions of this throughout the estate. In fact"—he traced a fingertip across the land survey—"this land with the large barn would be a perfect area to try it first as it has the cliffs providing one boundary and the barn another."

"No."

His brow furrowed. "No?"

"That won't work."

"If you look here"—perhaps she wasn't viewing it properly—"you'll see that it's quite perfect."

"It isn't. There are issues with that barn which cannot be resolved."

Head canted to the side in complete absorption, she scanned his work. His heart beat a hard hammer in his chest, fueled by no small amount of annoyance. Something else, too. Was he crestfallen? Did her good opinion mean so much to him?

"But that isn't to say this"—her forefinger dug into his drawing—"isn't brilliant."

Her praise spread through him with the rapidity of a Mozart arpeggio. The sunken low he'd experienced seconds ago was instantly replaced by an effervescent high.

He might like it too much. Or not at all. He couldn't be sure. Of one thing he was absolutely sure, however: he couldn't trust a feeling that blew cold one second and hot the next. Better to squash it now than allow it to grow roots.

Lest he forget, this woman neither liked nor respected him as an equal.

He cleared his throat. "There are, of course, potential problems with my drawing."

"Such as?"

"It might be time-consuming, not to mention costly, to implement."

Her eyes fast on his drawing, she shrugged.

"Also"—why was he seeding doubt into the plan he'd just proposed?—"there might be a problem with water."

"Not so. See here?" Her finger trailed across the survey. "Several small streams cut through the estate. Water isn't an issue." A frown formed about her mouth. "You're not accustomed to praise, are you?"

Her words caught him off guard. He pushed off the desk and planted his feet, ready to dig into the meat of their conversation. "You didn't call me into your inner sanctum to discuss pasture configurations."

Her head whipped around, and her gaze found his. A beat later, she'd moved on. Her long body ramrod straight, she set about closing and stacking her agricultural books into a neat pile, the openness of moments ago fading fast. When finished with her tidying, she took a seat in her too-large leather chair and regarded him with the hauteur of an aristocrat staring down her ignoble subject.

"I have a matter of some delicacy to ask. But before I begin, I request that anything we discuss not leave these four walls, as it won't become common knowledge for some weeks yet."

"And what matters of delicacy could you and I possibly have to discuss with one another?"

Wasthe man toying with her?

There were so many matters of delicacy that had accumulated between them, and his tone was so suggestive, it was impossible to tell. Hallelujah that she and he were separated by an oak desk no smaller and no less dense than the tree itself must have been in life.

"You mistake my meaning. The matter of delicacy refers not to you and I, rather to the sale of the Grange."

His brow furrowed. "You're selling Wyldcombe Grange?"

Surprise, coupled with no small amount of relief, spiked through her.

He hadn't known about St. Alban's intention to sell the Grange for he hadn't even known St. Alban owned it.

Nylander hadn't been sabotaging her efforts.

"You have the wrong end of the stick, I'm afraid," she said. "Wyldcombe Grange isn't mine to sell. 'Tis Lord St. Alban's."

"He owns the Grange?"

Her head canted to the side. "How do you think you ended up here?"

"I thought you were doing him a family favor."

"Lord St. Alban and I are family in name only."

His eyes narrowed on her, shock receding, assessment growing. "Not friends either?"

"I'd never met Lord St. Alban until the day you fainted in his foyer. So, no, not friends either."

"And he's selling the Grange," Nylander said slowly. "So I'm assuming you'll never be friends."

Callie pinched her lips into a firm line to hold the bitterness inside. Somehow she'd opened herself up to this man. Wasn't it he who should be revealing himself?

She could be a fool, it was a fact.

"The Grange isn't entailed as part of the viscountcy?" he asked, the question smart and utterly surprising.

She gave a short, humorless laugh. The unexpected always had that effect on her. "Are you a student of English primogeniture and land laws?"

Nylander shifted his weight and crossed his arms over his chest. He could be very intimidating. If she chose to see him that way. But really all she saw was the muscle flexing and releasing beneath his plain linen shirt, drawing her eye toward the sinewy breadth of his chest. She remembered that chest quite well, the feel of it, the heat of it, the taste of it.

Her mouth went dry.

"I picked up a bit of knowledge here and there over the years," he muttered.

"Thinking of settling down and growing roots into the English countryside?" Oh, why would she ask such a thing?

"Aye."

She willed her body to go very, very still and not reveal the slightest inkling of her dismay.

"But it's near impossible for someone outside the peerage or landed gentry to own an estate like the Grange."

His words, their tone, chastised her with their naked desire. This was why Lord St. Alban wanted to sell the Grange to this man. His friend wanted it, craved it.

She snapped to. This man was her rival. Were his desires, wants, and cravings more valid than her own? Even if they were the same? And now, worst of all, her paranoia and insecurity had led her to reveal the sale of the Grange to him. Blast.

Well, she wouldn't take it any further. She wouldn't be the one to inform the Viking that not only did St. Alban wish to sell the Grange, but he wanted to sell it to him. St. Alban could bloody well tell him himself.

Her desires, wants, and cravings were no less worthy than those of the man before her.

Is this fair play?

Life wasn't fair. And the Viking knew it as well as she. She wouldn't feel an ounce of guilt. Nothing had changed.

She was still the best captain of this ship.

His eyebrows drew together. "If the Grange is unentailed, then why didn't your late husband leave it to you?"

Another humorless laugh escaped her. It was the sort of laugh possessed of a razor edge sharp enough to cut a person on its way out. "Georgie believed the feeble female brain incapable of leading any endeavor, much less the running of an entire estate. He lacked the imagination even to conceive such a concept." She hesitated. "To answer your question, Georgie's will left the Grange to his heir, who he'd assumed would be his son."

"But, in the end, his heir was Lord St. Alban."

She nodded, wary of the canny light that had entered Nylander's eye. Puzzle pieces were beginning to snap into place for him. No good could come of that.

"Do you know of any interested buyers?"

She held his gaze, unwavering. "I know of one."

Understanding lit within his eyes, imbuing them with a silvery light. "You."

"The interested part, at least."

"And no other competitors?"

She shrugged one shoulder, hoping to convey disinterest, knowing she'd failed miserably. "There might be. I can't be sure who St. Alban has in the running."

It was just short of an outright lie, which would have to do.