Chapter 23

Callie smoothed decadent silk down her rib cage and tried not to squirm. "Are you sure about this costume, Jane?"

Jane removed the straight pin from her mouth. "Is the fit uncomfortable?"

"The fit is impeccable, and you know it. But it's so," Callie trailed, certain Jane would understand precisely what she'd left unsaid.

A smile that could be called naughty curled about Jane's mouth and twinkled in her eyes. "It is so, isn't it?"

"It's a complete break with tradition, and you know how people around here feel about change."

"I think they'll come around to it." Jane's head canted to the side. "I just need to adjust that hem a bit."

Callie stood still as a post while Jane unpinned and repinned the fabric. Once done, she released the garment and stepped back, her sharp gaze scanning the hem for anything amiss. At last, she grunted her approval and met Callie's gaze. "I'll send Jim over with it first thing in the morning."

Callie rolled her shoulders, allowed the garment to slide to the floor, and stepped out of its billowy cloud of silk. She handed it over to Jane. Really, it was quite a departure from any costume she'd ever seen for the Baptism of the Duke of Muck. But she trusted Jane's judgment.

She'd just pulled up her trousers and was reaching for her blouse when Jane said, "I have something else for you to try."

"Oh?"

Jane held up a flimsy scrap of cloth sewn together in a strange puzzle of fabric pieces that crossed and connected and buttoned in odd ways to form a garment utterly unlike any Callie had ever seen. "What am I looking at?"

"A solution to your problem."

"Which problem is that? Lately, they've managed to accumulate at a rather alarming rate." More than Jane could possibly know, in fact.

"The problem of your, well, your tender…" Jane gestured in the general area of her own rather sizeable bosom. "Of the chafing you've been experiencing when you run."

Callie accepted the odd garment and held it up to the dim, flickering light of a nearby lamp. Following its tangle of lines, she began to make out the rhyme and reason of the piece. These strips of muslin would wrap around her shoulder blades to go beneath her armpits and over her shoulders. These two small swathes of fabric formed the front where her breasts would fit. These three small buttons would fasten at her breastbone and hold the garment together and all her jiggly bits, what little of them there was, in place.

Callie couldn't help feeling awed and slightly overwhelmed. This might be the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her. She met Jane's eye over the garment. "You're a genius."

Jane beamed with pleasure and pride. "I think this will solve the problem of the soreness and chafing on your breasts that you experience on your longer runs."

Callie avoided Jane's gaze. "This should solve that problem perfectly."

It wouldn't do to dwell on the reason her breasts were sore tonight, so deliciously sore. They wouldn't soon let her forget this afternoon and Nylander's talented mouth.

"Are you going for a run when you leave here?" Jane asked.

Callie nodded.

"Then why don't you try it?"

"Certainly." Callie presented her back to Jane and tugged her camisole to her waist. She slipped one arm, then the other, into the straps and began adjusting to the unusual feel of the garment. Not since she'd given up corsetry had she experienced something so confining on her body.

She'd just taken the first button between forefinger and thumb when she heard behind her, "There have been a great deal of rumors bandied about the Grange of late."

Callie's fingers froze. "Oh?"

"Word has it the Charentais still is running again."

Callie forced out a laugh. "It's fairly well known that Old Pete never stopped using it."

"Old Pete? I heard he goes by Pierre now."

Callie's fingers unfroze and began buttoning with lightning speed. She needed to get out of here. "He does."

"And the operation has grown in scale."

"Well, we do have more apples and cider than we know what to do with."

"Hmm." Jane didn't sound at all convinced. "And other rumors are flying about, too."

"Oh?" The garment was completely fastened, but still Callie couldn't turn around.

"About bloodthirsty pirates." Jane paused. "About your Viking guest."

"People must find entertainment somewhere."

"That they're linked."

Callie forced her body around. "Linked? That's preposterous."

"They arrived around the same time. That's the connection people have made in their minds. And I'll admit it's a curious coincidence."

"Captain Nylander is friend to Lord St. Alban. They grew up together. And aside from that fact, I've never met a more honest and honorable man in my life. They aren't linked. I'd stake my last farthing on it."

Jane's eyebrows lifted clear to the ceiling. "Your last farthing? Is that so?"

Callie felt a blush coming on. Perhaps she'd been a trifle vociferous in her defense of the Viking. She reached for her blouse and had it buttoned to her chin in a thrice of seconds. "Jane, I must go now. Thank you for this wonderful garment."

"You'll tell me how it works at the festival tomorrow?"

"Of course," Callie called over her shoulder, feet already itching to race out the door and be free of this conversation that had gone horribly awry.

Her run would sort it out.

It never failed her.

Breath,regular and even. Feet, steady and sure. Waning moon, bright enough to illuminate the path and the river that flowed alongside it. Worries, set aside and left behind.

This was the beauty of the run. It was much like the distillation of fine brandy. It had a head, a heart, and a tail.

The head of the brandy process was the first quarter of the distillation. Those gallons were sour, even poisonous, but necessary, and must always be cut and discarded. The same was true of a run. The first minutes of the run could be rough going, her body protesting that it was cold in her lungs, it was hard on her feet, it was too much tonight. But she just had to keep going, let the run flow through her, one foot in front of the other in dogged repeat.

Moisture would break on her brow. A rhythm would develop. Her body would, at last, accept its fate, and her cares would fall away. Here, she entered the heart of the run, its essential spirit, its finest and sweetest section. Her mind could open into blankness, and she could find the expanse and freedom to sort through her thoughts.

Tonight, her run was less about the joy of it than about the raw need to clear herself, mind and body, of Nylander.

He wanted Wyldcombe Grange. He wanted a family. He wanted something rooted so deeply that it could never be stripped away from him. It was a soul-deep need.

It was the same soul-deep need inside her.

Beyond the physical, which was considerable, how connected she'd felt to him on that desolate moor, only him and her and his confessions. His mother, the life she'd led implicit in her cause of death. The abandonment by his father. His desire for the land, a home.

And, oh, how she didn't want to feel this connection to him, for he wanted the same life as she, a fact she couldn't begrudge him. But he could only gain it at her expense.

For him to have the life he wanted, she couldn't have the life she wanted.

This was the problem between them at its core, implacable, insurmountable. As strong a connection as she might feel to him, he was still her rival. In effect, her enemy.

Behind her sounded the crunch of bracken, and a sliver of anxiety slid in. She dismissed it. She'd chosen to run along the river tonight on a trail known only by locals. She was safe on this path. Likely, the sound had only been a skylark or a nightjar scurrying beneath protective fronds, perhaps late for its winter migration south to the northern shores of Africa.

She ran past the anxiety and left it behind. On nights like this, it was only her and the path and the moon. Although, tonight the moon was becoming obscured by a roll of clouds moving in from the west. She picked up her already blistering pace and thought to turn back. She had no intention of being caught out in a midnight storm.

Again, her ears picked up the crunch of scrub and bracken, this one not so easily dismissed. It was closer. But that wasn't what threatened to turn a sliver of anxiety into a full-panic. The sound was… rhythmic.

And gaining on her.

She increased her pace and resisted the urge to look back, her arms pumping fast in rhythm to her feet, her breath coming in short, hard bursts. Even the quickest glance over her shoulder would slow her down, and she would have to take her eyes off the ground. With the ever-thickening clouds obscuring the moon, she couldn't risk looking up and tripping on a root.

The sound, its rapid clip at her back, drew closer. Adrenaline pumped through her veins, and no longer could she deny it: she was being pursued, tracked like an animal. And not by animal, but by man. Someone was coming for her.

And after today on the moor, she had to allow the possibility that it could be a pirate.

No longer could she avoid it. She must look back. She had to know how close her pursuer was, if there was more than one, and, most importantly, she must come up with a plan to elude him or them. Her feet fast and sure, she twisted around and made out a human form, shadowed and solitary, not twenty feet behind her. He was faster than her, his heavy, determined tread gaining ground with every step, his strides longer and quicker.

Ahead, her salvation appeared in the form of a massive boulder that marked the Y where this river converged with another, aptly called Riversmeet. On the other side of the boulder was a narrow path that dropped off at a steep pitch before wending its way to the river below. If her pursuer wasn't from the area, he wouldn't know it.

Her pace increased into a flat-out run. Her only chance was to make it to the boulder well before her pursuer. The rough in-and-out of her breath loud in her ears, puffing white with every exhalation, she rounded the boulder and instantly ducked down, her body gone still as the stone that sheltered her, her hand clamped across her mouth to muffle the roar of her ragged breath, her ears attuned to the heavy tread of her pursuer. Not three feet removed from her head, his boots thundered past and followed the bend in the path.

Relief soared through her, and her breath whooshed out of her lungs in ragged relief. Enervated by exertion and terror, she sagged against cooling stone. She'd done it.

Above her head, the clouds broke, and the dirt beneath her bottom instantly transformed into mud. Blast.

She unraveled her body to a wary crouch and poked her head up just enough so she could scan the heath. Through the rain gaining momentum with every drop, she saw nothing and no one. Another wave of relief pulsed through her. One hand braced on the boulder, the other wrapped around a clump of crumbly shrub, she hoisted herself forward and up in a bid to regain the path and make her way back to the Grange. Except the slick mud beneath her feet had a different idea about how she should proceed.

Her footing slipped out from under her, and her right hip came down hard, landing on slick ground with a sickening splash. A loud, "Oof," escaped her, and adding insult to injury, gravity began to carry her, on her back and headfirst, down the path toward the roaring river below. Her hands grappled for purchase, but found none, her body gaining momentum with every inch descended.

At the head of the path, receding fast, a figure rushed into view. It was her pursuer, and she knew him. Nylander.

She wasn't sure whether to feel more relieved or affrighted.

Both seemed reasonable responses.