Chapter 24

Nylander blinked, unable to believe his eyes.

There Callie went, sliding down, down, down the path growing muddier by the second. Instinctively, he started forward. Instantly, he, too, lost his footing on slick mud, landing square on his arse.

"Bloody hell!"

All the while she continued her descent to the bottom of this trail and whatever lay at its end. Ten, fifteen, twenty feet away, away, away. He had to get to her.

He planted a bracing palm on unstable ground, rivulets of fresh rain flowing around his wrist, drops the size of apples soaking him to the core. Next month, those drops would be sleet, and the next, snow. For now, it was simply water that would have been refreshing after his run and under different circumstances.

He shifted his weight into his hand, and it slipped out from under him. Face first, he splashed into mud, bracken, and rock. "Bloody fecking hell!" he shouted, louder, just in case the gods hadn't heard him the first time.

Again, he tried. A hand, a knee, a foot. Nothing found purchase. And further she slipped from him. Another, "Bloody fecking hell!" escaped him.

Again, he struggled to seize control. Again, he couldn't.

If he could just?—

He stopped struggling.

Really, there was one way to catch her.

He succumbed to the inevitable, the combined forces of slick mud and gravity, and started sliding feet first. With his greater weight, he was already gaining on her and would reach her in a matter of seconds.

Careening down the steep slope, he tried digging his heels into sloshy earth to slow his descent. To no avail. He just kept going and gaining on her. "Callie!" he shouted to give her fair warning.

Through the wind and rain, now coming down in sheets, her eyes found his and went wide. Since he couldn't make himself stop, he shifted his feet sideways to avoid ploughing into her, which only seemed to invite gravity to speed him up.

Next thing he knew, he was nearly upon her. So he wouldn't barrel over her, he caught her about the waist with one hand and attempted to plant his palm into the earth with the other in a futile stab at slowing them. It only succeeded in making matters worse as momentum and gravity drove the full length of his body on top of hers.

"What the blast are you doing, Viking?" she shouted into his face, her eyes incredulous and fierce.

He wrapped his arms and legs around her, squeezed tight, and flipped around, so it was she who now stretched full-length atop him.

"Have you lost your blasted mind?" she screeched.

"Be still, woman," he shouted back.

She went stiff, her body resembling more plank of wood than woman.

At last, they met the bottom on a hard thud, and he held her tight as they rolled, finally stopping on a rocky embankment in a heap of cursed invectives and tangled limbs, her sprawled atop him, their chests heaving in unison, the river rushing beside them not five feet away. By the healthy sound of the swollen waters, they'd stopped just in time.

She planted both hands to either side of his head and pushed herself up. Not ten inches away, murderous, coal-black eyes stared down at him. Her hair had unraveled from its long plait and streamed about both their faces in sodden strings.

"What the blasted hell was that all about, Viking?"

Nylander didn't have a ready answer. Instead of trailing behind Callie like a shadow, as he'd done so many times, he'd thought to catch her and pretend he'd been out for a moonlight stroll, so they could walk and talk side by side. Something had shifted between them this afternoon, and he wanted to explore it. Then she'd caught sight of him and started running in earnest, from him, and everything went downhill, literally, from there.

Now their eyes remained locked, and awareness flared through him. This awareness had naught to do with the outside elements. Not the pointed shard of rock at his back. Or the cold rain pelting his face and soaking him to the skin. It was her, the way she was pressed against him. Her chest lifted, her hips had no choice but to press more fully into his.

His cock took notice. Her next question died in her mouth, and her eyebrows drew together. In the light of day, he would have detected a blush.

She felt it, his manhood, rigid and ready.

For a delicious instant, it felt like the moment could tip in either direction. Then her eyes narrowed, her lips pinched together, and she pushed off him and shot to a stand. "Oh!" she yelped, hopping on one foot.

Alarmed, Nylander sprang to his feet, ready. "What is it?"

"It seems that during our little conflagration on the hill there"—Mrs. Bailey couldn't devise a pastry tarter than Callie's mouth—"I managed to tweak my ankle." She set the foot on the ground and gingerly tested her weight on it. A silent wince crossed her features. "What were you doing? Chasing me like that?"

Thunder crashed, lightning streaked the sky. The eye of the storm was upon them. "We need shelter now," he shouted through the rain that had begun pelting them like it held a grudge. "Do you know of a place?"

Callie pointed beyond his shoulder. "There is a cave the local youths enjoy. But?—"

Nylander exhaled a rough breath. "What is it?"

"It's a bit of a climb. With my ankle, progress might be slow."

"Oh, bloody hell, woman." A grim set to his mouth, he strode over and took her in his arms.

"What do you think you're doing? I can walk," she protested. Still, her hands clutched at his neck to secure her body in place. Soaking wet, the woman didn't weigh anything.

"Tell me where to go."

Fast and steady, his feet followed her directions and found them ascending the rise to the cave in a matter of seconds. At its dark, gaping mouth, he asked, "Can I set you down?"

He felt her nod against his neck, and he shivered, and not from the cold or wet.

He found a flat stretch of wall and settled her against it. "Do you know if there's a lantern?"

"With the youths using it, there must be."

He began his search, feeling his way deeper into the cave, step by cautious step, the darkness swallowing him inside. He felt along the wall, damp with moss and humidity, his fingertips trailing along the base. It must be here somewhere. At last, his fingers touched cool metal and glass. "Found the lantern."

"Flint and striker can't be far."

He dropped to his knees, the better to feel along the ground… There. "Got it."

He struck flint and striker together, and in a matter of seconds the dark flickered into orange light, shadows dancing about ceiling, walls, and floor. Outside, the storm raged on.

"Come closer," he commanded, like he was speaking to one of his crew. She stood outside the small circle of light, and it bothered him.

"Why were you following me?" emerged softly from the darkness.

Nylander froze in his crouched position. "You know there are pirates about."

It didn't answer her question, but it was a statement of truth and enough to snap her mouth shut.

His eyes cast about until he found it: a blanket. Actually, two. He reached for one and held it out. "Take this. You must be freezing."

Anything to get her into the light and closer. He didn't like her standing out there like a wet cat. Outside, the storm might rage, but inside, stillness pulsing with tension, prevailed. At last, she limped into the light and eased onto a flat rock opposite him with a wince. He tossed her the blanket.

She snatched it up and held it out in front of her. "It won't do any good, unless—" She bit off the rest of the sentence.

She didn't need to finish it. He knew how it ended. Unless we strip off these wet clothes. "We could be here all night," he said instead.

Her dark eyes, fathomless as the sea on a moonless night, would obliterate his presence, if they could. But he saw agreement there. She nodded absently. "If we don't, we might catch an ague."

"I'll turn my back while you"—he wouldn't say strip—"disrobe."

Disrobe, a discreet, unsalacious word. A word he'd never spoken in his life.

"Is it only your ankle that's paining you?" he asked to get off the subject of disrobing.

She shifted. "My right hip is a little bruised."

He tamped down the impulse to ask if she needed assistance as she leaned down and untied the laces of her boots. She removed the left one with no problem, but the moment she tested the right boot, her mouth went tight at the corners.

"You'll need to get that boot off your foot."

"It can stay."

"I don't know of any way to remove one's trousers other than to remove one's boot first."

Her mouth gave a twist, sour and stubborn.

"Oh, blast it, woman." He crossed the distance between them and had her foot in hand in a matter of seconds, fingers already unlacing her boot. "You need to get this boot off."

She tried to wrench her foot away and again winced. "It'll be fine by tomorrow."

Nylander jabbed a finger toward the mouth of the cave, torrents of rain coming down in sheets. "We'll be lucky if that abates tonight."

Her mouth closed in a grudging line. He would take that as acceptance.

One hand closed on her boot heel, and the other removed the laces entirely from their holes. It would hurt her less this way. "I'm going to slide it off on the count of three. Ready?"

She nodded. Her knuckles showed white as her hands clenched the stone at her sides.

"One… two… three." As gently as he could, he angled the boot and coerced it off her foot in as slow and steady a motion as was possible given the damp cling of her woolen sock to leather. The boot off at last, she released the breath she'd been holding on a relieved grunt.

"Does it need a—" He stopped. He wouldn't ask if she needed a massage. Instead, he returned to the opposite side of the cave. It was safer over here. "I'll turn my back while you—" He hesitated. Would he never finish a sentence again?

"Disrobe?"

"Aye."

Back to her, he evaluated his person. Boots, socks, shirt, trousers, smalls. They all had to go. With every article of clothing he removed, he heard a corresponding slap of wet cloth against stone from her side of the cave. Sock, sock, slap, slap… shirt, slap… trousers, slap… smalls, slap.

He stood naked as Adam, and behind him, safely on her side of the cave, stood Eve. The thought had him reaching for his blanket. There was quite a bit more of him to cover now than there had been before that thought sprang to mind.

"You can turn around now."

He snugged the blanket around what little of him it covered and faced her with an air of nonchalance, as if he wasn't currently tamping down a massive cockstand. She sat on her flat stone perch, curled into herself beneath her blanket, except for the length of one slender, creamy leg revealed from knee to toe. That inviting stretch of skin wasn't helping the problem he was battling beneath his blanket.

"Might as well make ourselves comfortable."

"Hmm," he grunted. Not bloody likely. Frustrated and grumpy, he asked, "Why do you run in the dead of night?"

They wouldn't be in this current predicament if she didn't.

"You've been hearing tales of the Wyld Hare, I take it."

He nodded.

She shrugged. "I enjoy it."

"Is it a common activity around these parts?"

"I've never encountered anyone else doing it."

"Then why do you do it?" He sensed more beyond the words she spoke. Unspoken ones hung out of reach.

"My mama."

"She ran?"

Callie snorted. "Couldn't imagine." Her eyes flashed with humor. "She would've liked you."

Nylander lifted his brow in silent question.

"You're rather like Thor." Her humor fell away. Eye on the flickering flame of the lantern, she huddled deeper into herself. "When I was in my tenth year, my hale and hearty mama began to grow thin. Of a similar height with me, she was broader and carried a deal more weight. It suited her nature. A jolly belly for a jolly laugh, she always said. By my eleventh year, the pounds kept steadily falling away and her energy faded. Although they wouldn't speak in front of me, I took to listening at doors and learned there was a deformity, a lump in her bosom that was the problem." She swallowed. "And there was no help for it."

He wanted to reach out to her. But he didn't.

"I flew out of the house as fast as my legs would carry me, in no direction in particular. Ours was a sprawling estate. I could just run and run. My lungs burned, and it hurt like hell, but I ran for a full hour that day. I came home with blisters on my feet and utterly, completely exhausted. Too exhausted to think about what I'd heard. After the blisters healed, I did it again. I ran on the day she died, and again on the day of her funeral. I never stopped."

Without her having to speak them, he heard them now, those unspoken words. "It's freedom."

Her gaze fixed on the lantern at her feet. "I can sort myself out on a run."

He waited for her eyes to lift. "What were you running from tonight?"

"You, of course."

It was literally true, but there was more to that you. He saw it in her eyes. He dare not move a muscle.

"There is something I must tell you. Something I've been keeping from you."

At last, she would be out with it, and they could move forward. They? There was no they.

Not yet, anyway.

"'Tis to you that St. Alban wants to sell the Grange." The confession emerged in a tremulous rush. "I've known it since London and have deliberately withheld the information from you."

He nodded and held his tongue.

"St. Alban has given me until the festival to secure the monies."

Surprise jolted through him. "That's tomorrow. Do you have them?"

Her coal-black eyes transformed into cold, hard diamonds. It was the wrong question. "That'll be my business."

There.Confirmation. Jack Le Grand would be providing the funds. Or, at least, that was at the heart of her bargain with the pirate, except it wasn't going to plan. Recent "accidents" and assaults didn't add up. Her monies were anything but secured, and she knew it.

"Is there anything else you would like to tell me?"

She gave her head a curt shake. "It's nothing I can't handle myself."

She thought to handle Jack herself? He couldn't dream up a more frustrating woman.

"If I can't secure the funds, are you going to buy the Grange?"

She'd just made her deepest fear a tangible thing by speaking it aloud, and he couldn't help but admire her for it. She was brave to her core. The only way he could honor her courage was to be honest. "Yes."

She flinched, as if he'd struck her.

"Would that be such a terrible thing?"

A small, humorless laugh startled out of her. "If you'd asked me the same question even a few days ago, I would've said yes. I would have listed all the ways it would've been the worst catastrophe in the world." She held up her fingers and began ticking items off a list. "For the Grange. For its tenants. For Upper Wyldcombe Lacey." She hesitated. "For me."

"And now?"

"I'm not so sure. Perhaps I made the wrong choice to stay after Georgie's death. Perhaps it's prevented me from having the life I really want."

"And the Grange isn't it?"

She shook her head.

"What is it you really want?"

He waited. She might not answer. She didn't owe him that. He had no right to her deepest desires, not the ones that went deeper than her skin.

"A child." The words, stark and simple, echoed about the cave. "No one liked Georgie, not even my father. But that hardly mattered, because everyone would get what they wanted from the marriage." Again, she held up fingers to tick items off a list. "Father would get a title into the family. Georgie would get a much needed infusion of fresh funds into his bank accounts. And I would get a child." Bitterness twisted her face, her short laugh. "The marriage happened, but the promised child didn't. And nothing—not fortune, not status, not connections—mattered in the face of that particular misery."

"You could have remarried." He hesitated. "You still can. You're a young woman of great ability and talent." Any man would be lucky to have you, he left unspoken.

"Most men don't regard a woman who strides around in men's trousers and barks orders at them all day as the ideal wife and mother."

"Most men are fools." The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to stop them.

They were unwise and careless words.

They were the most honest words he'd ever spoken.