Chapter 31

"How about this?" Jane slipped the wire hook into the eye and stepped away, her head tilted in assessment.

Callie rolled her shoulders, testing the fabric encircling her chest, and released a sigh of relief. "Much better."

"And the waistband on the trousers?"

Callie buttoned them with ease.

"Not too snug anymore?"

"They're perfect."

Jane's eye fell on Callie's midsection. She resisted the urge to squirm.

"How curious that your body decided to gain weight in your breasts and around your waist. I can't say I've seen a case quite like it. This usually happens to a girl of twelve, not five and twenty."

"Mayhap I'm like a late blooming flower." Callie swallowed, the deceit stuck in her throat.

Jane tapped a pensive forefinger to her lips. "Unless, of course…"

A tiny charge sparked in the air. It was obvious what was left unsaid, and Callie was content to leave it there. She wasn't ready to say it out loud. She'd only just admitted it to herself.

"I suspect," she began on a false high note, "Mrs. Bailey's Christmas holiday fare may be the culprit. Mayhap her cooking has caught up with me after all these years." To add outright lie to fib, she squeezed out a hollow laugh. "I'll tell her to start minding the butter."

Jane's expression turned skeptical. "That's quite a few mayhaps." Mouth in a firm line, she began sticking straight pins into their cushion, respooling the leftover thread from today's alterations, and carefully replacing the tools of her trade in their individual stations. Callie watched, wary. Jane wasn't finished, she could feel it.

At last, Jane stood straight, crossed the room, and took Callie's hands in hers. "I expect you're busy with matters on the Grange. But Calpurnia, pet, when you're ready to speak of other matters, any matters at all, you know where to find me."

Unexpected emotion surged forward, and Callie nodded. She gathered up her altered trousers and released Jane's hands. "I must be going now."

In a moment, she found herself on Jane's front stoop, swiping a stray tear. She was a right, soupy mess these days.

She popped her collar up against a biting northerly breeze and stepped onto High Street. Throngs of villagers were flowing toward the bay, the opposite direction of where she was headed. "What's all the fuss about?" she asked in the general direction of anyone who would answer.

"Tall ship just arrived," came a hurried response.

Callie dug her heels into cobblestone and stopped herself from following the momentum of the crowd. Nothing new in the town getting excited about a recently arrived tall ship, bringing all manner of goods, some expected and ordinary, others exotic and unique.

She had no intention of joining the fray. In fact, she'd already taken too much time out of her schedule to see Jane today. But there had been no help for it. She hadn't been able to button her trousers.

And it was obvious as day that Jane suspected why. Nay, not suspected, knew. Mrs. Bailey's buttery Christmas cooking had naught to do with Callie's expanding waistline or tender breasts. What, really, had been the point of withholding the truth? Soon, she would be gone from the Grange, and no one would be the wiser.

Nylander would return, deed in hand, to claim his rightful place and boot her from the premises.

How soon? It was only a matter of time.

In all honesty, it would be no small relief. She would no longer have this ax suspended over her head. These last few months, she'd been busier than she'd ever been in her life. When she'd awakened after the night of the fire, she'd lifted her head off her soot- and tear-stained pillow and resolved to make the Grange whole before Nylander returned to claim it.

Her life, it would never be whole again. But the Grange could and would be.

She'd started by confessing to her men and offering to turn herself in to the law. To a man, they heard her confession and rejected her offer.

"If you don't mind me saying, milady," Will said, "we thought something like that was afoot. You might work on your lying skills. Besides, you been making it right."

"Weren't no real harm done," Jess dismissed, working his shoulder to demonstrate its wholeness. "If they wanted me done for, they'd a done it."

"We don't need the London law breathin' down our necks," Tom said and spit.

"But I—" Callie began to protest.

"Will ye do it agin?"

"Never."

"Then leave it be. We take care of our own in the west."

She'd had to fight back the tears—when wasn't she fighting back tears?—at the grace she'd been granted.

Lastly, she'd spoken to Pierre. The man was singularly attached to the Charentais still. Fortunately, he had Kip, who was only too happy to be his arms and legs in the repairs. The boy was thriving. That she wouldn't be here to see what sort of man he'd become, tugged more tears from her.

"I only wish you'd told me you were in a pickle," Pierre opined. "I could've introduced you to some freebooters a sight more honest than that old bugger, Jack Le Grand."

It still shocked her how sanguine the men had been about her shameful bargain, the way they'd shrugged it off. Just when she had to leave, they'd accepted her as one of them. Again, tears welled up, and this time spilled over.

Now, all she could do was wait for the ax to drop, should be any day now. She'd had the large travel trunk that she'd brought with her five years ago lugged down from the attics. In her bedroom, it waited, mouth yawning open, for her to toss what few belongings she possessed into its great depths. She would be gone within an hour of the new master's arrival.

She found that her hand had settled on her stomach, ever so gently rounded and noticed only by her. Thus far. When she returned to her father's house, for that was a foregone conclusion, she would have to confess all.

Well, mayhap not all, but enough to explain this rounding belly.

Her father possessed a far-flung estate in Yorkshire that he'd come to own when he'd purchased a minor lordling's debts. For all his faults, he would let her live there due to a combination of fatherly affection and the need to put distance between him and her shame.

Perhaps, she thought, her daydreaming eye upon the hilly horizon, colors dimmed by the deep frost of winter, the estate would need improvements. She could start over. No one in Yorkshire need know that her widowhood had begun over two years ago, well before any child could have been conceived.

There was but one problem with this daydream: her heart was here.

She neared the top of a hill, and the Grange rose into view, a roll of puffy gray clouds behind it. Snow was in those clouds. They would wake up to a world transformed on the morrow.

An estate worker—Billy, if she recalled correctly—reached the top of his side of the hill just as she reached hers. He stepped aside to let her pass. "Yer headin' the wrong direction, yer ladyship," he said. "The merchant ship is the other way."

This young man had always been cautious around her before the festival. But here he was speaking to her like one of his own, a tease in his words.

"Well, Billy," she began, "you'll just have to pick out something pretty for your best girl."

"That I will." He jammed his thumbs into his waistband. "She's been wantin' an ivory comb from China somethin' fierce, like the one 'er sister got off a ship last year."

"How lucky it's arrived on the eve of Christmas. You'd better hurry so you get the very best one."

He gave Callie a serious nod and raced down the hill like a shot.

As she approached the Grange, a vision of him replaced the view. Of working side by side with him. Of being held in his arms and made to feel precious, like the only woman in the world.

She missed him, as a lover, as a companion. A man who always knew the correct course of action and pursued it. She missed his familiar, windswept scent. He smelled of the ocean after a cleansing thunderstorm.

She approached the Grange from the side, rather than from the main road's head-on approach, whose purpose was to give visitors the opportunity to appreciate it in its full grandeur. Long, curved road with plane trees to either side. Rolling, green hills dotted with fluffy white sheep. The house itself, Palladian, grand, its golden stone, brought in from the Cotswolds, glinting mellow in the sun. She preferred the back way. Here, behind the grand facade, pumped its living heart, steady, stalwart, and true.

A gust of northern wind blasted in from the sea, and she tucked her chin into her upturned collar. But not before she caught competing whiffs of Christmas goose and shortbread flavored with a hint of orange wafting toward her from Mrs. Bailey's kitchen. She wasn't sure which she preferred, the savory or the sweet. Both, her stomach growled, wolf-like.

She'd told Jane a bald-faced lie when she'd said she would ask Mrs. Bailey to mind the butter. Her step quickened on the anticipation of culinary delight.

"Your ladyship," came the proper tones of the footman behind her, arresting her step just as her feet reached the kitchen's threshold.

She pasted a neutral expression onto her face and squared her shoulders, when all she really wanted to do was fling herself to the ground like a toddler in the throes of a proper tantrum. Shortbread, she wanted to cry. But she was a Lady, therefore she must act like an adult woman worthy of the respect afforded her.

"What is it, Ollie?"

He held out a packet wrapped in brown paper and secured with twine. "This arrived for you."

Her stomach dropped to her feet as she took the packet between fingers that had begun to tremble. Neither thick nor thin, it contained the heft of importance. The ax that had hung suspended over her head for the last few months? It had just fallen.

On Christmas Eve.

Packet clutched tight to her chest, she dismissed Ollie and fled through the kitchen, unheedful of the scent of shortbread that had so tantalized her moments ago. Winged feet navigating the maze of hallways, she reached her study in a matter of seconds. She kicked the door shut behind her and slumped against solid oak, her breath coming in quick, shallow pants.

She turned the packet over and found Callie scrawled across the outside in an unfamiliar script. Only Nylander called her by that name. Her fingertip traced her name surely writ by his hand. She brought it to her face, pressing it flat against her nose, and inhaled. It smelled faintly of the sea, of him.

She stalked across the room and seated herself behind her grand desk on the half hope that its stalwart heft would shore her up for what she must do. For it was clear that she must read the contents of this packet. She grabbed a pen knife and sliced through twine with the same grim determination one used when stripping a bandage off a not-quite-healed wound. Corner by corner, she peeled back the brown paper until the white contents of the packet stared up at her. She took a deep breath and focused on fine, black print.

Page one was the bill of sale of the unentailed estate, Wyldcombe Grange, and its six thousand acres from the Right Honorable Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban, to one Mr. John Nylander for the sum of ￡100,000. Paid in Full.

Her breath stole away, and she sat back in her chair, eyes clenched shut.

Paid in full.

Her eyes flew open, and she bent her face close to the document to confirm the sum. That Paid in Full caught between her teeth. Nylander had the available funds to pay such a price infull? It boggled the mind. She'd been prepared to approach Lord St. Alban with a plan to pay yearly, but this…

She flipped to the next page. Here was the deed. Ownership of the Grange transferred from the Right Honorable Jakob Radclyffe, Fifth Viscount St. Alban to Mr. John Nylander. Even though she'd known this document was an inevitability, moisture blurred her vision. She blinked it away.

It was official in black and white. She'd lost the Grange.

She turned the page and gave it a quick skim. Her heart froze in her chest. She tried reading it again, this time slowly, but the words refused to make sense. Her mouth went dry. She pressed her forefinger to paper and read as slowly as it moved, willing herself to comprehend words like transfer and ownership and to and Lady Calpurnia Radclyffe, Dowager Viscountess St. Alban.

Time slowed until the clock stopped ticking altogether.

She read and reread, slower each time, words broken into syllables, syllables into individual letters, and then reformed into words, which remained immutable. Mr. John Nylander had transferred ownership of Wyldcombe Grange and its attendant lands to one Lady Calpurnia Radclyffe, Dowager Viscountess St. Alban for the sum of?—

She lifted the deed to confirm no more documents lay below.

—￡0.

A long, blank line where her signature was required stared up at her. If she scrawled her name across it, she would be the owner of Wyldcombe Grange.

Everything she ever wanted was in her hands.

She blinked, and time resumed its steady tick-tock.

Noteverything.

She caressed her stomach and glanced around. So much of what she'd spent her adult life craving could be hers. All she had to do was sign.

And it lacked all substance without him, the man who was sacrificing everything he ever wanted to give her her heart's desire. What would possession of the Grange mean without him?

She held the papers to her nose again, taking in his fading scent. A thought blasted through her with the force of an exploding star. She shot to her feet and gathered up the papers into an unkempt mass before rushing across the study. She swung the door wide. "Ollie! Ollie!"

The footman appeared at the end of the hallway and approached her with his usual dignified gait. She tapped an impatient toe. Why wouldn't the man hurry up already? Couldn't he see she had a matter of pressing importance?

At last, he stopped before her, all dignified patience. "How may I be of assistance, my lady?"

She held up the mass of papers. "When did these arrive?"

Ollie's eyes screwed up to the ceiling. "I'd say an hour past."

"And how did they arrive? By post?"

"The post doesn't arrive for another two hours."

"Then who brought them to you?"

"The stable lad brought it to Mrs. Bailey, who gave it to me. This brings me to another matter of importance. That lad needs a firmer hand guiding him if he is going to?—"

"Kip?" Callie interrupted.

Ollie drew himself up. "Yes, my lady."

"Thank you, Ollie," Callie called over her shoulder, already on the run. The instant her feet hit the stable yard, she began shouting, "Kip! Kip!"

In what felt like an eternity of seconds, but couldn't have been more than thirty, Kip sauntered out of the stable, a piece of straw between his teeth. "What's all the fuss about, milady?"

The boy really was an impudent rascal. But that was neither here nor there at the moment. "Who gave you the packet of papers to deliver?"

Kip shrugged. "Some old salt."

Callie's eyebrows met in the middle. "An old salt?"

"You know, a sailor."

An old salt… a sailor… the tall ship in the harbor… Nylander was… here.

She nearly hugged Kip in gratitude, but she resisted. The lad likely wouldn't appreciate it. Instead, she settled for a quick, "Thank you," before rushing off.

It might not be too late. But…

What if he was only delivering the packet before sailing away? If the tide was going out, he might already be weighing anchor.

She would never see him again. She would never have a chance to make this right. To make them right.

And she must.

She darted toward the quickest path to the village and stopped. She glanced down at herself, clad in trousers and shirt buttoned up to her neck. First, she would change clothes, and she knew exactly what to wear, even though the stains had never really come out and the hem was tattered to bits and a few buttons would surely resist fastening.

He'd given her everything, and she would do the same for him. She would offer him everything the magical night and day they'd shared had promised, and more.

If he would have her.