Chapter 19

Callie's boots crunched a quick step along the cart path, the newly blue sky having driven away the gray clouds and mist that had enveloped the estate for the last two days. Autumn light, crisp and clear, surrounded her and cast a golden glow onto the greens and browns of the countryside as the sun began its descent in the west.

She reached the top of a rise. There, in the distance, stood the cliff barn. Aside from the main house, it was the estate's largest structure, its new thatched roof burnished a rich amber in the waning light. From this approach, it appeared to have a single ground level with a hayloft. In fact, the barn had multiple levels as it was built into the side of a hill, the edge of the cliff some hundred yards to its backside. One would never suspect those other levels if one didn't know about them already.

But it was the middle level that made this barn most useful. For there was housed the Charentais alembic pot still. Below that was yet another level, more of a cellar excavated into Devon stone that had been shored up for the storage of their ever-multiplying barrels of brandy.

Making this barn even more perfect was its location and isolation. Jack Le Grand and his crew could access the brandy from the goat scramble that connected to the cove below. They would barely venture onto estate lands, and they would never interact with her workers.

Quick in, quick out, and done, as if they'd never been here in the first place. The estate would be hers, secured.

She was so close. Only two days until the Baptism of the Duke of Muck. Then the following day, she would have the monies for St. Alban.

So, so close. So close she could taste victory. She'd all but done it, saved the Grange.

Saved it? From whom?Was the alternative to her—him—really so bad? Did he justify all she'd compromised? Her solemn word? Her very integrity?

He'd wanted to incorporate this barn into his brilliant pasture reconfiguration. Of course, she'd had to quash that idea.

Him… here? That wouldn't work. But how useful the man could be.

Useful… A slow crawl of heat crept down from the tops of her ears to the tips of her toes. When angled another way, the word sounded… dirty. She'd experienced precisely how useful the man could be. Twice.

She went yet hotter. She unbuttoned the cuffs of her blouse and rolled the sleeves up to her elbows. A gust of sea air breezed over bare forearms and lifted the fine hairs in cool relief.

"How is it you think any man could ever forget you?"

The question had quite stolen all the breath from her body. It still did.

He'd known all along. She didn't know what to make of it, so she'd immersed herself in work to take her mind off her shamelessness. But it persisted, endured, and expanded, taking up most of the space in her brain.

Oh, how she wished she could undo those two nights.

Oh, how she wished she could do them again.

Another wave of heat crested inside her. She unbuttoned the two uppermost buttons below her chin. It did little to alleviate her discomfort. This heat wasn't so easily assuaged. A dip in the ice-cold sea held promise, but likely not. It was possible she'd spend the rest of her life a walking blaze of shame.

Still, he'd become so involved in her life in recent weeks that it had come as quite a shock yesterday and today that he'd made himself scarce. There could be any number of reasons for his absence. His fever might have returned. Cook could have him occupied collecting eggs, milking cows, and baking breads, and, since Callie hadn't stepped foot inside farmyard, dairy, or kitchens, she simply hadn't seen him.

But another reason for his absence burned at her, one she suspected much closer to the truth: twice was enough for him to have had his fill of her.

He'd found her lacking.

Just like every other man.

The cart path opened into a small loading area, and she was slipping through an unobtrusive side door in a matter of seconds. The wide double doors at the far end of the aisle were closed, the interior of the barn the gray of shadow. No matter. It was only her in here, and she understood today's task well. The stalls left of the center aisle held barrels leftover from last year, and the ones to the right held this year's newly casked cider, not to be consumed for a few weeks yet.

She dug a piece of charcoal from her trouser pocket and set to work before daylight ran out. With the Duke of Muck just around the corner, she was here to inspect and mark last year's barrels, ensuring they would be loaded onto wagons tomorrow and driven into town for the festival. Cider wasn't good beyond a year.

As she made her way down the center aisle, stall by stall, her ears picked up the soft drone of voices on the level below. Nothing unusual in that. Old Pete had conscripted Will and Cam into service. Time was of the essence during the autumn months. Winter was for rest.

But it was another voice in the mix that loosed a faint tremble through Callie and made the fine hairs on her arms prickle to their very tips. It was unfamiliar.

Actually, that wasn't true. It was quite familiar.

Could it be? It couldn't. But… could it?

Ahead, tucked in a corner, stood a narrow flight of stairs that had more in common with a ladder than a staircase. As she crept down, step by awful step, dread snaked through her. She stopped her descent halfway and ducked her head below to take stock, praying to the heavens above that she wouldn't be spotted.

The barn doors at the end stood open, wide enough to admit a fully loaded wagon, the cliff's edge in the distance and the watery horizon beyond. By contrast, the interior was dark, making it impossible to see the occupants at the far end beyond their industrious silhouettes.

She crept lower, her eyes adjusting by slow increments. Of the twenty-four, this was the loveliest hour of the day. Her foot touched solid earth, and she soaked in the transitory glory of a setting sun, its warm glow suffusing the woolen fibers of her shirt and trousers, the muslin of her camisole, until it stole into her skin.

Up ahead, the Charentais still shone bright copper, its three massive containers of pot, condenser, and collector lined up in a neat row, connected by crooked copper tubes, catching these last rays of the day and throwing them about the room, dust motes floating in their stream. It received its name from its region of invention, the Charente in France. It was a strange thing of beauty beyond its function of processing cider wash from liquid to fine vapor, then cooling it into condensate that wended through coil and condenser into the collector, creating the brouillis, a low wine. This distillate went through the same cycle again, thereby creating an even finer brandy, the bonne chauffe. It was this brandy that Jack Le Grand set such a high premium on.

It was this brandy that would save the Grange.

Her eye moved on, across the packed dirt and straw expanse of the central corridor, eventually, nay inevitably, snagging on one of the busy figures, the one not unfamiliar. He, Will, and Cam were unloading barrels of cider from a parked wagon and rolling them toward the still, where the liquid would constitute the wash for a first distillation.

The heat from a thousand setting suns fired through Callie as, finally, it hit her:

Nylander was here, in the cliff barn, fraternizing with her men and assisting in the production of a brandy that he should know nothing about. The man had the most dreadful habit of making himself useful.

She exhaled a rough, unladylike hiss. That word might just be ruined for her.

He drew his massive body fully upright, his back to her. He was an exceedingly large man, his breadth and height dwarfing the large opening of barn doors. The rays of the setting sun gleamed against the white linen of his shirt, outlining his form beneath.

Her mouth went dry. Perspiration beaded her skin from temple to toe. Her nipples definitely pinched into buds hard as cherry pits, and her body went light and floaty at the sun-drenched sight of him. The man was nothing short of glorious as he used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat of exertion from his brow. The tips of his golden hair brushing his broad shoulders, he set his arms at his waist, akimbo, a Viking god surveying the land before him, land he would plunder and pillage and take for his own.

But only if she gave up.

Well, she wouldn't. She was so, so, so close. Just a few more days.

Oh, why wouldn't the blasted man just leave Devon and get on with his life? Even as her mind formed the thought, another part of her reacted with a tug away from it. That part, which she refused to explore, didn't want him to leave.

His head cocked subtly to the right, as if someone had called his name and he was awaiting confirmation of it. The sun took its opportunity to backlight his profile, providing a silhouette in exquisite detail: brooding brow, deep-set eyes, straight angle of nose, firm set of lips, strong curve of jaw, dimpled chin that she regretted not having run the tip of her tongue across. What a classically masculine profile Nature had wrought upon this man.

Before she could blink, he half-turned, and his eye found hers with unerring precision. The breath froze in her chest. It was as if… oh, terrible thought… as if he'd known all along she was here, watching him.

He'd known all along, indeed. If she could, she would evaporate into a million dust motes and float away on a beam of light.

Oh, mortification of the soul.

Oh, that she would come out purified on the other side.

As a grown woman and mistress of this barn, she must say something. Yet the seconds ticked by, and the longer they went without speaking, the tighter her tongue twisted into a knot inside her mouth. His expression was both assessing and contemplative and somehow shrank the distance between them. Her heart would burst through her chest any second now.

Someone must have called him—she couldn't hear through the wool in her ears—and he broke their contact. Like that, the ground between them expanded into a more manageable distance, and she stood in it alone, exposed.

How easy it was for him to move on from her, the woman who couldn't stop throwing herself at him, who gazed upon him as if he was a one-man Michaelmas feast.

"Bonsoir, madame," Old Pete called out, rushing to greet her, looking more healthy and vibrant than she would have thought his ninety-something years allowed. The brandy-making business seemed to agree with him. "I must speak with you, posthaste."

She cleared her throat. "Well, you have me. What is it?"

"We must halt the brandy production."

All Callie's other problems fell away. "Stop production? Why?"

"The spigot from condenser to collector keeps getting clogged and needs a proper cleaning. An alembic still is hearty, but delicate, non? It must flow and be nurtured better than I have time to give at the production level you require."

"Can't you manage it?"

"What am I? The skivvy? In France, I would be a master." He drew himself upright with every bit of dignity he could muster, which was considerable and oh-so-very French. "Here, if you want me, I shall be master. Does the master clean?"

"Umm," Callie prevaricated, more than a little flummoxed. "No?" Only last week she'd mucked out a horse stall.

Quick movement caught at the periphery of her vision just before a voice piped up, "I'll do it." Kip stopped before them, charmingly defiant, if there could be such a thing.

Pirates… Vikings… now children were involving themselves in this brandy-making business?

"Kip," she began in as matronly a voice as she could muster. "How did you find this place?"

"Same as everywhere." He tucked his thumbs into his waistband and rocked back on his heels. "On my two feet."

"I can't imagine this is appropriate for a?—"

"Tell you whut," he interrupted. "You let me 'elp out Old Pete, and I'll go to school two days a week."

A bewildered laugh sprang up from her throat. Was this scamp bargaining with her so he could work at her less-than-legal brandy still? Further, should she take him up on it? It was more schooling than he was submitting to now.

"Four days," she countered.

"Three," he shot back.

She stuck out her hand, and Kip shook it, a bargain settled.

Nylander stepped into their small circle, an amused glint in his eyes. She kept the blasted man at the edge of her vision as Old Pete, emboldened by his win, expostulated at length about the setbacks, the successes, and the needs of the still. The Viking was too gorgeous to look at directly, anyway.

How had she gotten so tangled up with such a man? It defied all her twenty-five years on this earth had taught her about herself, men, and their relation to one another. She wasn't the sort of woman who had interactions with this sort of man. And, yet, they had… interacted… twice.

Old Pete led Kip away to explain the workings of the Charentais still, all but leaving her alone with Nylander. Awareness tickled along her skin.

"This is quite an operation you have going here," he observed.

She kept her gaze firmly fixed on Kip and Old Pete, who was demonstrating the path the vapor took through the swan's neck of the apparatus.

"Just a little something the estate is experimenting with." She'd tried for offhand and failed, she was sure.

He whistled through his teeth and made a big show of looking around. She had no choice but to glance his way. Well, that was her intent. Once her gaze landed on him, it had no choice but to stay.

"I'd say it's a great deal more vast than a little experiment."

She shrugged, hoping to give off an air of indifference, knowing she was wholly incapable of such a thing.

His head angled to meet her gaze. "Is this little experiment legal?"

"Not precisely." His penetrating blue eyes left her no choice but to admit, at least, some of the truth. "All the orchards do it."

Or so she'd been told.

"So St. Alban doesn't know about it?"

Callie knew she was looking at the man like he'd gone daft. But, really, what a daft question. "Why would Lord St. Alban know? He's never shown the slightest interest in the Grange."

"He might be interested in knowing if any illegal activities were taking place on his lands."

Her gut dropped to her feet, and she gulped, like a guilty person. She couldn't help it. She was.

"Further, I would think any potential buyers would want to know." A beat passed. "If I were buying the Grange, I would want to know."

Callie couldn't seem to draw enough breath. Sweat slicked her palms, and, again, she gulped like the guilty. She must answer him directly and authoritatively. Nothing less than the survival of her efforts and dreams hinged on it. She drew herself up to her fullest height, which, frustratingly, wasn't taller than him, no matter how much length she willed into her spine. "I am purchasing the Grange. I know about it. And I am perfectly amenable to it."

Two ticks of the clock beat by before the blasted man responded with a slow, skeptical nod. A tiny movement she would've missed if she'd blinked. "The Grange does appear to be quite prosperous, I suppose you would have the monies to buy her."

Portent spiraled through Callie, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

"Have you a speck of dirt in your eye, my lady?"

Her eyes flew open. "I'm quite speckless."

"Quite," he said, dry, ironic. "Have you considered setting up a round-the-clock guard?"

"I hardly think that's necessary. This is Devonshire."

"This barn is close to the cliffs bordering the estate's lands, and haven't you heard?" He paused, drama building into the moment. "There are pirates in the area."

Her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. "I pay no mind to baseless rumormongering, to be sure. And, frankly, I'm surprised a sensible man like yourself does."

Oh, that last bit was bold. She could hardly countenance the boldness this man brought out in her.

He gave her a smirk, and Callie felt like she'd stepped too close to the sun.

That smile did things to her insides.