Chapter 3

Blasted malaria.

The diagnosis—well, not the blasted part—that had placed Callie inside this carriage, careening down a soggy country road with a noisome, querulous nurse squeezed in at her side and a feverish, possibly concussed, intermittently raving ship captain splayed out across from her, both lost to the world in slumber.

Disgusted, Callie stared out the fogged-up window and took in the uneventful countryside racing alongside her. How had it come to this?

One moment, she'd been watching a scene straight out of a French farce in St. Alban's foyer, and the next, she'd been cradling the captain's head, dripping with perspiration and hot to the touch, lest he hit it again on the checkered marble floor and this time crack it clean open. She still couldn't recall the thud of his skull against unforgiving marble without her stomach giving a lurch.

Next thing she knew, St. Alban was barking orders that a carriage be brought round to transport the Viking to the nearest inn and that a doctor from the Westminster infirmary be instructed to meet them there. The concern was that the captain had a fever and that it was contagious. A few hours later, St. Alban returned as supper was concluding to assure his family and guests that the doctor had diagnosed the captain with a malarial flare up—They're not uncommon in the Far East—and a possible concussion—You saw the way his head bounced when it struck the floor?

Then he'd pulled Callie aside and asked the fateful question. "Will you take Nylander back to Devon with you?"

"I… I should think not," she'd all but exclaimed.

The viscount's head cocked to the side, and his eyes went ice cold. A shard of foreboding stabbed through her. "He shouldn't stay in London."

"And why is that?" Callie had never been more taken aback in her life.

"London is a cesspool, and the close quarters on his ship would be a misery. Clean country air is what he needs to recover. Then once he's well enough, you could show him the workings of—" The man had enough sense to stop.

Callie silently finished the sentence for him. The Grange. But it wasn't this argument that would sway her.

It was that St. Alban's petite, blonde viscountess was a good six months gone with child. She was glowing and gorgeous and perfect in the specific way only a very pregnant woman could be. Callie had had to swallow a surge of envy. What if the physician was wrong and the captain was contagious with smallpox or scarlet fever? Callie couldn't bear the idea of causing the loss of a child due to her selfishness.

And that had settled it.

Callie was offered a night's accommodation in the Cleveland Row house, which she grudgingly accepted, her departure effectively delayed a day. In the deep of the night, however, she did have a curious incident.

Restless, she'd wandered out into the back garden to collect a few sane thoughts from this mad whirlwind of a day when she encountered a girl of middle-teen years—Miss Radclyffe was her name—lying flat on her back on a patch of springy turf, gazing up at the twinkling sky through a small telescope.

Due to all the confusion, Callie's introduction to the girl had been overlooked, but she had noticed Miss Radclyffe's quiet presence at the opposite end of the supper table. She was of a height with Callie, unusual in itself, and quite possibly the most strikingly beautiful girl Callie had ever beheld. It was clear that Lady St. Alban wasn't Miss Radclyffe's mother by blood, but rather a woman from the Orient. From St. Alban's life before he'd become a viscount.

Callie apologized for intruding on Miss Radclyffe's stargazing.

"No need. The stars are entirely indifferent," she'd replied. "I was hoping to catch a few last remnants of the Epsilon Perseids."

"The Epsilon Per—?" Callie trailed.

"It's a meteor shower. But, alas, it seems to be done for the year."

"For the year?" Somehow, Callie found herself being drawn in and charmed against her will. As much as she wanted to loathe St. Alban and everyone connected to him, she couldn't. His family were, quite annoyingly, treating her with respect, kindness, and generosity.

"Oh, yes, meteor showers return every year. They're quite predictable, unlike us humans."

"Quite," had been Callie's dry reply. The last day had certainly reinforced the truth of human unpredictability.

For the hundredth time inside this cramped carriage, her gaze fell on the most unpredictable Captain Nylander, drawn in as if by a lodestone. He was hard to ignore, sprawled out as he was, taking up three quarters of the carriage interior, if an inch. A harness had been devised to hold him in place and prevent him from sliding to the floor. The leather held fast and true, even as it was tested to its limit by the combination of jostling carriage and massive man.

She rested her forehead against the window. The translucent gray cloak of encroaching night was beginning its descent, chasing away vibrant daylight and dimming the green of rolling hills into slate gray. They would have to stop at a coaching inn for yet another night on the road. Only fools traversed the Exmoor after dark.

Annoyance seethed inside her. Over the last few years of widowhood, she'd become accustomed to bending circumstances to her will, not the other way around. And this was one set of circumstances that refused to bend. At least St. Alban's carriage took the road more smoothly than the average stagecoach, and its plush leather seat was, if she was being honest, quite the most comfortable she'd ever set bum upon. Still, she'd have rather returned home by post coach than be saddled with her present predicament.

Through some strange trick of fate, she'd become obliged to care for the man who would buy her home out from under her, if given half a chance. It defied all belief. Well, that wasn't precisely correct. Mrs. Bickle, softly snoring at her side, was the woman sent by the Westminster infirmary to nurse the captain. Callie shifted away from the woman's bony elbow cutting into her rib cage. In truth, the woman wasn't much of a nurse.

The following day, when Callie and St. Alban had arrived at the inn to begin the journey west, Mrs. Bickle had jutted her sharp chin at Callie and spoken her words to St. Alban. "Yer sayin' this woman is to be the boss o' me?" The question ballooned with incredulity with each word she spoke. "Why, she ain't dressed no better than Margie down the street."

Callie hadn't the faintest idea who Margie-Down-the-Street was, but it wasn't a compliment.

"It's an odd state of affairs, I kin tell ye," the woman continued, "when the 'elp is dressed better than the missus."

It was true that Callie didn't believe in finery, abjuring silk in favor of the more practical Devonshire wool. But she kept her appearance neat and her person clean, which was more than Mrs. Bickle could say for herself.

Chin lifted, Callie stepped forward. "If you plan on being in my employ, that will be enough." Her words emerged in the haughty voice provided her by the best finishing school in Exeter. "You will be reporting to me, not the viscount." She glanced at St. Alban and detected an appreciative glimmer in the man's eye. "If you take issue with this state of affairs, I suggest you see yourself back to whence you came."

She half hoped the woman would. Instead, Mrs. Bickle had mumbled the approximation of an apology and followed the lads lugging the captain to the carriage.

Before he'd left, St. Alban had a few final words for Callie. "I've sent word to Nylander's ship and had his personal effects retrieved."

Callie had nodded when she'd really wanted to shrug. These details made no difference to her.

"And," St. Alban continued, and Callie's ears perked up at a particular note in the syllable. "Have you any experience with malaria?"

"Not in the least."

"It's a fickle affliction. You'll need to keep your eye on him."

Callie scoffed. "Isn't that Mrs. Bickle's job?"

The viscount raised his eyebrows. "You need to know that it can be tricky. Best to be aware."

On those strange parting words, the man had left her responsible for an unpredictable man and his churlish nurse. Now, here they were, a cozy little trio rattling through the wilds of Somerset.

Again, her eyes landed on Captain Nylander. Somehow, in the dusky interior of this enclosed carriage, the light sought out his features and illuminated them to their best advantage. The twin crescent-moons of golden eyelashes resting against his cheeks. The bold ridge of a cheekbone. The firmness of lips parted in abandoned sleep. Even the three days' growth of his beard didn't obscure the deep cleft of his chin or the strong line of his jaw. His beard was red. Like Thor's, came her next thought.

Mama had loved the Norse tales and told them to Callie a hundred times over. Gorgeous and bold and possessed of a glorious red beard, Thor had been her favorite. It could've been no accident that Father's beard was red, although now streaked with gray.

And the man slumped in restive oblivion across from her? He would've made Mama's knees buckle. Even with his resemblance to Thor, ungodly handsome was what he was.

He was impossible to behold.

He was impossible not to behold.

Callie nestled her shoulder deeper into the little corner and closed her eyes. She'd been staring at that man too long. They must be nearing the coaching inn by now.

Tomorrow, they would complete the final leg of their three-day journey and, at last, reach the Grange. The thought should've comforted her. Instead, it sent a clamor of anxiety straight to her gut. She had just about four weeks to secure the Grange from her god-like rival. The fictitious money from Mama that had saved her in the moment wouldn't save her in the end.

There would be no money from her father, either. He'd visited the Grange on the first anniversary of Georgie's death, looked her up and down, commented that she'd gone to seed, and hadn't returned since. If she lost the Grange, the last vestige of her marriage into the aristocracy, there would be little, other than her title of Dowager Viscountess, left to show for her father's strides into the upper tier of Exeter Society or for her entire adult life, for that matter.

Her hands coiled into tight fists. No one was going to take it from her. Not the Viscount St. Alban. Not the Viking sprawled out across from her. Even if she had to make a deal with the devil.

"You could make a pretty penny, and the tax man would be none the wiser."

Those had been the notorious pirate Jack Le Grand's exact words during their first and last meeting at Hawkset Cove a few months ago. They taunted her now, their illicit wisdom hard to deny in the face of her desperation. She would never see as much quick profit from her brandy using a law-abiding London distributor.

Could she go through with it? Could she humble herself to the outlaw whose offer she'd so haughtily rejected in the name of all that was right and honest? The humiliation she could bear, but the loss of principle and the high ground, to be on the same level as such a man…

That would be an outcome difficult to tolerate.

Ifshe went through with this idea and if St. Alban ever learned of it, he wouldn't sell her the Grange. It was that simple. He might even have her arrested.

Well, he wouldn't find out.

Voices from outside the carriage began shouting back and forth, and the vehicle slowed. Callie poked her head forward, nose pressed into the window, steaming the glass, and made out the open gate and circular courtyard of a coaching inn.

As the viscount's team of four clattered to a stop across rough cobblestone, Mrs. Bickle startled awake. Eyes wide with terror, she grabbed Callie's arm. "What in the feckin' 'ell is this?"

"Mayhap you were still too deep in your cups this morning to have taken notice of our departure from the Red Lion in Salisbury?" Callie asked, unable to restrain her distaste. The woman's drinking habits really were a source of concern. "We've arrived at our inn for the night."

Mrs. Bickle released Callie's arm with a nettled smack of papery lips, drew her shoulders back, and exhaled a piqued huff. If the woman had been a cat, the hairs along the ridge of her spine would've been standing on end. Callie buttoned her pelisse and clutched her reticule in general readiness to vacate the carriage. She wouldn't bother soothing the woman's wounded pride. She hadn't spoken a word that wasn't true.

A gruff cough sounded from the opposite bench. In unison, she and Mrs. Bickle turned to find the captain twisting his body from side to side in a stretch that seemed testing and intentional, the leather strap surely strained to its limit. Long, golden lashes fluttered off high cheekbones, and a blue gaze, clouded and disconcerting, stared out. Callie froze, her breath caught in her throat, and waited. He did this periodically, tried to push through his fever to wakefulness. Then his eyes slid shut, and he slumped back into his seat. The breath Callie had been holding, released.

"Well, wadn't that a close one?" Mrs. Bickle exclaimed on a relieved, short laugh.

Callie couldn't help but share the sentiment. What would she do with this hulking Viking if he awakened inside the carriage with little to no idea how he got here? It was the stuff of night terrors.

Well, he wasn't hers to do anything with. He was Mrs. Bickle's problem. This time tomorrow eve, they would arrive at the Grange, and she would thoroughly wash her hands of him. At a house and estate as sprawling as Wyldcombe Grange, she would be able to avoid the man entirely, even after his recovery. Of their own accord, St. Alban's words returned to her:

Then once he's well enough, you could show him the workings of?—

Good thing he'd stopped, for she would've had to tell yet another lie by assuring the viscount that, of course, she would show Captain Nylander the workings of the Grange. Which she hadn't the slightest intention of doing. Did the man take her for a fool?

Callie reached around Mrs. Bickle, still bristling with offense, and twisted the brass handle. She cut across the short distance and pushed the door open before hopping down from the carriage. The flummoxed coachman, Thomas, stared out at her, his empty hand extended to assist her descent. She exhaled a short, unladylike snort. City servants were a different breed from Devonshire ones. Still, she should let the man perform his duty and assist her once in a while, like a good lady.

Again, she snorted. She wasn't any good at being a lady, not since Georgie died.

She pointed her face to the sky and inhaled a deep sip of fresh country air. Around her, the courtyard teemed with hustle and bustle: the cacophonous clanging of the arrival bell, the sharp clatter of horse hooves against well-worn cobblestone, the harried shout of the hostler to a stable lad. "Kip, make play!"

The boy, who couldn't have more than a dozen years on him, directed a crude gesture at the hostler's back, and his step, if anything, grew slower. While Callie had no doubt the impertinent Kip had a firm handle on how to make his way in the world, she couldn't like the fact that he was doing so at such a young age. It was the same in every stable throughout the country.

"And you must be the most esteemed Dowager Viscountess St. Alban?" Callie heard at her back. She pivoted, just as Mrs. Bickle brushed past her and made tracks to the tap room. The man before Callie was lowered into a bow fit for the Queen of England. She cleared her throat, and the man rose, not to his full height but to one deferential to his betters, who happened to be her at present.

"Am I to take it you're proprietor of this establishment?"

"I am, my lady."

Again, he bowed. For pity's sake. She had little use for the idea that she was better than anyone else for no reason other than she had a title. On the Grange, when she was picking apples or milking a cow, none of that mattered.

"Have you enough rooms to accommodate our party for the night?" she asked, straight to the business at hand.

"The best the Dog and Duck has to offer, my lady."

"My coachman will require the assistance of two, likely three, strapping lads to assist one of our party to his room. Thomas?" she called out.

At the sound of his name, the driver broke off his conversation with a local serving woman, her eye possessed of the specific saucy twinkle that had Callie averting her gaze. Thomas ushered the obsequious innkeeper to the carriage as to acquaint him with the same problem their party had encountered at the coaching inn from last night: the transport of a feverish, possibly concussed, man from carriage to room, which likely involved stairs, judging by second-floor windows buffed to a mirror shine.

The place did appear clean, at least. Like as not, comfort would be an altogether separate issue. It didn't matter. All she needed was a hot bath, supper in her room, and a place to lie horizontally, preferably in a bed with fewer than ten lumps and more than fifty feathers. Based on recent experience, it was the most she could hope for.

While the men began extricating the captain from the carriage, Callie stood silent sentinel beside the front door and observed the now-familiar process. The leather strap holding him in place was released. With the assistance of gravity, he slid to the carriage floor while his body was pushed out by one man behind and tugged forward by another in front, his massive form emerging feet first. On a series of moans, groans, and guttural grunts from both patient and helpers, the Viking was hoisted by the arms onto the shoulders of a strapping lad to either side of him.

At the bottom edge of her vision, she caught movement in the general area of the captain's boots. Yesterday and this morning, he'd mostly been dragged across the courtyard of the Red Lion. But just now?—

There!

There was the movement again. His feet were attempting to keep in step with the men assisting him, which could only mean…

Her eyes flew up to meet the narrowed blue slits of his already trained upon her. She went still as a woodland creature caught in the crosshairs of a hunter's bow, and her heart banged out a series of hard, rabbity thumps. His gaze wasn't clouded, not in the least. Instead, he stared straight at her—straight into her. Piercing, lucid were those eyes the blue of a Devon sky on a clear wintry day. An electric instant passed before his lashes dipped once, twice, and fell to a close onto high cheekbones.

Her parted lips uttered a soft, unconscious "Oh," and she startled into self-awareness. The captain drew level with her at the doorway, and she glanced at his feet. His eyes might be closed, but his boots continued moving in step with the stable lads. One foot in front of the other, the trio shuffled across the threshold and past her, but his gaze didn't meet hers again. Was it possible he was recovering?

Once inside the main tap room, she trailed behind her party and inhaled the scents of roast joint, tobacco, beer, and unwashed body blended into the particular humid fug that she recognized as the unmistakable scent of the English coaching inn. Locals and travelers alike had gathered for an evening of food, drink, and song, judging by the fiddler tuning his instrument in the corner nearest the fireplace, which glowed orange with recently stoked embers. Up the stairs, she followed the huffing and puffing lads as they negotiated the Viking up, one heavy step at a time, stopping for rest on the landing midway before reaching the top.

"My lady," the innkeeper began, gracelessly squeezing past her in the narrow, second-floor corridor. "You are in Number One. Our very finest room." He turned the key in the lock to their left and flung the door open with a flourish.

Callie paused and allowed the innkeeper to precede her into the room. She chanced a final glance in the direction of the Viking, half expecting to meet his lucid blue eye again, every muscle tense with the possibility. But a silhouette of his profile was all she was presented as the lads fumbled with the door one down from hers.

A frisson of heat lit inside her, strange and discomfiting. Goose bumps raised along her arms, down her spine.

Then he was ushered into the room next to hers, leaving her in the corridor, alone. She stood rooted in place, kept company by the muted opening strains of fiddle song seeping up through thin floorboards. Not once in her life had she reacted to another living being the way she had to that man just now. Shaken, she stepped inside her room.

She cursorily glanced at the wall to her right, papered in a garish green that had been fashionable at no point in history. She and that man would share that wall. She could only hope he kept his feverish ravings to himself tonight. But… was he still fevered?

It wasn't any of her business. Now that they were free of the carriage and inside their separate rooms, he was Mrs. Bickle's concern.

"Have water for a bath sent up along with a light supper," she said to the innkeeper. "I'll be keeping to my room for the duration of my stay."

The man inclined his head, and light glinted off a centrally located patch of bald scalp. "Your wish is my command, my lady."

He scurried off to perform his duties, and Callie kicked the door shut. She paced to the room's lone window and stared unseeing at the courtyard, a hive of buzzing activity below.

What if… what if the Viking was emerging from his sickness? Further, had there been something in his piercing blue eyes? Beyond lucid, she'd have sworn they were knowing. What could they possibly know?

A knock sounded on the door, and Callie nearly jumped out of her skin. "Yes?"

"Your dinner, milady," came a muffled female voice through hollow oak.

"I'll be right there."

Callie tamped down the uncharacteristic flight of fancy and crossed the room. The contact between his eyes and hers had lasted the flicker of an instant, no more. There was nothing in it. Nothing.

Tonight, she would lay her head on her rather feeble pillow.

Tomorrow, she would arrive home.

And such matters would be relegated to the travel weariness they surely were.