Chapter 18

Below a moonlit sky, oars sliced through water still as the surrounding night, sending the small dinghy skimming along the coast.

Moisture beaded on Nylander's brow and trickled down his temple. If he kept going in this direction, eventually, he would happen upon the right cove. A loop of thoughts, unbidden and incessant, circled his mind with the rhythm of the strokes.

He'd succeeded in stripping the confession from her. Lady Calpurnia Radclyffe, the Dowager Viscountess St. Alban, could no longer deny the shame of him or their night together. Except, afterward, it didn't much feel like success for, in reality, it changed nothing. She was still lady of the manor and he still the dirt beneath her feet.

In the moment, though, he'd been fired up with a need that insisted on having her speak aloud that she'd deigned to couple with the likes of him. Then they'd done it, again.

A tenacious nag of guilt tugged at him. He'd taken her virginity, then he'd taken her in the study. But the wanting was mutual, that was certain, which made no sense. She made no sense.

The oars slapped against water with more force than necessary, propelling the small boat to jump forward in the water on a wobble.

He'd allowed her to avoid him today. Well, that wasn't precisely true or fair. He'd avoided her, too. He needed the mental space to think clearly, and that bloody woman jumbled his senses when she was near.

Further, he'd needed a clear head when the youth from the Free Reaver returned. He'd just finished tracking a missing hen to a distant paddock when the youth appeared at his side, missive extended. "Tell him I'll be there at midnight," had been Nylander's curt instruction. He didn't need to crack open the missive's seal to know its contents.

The youth's gaze startled upward, and blue eyes, stippled with flecks of cloudy gray, met his. Recognition jolted through Nylander. He knew those eyes. In fact, he was meeting their sire tonight.

The lad nodded once and scampered off.

Tonight, he was headed straight to the source to find out what the bloody hell was going on. Ignoring Jack and shadowing Her Highness… Callie, wasn't getting him anywhere, not fast enough.

The oars missed the water and kicked up an arc of sea-spray into his face. Well, his dealings with Callie had gotten him somewhere, but nowhere good.

The truth was he could no longer avoid Jack. He'd done a lucky job of it for over two decades, but it appeared his luck had run out. He just couldn't let the matter go.

He navigated the dinghy around the bend of yet another cove and peered into the moonlit distance. No sign of the Free Reaver.

None of this was his business. He should turn this boat around and let matters that had naught to do with him resolve themselves.

But he couldn't. He'd never been able to resist protecting a woman who needed protecting, even when it was all but assured it would land him in trouble. And two things were certain: Callie was in trouble, and she was trouble itself.

Last night, he'd caught more than a glimpse of the vulnerability she'd revealed by bits and increments. Last night, he'd seen it in its full, ugly glory. She'd allowed him behind the facade she presented the world, the one that hid the insecurity brought on by years of being told she wasn't enough.

He understood something about that. It was the very same voice he heard inside his head. Against his better judgment, which had no say in the matter, he felt a kinship with the woman that went deeper than the physical act they'd shared.

"Can't you see that you and I don't suit at all?"

Her words still stung, but their truth was undeniable. She'd only spoken aloud the line that divided them. She was a lady, and he the scum of the earth. Yet this lady was out of her depth, and he couldn't ignore the fact that she'd begun to drown. She simply didn't know it yet.

The dinghy glided around yet another jagged outcropping along the silent coastline, and, at last, he spotted the outline of the Free Reaver in the distance, anchored and waiting, not a single light visible across the distance that grew increasingly hazy with a descending fog.

His gut churned in anticipation of the meeting. There was no help for it. Aboard that ship awaited a reckoning of more than one kind.

The rate of his strokes increased, and the boat raced across the water. Sweat now dripping in a well-defined rivulet down his spine, his heart thumping a hard, fast rhythm, he slowed his strokes once his dinghy entered the shadow of the barque. The dinghy came parallel and sidled up to the starboard side of the ship. He tapped out a quick rhythm on damp boards.

On the last tap, it hit him what he'd done and what it meant. He still knew the Free Reaver's code after all these years.

Above, a rope ladder unfurled and landed with a light slap against oak on its way to meet him. He tied off his boat and made a quick ascent, hopping over the rail and landing on the deck with a muted thud. He glanced up and found a dozen or so men gathered round, tensed, waiting for him. Hanging on the periphery of the group, Nylander noticed the messenger lad, eyes wide and observant. He likely missed nothing.

"Took ye long enough," sounded a voice both familiar and dreaded, a voice he hadn't heard in five and twenty years. "Yer late."

Nylander met the gaze he sought. "And I see you're still the world's most punctual pirate."

Jack's head cocked to the side, the long, thin scar running from hairline to jaw shining silver in the moonlight. "Yer voice is deeper than I reckoned." His eyes sped over Nylander, up and down, side to side, as if taking inventory. "Ye speak like a lord."

The words sparked an unexpected flare of anger inside Nylander, one he immediately suppressed. If he gave it oxygen, it would blaze into a full-scale conflagration, and he would get nowhere. "And, Jack, you're as weathered and grizzled as I thought you would be."

Jack glanced about his compatriots, who watched their captain carefully, unwilling to commit to an emotion until he showed them which way he would take the insult. A sudden, jolly rip of a laugh tore out him, and his crew followed his lead half a beat later.

"Ain't no denying the truth. The years ain't been kind to me face, that's fer certain," he barked. "Take a good look, me boy, it's the same face that'll be staring back at ye in a mirror soon enough. But, eh, ye got a bit of yer ma in ye, so who knows, Johnny boy."

Nylander flinched at his childhood nickname. "My name is Nylander."

"That ain't yer name, and ye know it."

"It's been my name for over two decades, and you'll address me as no other."

The humor fled Jack's face, and it hardened to flint in an instant. "Shall we take our conference to my quarters?" he asked in a faux lordly voice. "Captain Nylander."

"Nylander will do."

Jack heaved a great sigh—the man always did have a flair for the dramatic—and conceded. "Nylander." He nodded once in the direction of the lad and gestured toward Nylander to follow him.

As Nylander took the stairs leading below the quarterdeck, the scents, sounds, and sights of his youth rushed up to greet him in a wash of unsettling familiarity. He hadn't prepared himself for this. For the possibility that it could be exactly the same as it was when he'd last laid eyes on it as an eight-year-old boy. The same length of rope coiled in a forgotten corner, surely rotted into dust and fiber by now. The same smell of gunpowder and toil, acrid, pungent. It was a smell he could almost taste.

After a quick series of cramped corridors and staircases, they'd, at last, reached the captain's quarters. Nylander stepped inside a room that, like everything else aboard the Free Reaver, remained unaltered by time. His eyes shot left toward a far corner and located the small bed, low to the floor, neatly made. It was still there. His old bed, the last place in this world that he'd ever felt completely safe and untouchable. It had only taken an instant for him to be thoroughly disabused of that notion.

The youth crossed the room and settled atop it, his direct gaze meeting Nylander's without an ounce of trepidation. Nylander's gut roiled, and sweat broke out across his skin. The room felt smaller than he remembered.

Right. He clenched his jaw. Time to get on with it.

Jack had taken a seat in his favorite brocade chair that had been constructed for and stolen from a king, its silk now faded and frayed.

"The lad's eyes have a particular shade of blue," Nylander stated. For some reason, he needed to test these waters.

"Aye," Jack grunted. "He gets it from his pa."

Nylander willed himself not to react. In his gut, he'd known the boy was Jack's son.

"And that ain't all he gets from his pa, either." The beam of fatherly pride was unmistakable. "He'll run the Free Reaver one day. The Seven Seas, too, mark me words. The lad has nerve like you've never seen. Once he gets some schoolin' in him, there'll be no stoppin' him."

"I told you I don't want no schoolin'," the lad called out from his bed.

Jack waved his arm in Nylander's direction. "Now, Lash, how will ye become a man amongst men, like yer brother here, if ye don't?"

The lad's mouth closed in a sullen line.

"Lash?" Nylander asked, unable not to. "Wasn't that your father's name?"

"Aye, Louis was me pa's given name." He reached for a decanter and began pouring whiskey into two filmy tumblers. "But everyone called him Lash."

Bitterness, raw and acrid, spread its spiked tentacles through Nylander. For his own protection, he needed to steer the conversation away from this topic. "I didn't come here to play drinking games with you."

"No man boards me ship a free man without tippin' back a glass with me."

Nylander strode forward, took the proffered glass, and shot his whiskey back. He was in no mood for a toast.

"So it's to be like that?" Jack asked on a humorless laugh. He sank back into his chair, his elbows settled on the armrests, his fingers steepled before him. For all the world, the man looked like a king. All he lacked was a scepter. "Awright, I know ye ain't accepted me invitation to talk old times."

Nylander pitched directly into the heart of the matter. "What's your game?"

Jack flicked his wrist like any elegant lord. "Takin' in the sights of the world. Same as any free man with a boat and a crew."

"What's your game here, on the north coast of Devon?"

"Takin' care of storage needs."

"Storage needs?" Incredulity swelled inside Nylander.

"Ye know how weighed down the Free Reaver gets."

The man could be cagey as a squirrel. "What's your business with Lady St. Alban?"

Jack's eyes lit with a canny glow. "Ye be wantin' to know about the lady's business? It's like that, eh?" His eyebrows lifted to the ceiling in undisguised insinuation.

Heat, instant and undeniable, suffused Nylander's body. It's like that. Of a sudden, he felt lower than the floorboards beneath his feet. It was tawdry and wrong and too close to the truth. "The lady doesn't tell me her business."

"Well, then I reckon that business will stay between me and the lady."

Nylander suppressed the frustration that was steadily building toward genuine anger. Anger would do him no good here. He needed to try a different tack. "Are you taking care of your storage needs in the caves in the cliffs?"

"Could be."

"You know they connect to the silver mine." It was a statement of truth, rather than a question. There was no way Jack Le Grand didn't know that bit of information.

"Aye."

"And you know the vein isn't exhausted." Another statement of truth.

Jack shrugged an indifferent shoulder. "That's fairly common knowledge."

Nylander pressed his lips together and waited. Jack had never met a silence he could resist filling. Understanding dawned across his craggy face, and he gave another one of his great belly laughs. "What? Ye think me and me crew are turnin' into miners? That we would submit to a life inside a tunnel beneath the earth when there's a blue sky above and an open sea beyond? For a bit o' silver?"

"In case you haven't noticed, your heyday of jolly old pirating has come and gone," Nylander said with no small amount of satisfaction. "With every day that passes, your way of life is a memory. Honestly, I can't fathom how you've evaded capture this long."

"That'll be between me and the Crown, won't it?" He barked out another laugh. "But let me tell ye this, Johnny boy. For a man with a ship like the Free Reaver and the crew I've got mannin' her, there be easier ways of procurin' silver than by tunnelin' underground like a rat in a hole."

Nylander weighed the man's words. He wasn't wrong. "What do you know about the Grange's cider operation?"

"What use I got for cider? Ye can get that slop anywhere."

It wasn't a denial, which was all but a confession from Jack Le Grand. Something here was worth pursuing. "What about the brandy operation?"

"Now brandy, that's a whole different beast. There's a nuance in a good apple brandy. Wyldcombe Grange has thirteen different varieties of apples, ye know that? Whatever Lord of So-and-So who planted that orchard knew what he was about."

"I've heard."

"A real connoisseur," Jack continued. "And, Her Highness, well, she's got the grit to do somethin' with it."

"Is that your business with Lady St. Alban? Brandy?"

"I'll tell ye this once," began Jack, joviality replaced by unmistakable menace. This was the Jack Le Grand he'd expected to see tonight. "Don't involve yerself in what's between me an' the lady." Unspoken threat underlay the words. "Ye'll know soon enough anyhow."

Goose bumps pinpricked Nylander's skin, causing the individual hairs to stand on end. Jack had a plan beyond storage needs. Bloody hell.

Again, Nylander changed tack. "What do you know of the wheel mill accident?" He wouldn't bother asking about the cows in the orchard. That was a trivial prank by comparison. "A man could've been killed."

"Now, why would ye be suspectin' me of that?"

"You're not answering the question."

"Wood cracks and breaks all the time."

"How do you know the cause of the accident?"

"Like ye said, a man almost died. Word tends to get round about that sort o' thing. But if ye be wantin' elaboration, I'll say this. A man almost died." He leaned forward in his chair, his gaze dead serious. "If I wanted a man dead, 'e'd be meetin' 'is Maker in short fashion, ye ken?"

Jack had put on his lowest-of-the-low-class voice, and when that happened, the conversation was all but over. It was his strategy for dealing with nobs, and it usually worked, as it made them underestimate him.

And now Jack was speaking to him that way.

Right.

Jack propped his elbows on his knees, his gray-blue gaze bright and keen. The man was about to state his business. "No chance you'll join us on the Free Reaver?" The question emerged low and serious. This was a Jack Le Grand rarely seen by others.

Nylander didn't hesitate. "No chance."

The man sat back in his chair fit for royalty, drumming his fingertips on the armrests. "Ye run the Fortuyn right and tight, that's sure."

"I'm satisfied with the work," Nylander bit out.

Jack's eyes narrowed. "Are ye now? Captainin' another man's ship? Riskin' yer neck on the open sea for another man's payday?"

"I'm well compensated."

Jack snorted. "I can tell ye one thing certain, Johnny boy. Ain't no man measurin' me compensation but me."

Jack was trying to manipulate every last one of Nylander's emotions, but he mustn't rise to it. "I have plans."

Jack's head cocked to the side, and his mouth curved upward, sly. Instantly, Nylander regretted his words. Those three words were three too many.

"Plans?" The man scoffed. "Spoken like a man who's taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker. And what plans might those be, if ye don't mind me askin'?" His accent grew broader, more vulgar, with each word he spoke. "Could it be that ye plan on purchasin' yer own ship?"

Nylander's lips pressed together in a firm line. He wouldn't speak of his wants and desires with this man.

"Now why would ye go and do a thin' like that?"

A frustrated "What?" was out of Nylander's mouth before he could control it. "Not a minute ago, you were encouraging me to be my own man."

"Aye," Jack conceded, the syllable a patient, gravelly grumble in his throat. "But here's what I've known about ye since ye were a wee lad. At heart, yer a landlubber."

"I've been on the sea my whole life."

"Aye."

"You know nothing of what's in my heart."

"More than ye ken, Johnny boy."

Nylander's breath froze in his chest. Sudden memory of the boy he'd been, flashed before him. This man had been the center of his universe, his idol, capable of no wrong. Until the day his idol had shown his true colors…

Bitter anger swept memory aside. Memory he hadn't allowed himself to revisit in decades. Memory he wouldn't revisit now.

"This conversation is over." He pivoted on his heel and strode toward the door.

"Over before it began, methinks," Jack called out, an infuriating chuckle quick at the statement's heels.

Nylander's hand closed on the door latch.

"I reckon ye remember how to find yer way to the deck," he heard at his back. "But ye'll answer me one question before ye go."

Against his better judgment, Nylander waited.

"Do ye intend to buy her?"

Nylander's brow crinkled in confusion. "The Fortuyn?" Hadn't he just stated as much?

"Wyldcombe Grange."

Every muscle in Nylander's body bunched. Unclear on the meaning behind Jack's words, he said, "Lady St. Alban has an arrangement with?—"

"It's been St. Alban's intention from the beginnin' to offer Wyldcombe Grange to you," Jack interrupted. "He'll sell it to ye, too, if her ladyship can't cough up the money."

Nylander drew in a deep breath and exhaled it on a soft curse. No longer could he keep his back to Jack. The man had just stated his true business. Nylander turned, no choice but to engage. "How do you know this?"

"I make it worth a servant's time to wag the tongue as the occasion sees fit."

Nylander knew as much. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Figured Her Highness wouldn't."

The words struck Nylander like a bare-knuckle blow to the sternum. Her Highness. She knew. Of course, she knew.

"You made a deal with her, shook hands on it. Yet you're giving me this information. She might be more careful in her friendships."

"Aye." Even though his nod was agreeable, Jack's eyes held a steel edge. "And in who she makes her enemy, too."

Nylander pivoted and jerked the door open. He stepped through its cramped opening and began navigating the maze of close corridors and short staircases, making his way to the quarterdeck without a single wrong turn. No care for the crew's silent watch on him, he strode to the railing and tossed the rope ladder over the side. He'd descended its hemp length in a matter of seconds and jumped into the waiting dinghy with a solid thump. He began rowing, the strokes short and choppy, much like his thoughts.

Betrayal, hot and livid, charged through him.

Betrayal he had no right to.

"Can't you see that you and I don't suit at all?"

He was nothing to Her Highness.

Well, that wasn't precisely true. He was something. He was a source of pleasure to her.

Which, in his experience, was worse than nothing.

As the minutes ticked by, tense muscles began to unravel beneath the intensity of the exercise. His strokes lengthened, and the dinghy assumed an easy glide over glassy water hemmed in by a mist that had only become more dense with the deepening night.

Alongside the anger and betrayal came bitter disappointment. Strangely, he felt let down by her. He'd thought her an honorable woman in her way. Sure, she made deals with pirates, but, in this, he would've thought her someone who fought fair.

Would he never learn?

She'd wanted the Grange. And she'd withheld the information that Jake wanted to sell it to him. Was that why Jake had asked him to dinner? To offer him the opportunity?

New emotion entered the fray, something perilously close to hope. The Grange could be… his.

His?His.

The Grange represented everything he'd ever wanted, and everything he'd never have. But now… now it could be his? Land, a place to settle and grow roots, not subject to the vagaries of the shifting sea. A place to call his own. A place to grow a family.

She'd resorted to trickery to keep it from him. Atop all the other layers that years of betrayal had hardened around his heart, formed yet another one. This one seemed harder than all the others combined.

That Jack had been indirect and calculating had been expected. The man toyed with and upended the lives of others for a living. Nylander should've known he would leave with more questions. The answers lay at the Grange.

What he needed was to tuck away all the emotion tonight's revelations and half-revelations had stirred up and try to formulate a concrete plan. A brandy operation was happening in the cliff barn. That truth had been before his eyes this entire time. The heated conversation between Callie, Will, and Cam on the hillside. The locals talking it up in the taproom of the Devil's Books. The way Callie had rejected out of hand his suggestion to use the area for grazing.

She'd spent all of today there. Oh, yes, it was central to the operation. It had been all along. He just hadn't known what he was looking at. And it was the key to her bargain with Jack. Still, he needed the specifics.

He'd thought to keep the situation quiet until he understood its scope more fully, but he saw now that the time had come to contact Jake. To confirm the sale of the Grange. To inform him that Jack Le Grand was sniffing about his lands. The one detail he would omit was Callie's involvement. He wouldn't expose her until he knew what she was about. Instead, he would continue to involve himself in her business and rattle her.

There was but one potential problem with that last part: desire.

Hers.

His.

He wasn't at all sure whose was the greater of the two.

He snorted. He had a job to do. That was his function at the Grange. Not to be a lady's hunk of flesh possessed of no higher function than to provide her pleasure. He had to press on.

"And who she makes her enemy, too."

What on earth had Jack meant? And what had Callie done to make the man her enemy?

More than one factor was at play, and only Jack knew them all. Callie might not think she needed Nylander, the man who didn't suit her at all, but she did.

She needed him to stop her.