Chapter 32

Nylander planted his feet wide to brace himself against the subtle roll and sway of the sea below, arms akimbo, his usual stance at his usual place on the quarterdeck at the base of the main mast.

It was familiar. It was home. After spending all his days serving the sea's whims, and dreaming of different ones, he'd at last resigned himself to his fate.

"So this is the place, eh?" came the First Mate's voice.

"What place is that, Mr. Smythe?"

"Where you recovered from your fever."

"Aye," Nylander grunted, his gaze fixed on the hive of activity aboard the Fortuyn, and most definitely not on the distant shore.

"We thought we'd lost you to the land." Mr. Smythe huffed a small laugh. "Some of the men laid odds on it."

"Not a chance." The reply was clipped and curt and efficiently closed the door on this conversation. Mr. Smythe discreetly stepped away to see to his duties.

It wasn't simply that Nylander had spent his entire fortune in the space of an afternoon inside a fuggy London solicitor's office and had no choice but to keep captaining the Fortuyn. On the sea, a fortune could be made, lost, and remade in the span of a few years.

No, it wasn't that he was starting from zero that kept him tethered to the sea. He'd forgotten the place life had handed him and reached too far, too high. And his crash back to earth, to reality, had been jarring and exquisitely painful. He'd not be forgetting his place again.

Which was here, the captain of a tall ship provisioned for another trip to the Mediterranean. Apparently, the Ottoman sultan was so delighted with his pair of Thoroughbreds that he wanted to reciprocate by gifting a pair of Arabian stallions to the lord who had provided them. For the voyage out, the Fortuyn was outfitted with ironware, woolens, linens, and textiles.

He wouldn't think about the other life—the one on the shore that his gaze kept avoiding—that he'd come close to having. So close the taste of it still tickled his tongue in the small hours of the night. It tasted of apple and earth and the salt of honest, sweat-soiled toil.

Buzzing around him, lugging ropes and canvas, whistling the odd sea song, securing cargo, was his real life as they prepared to set sail. They wouldn't touch land again until Gibraltar.

He allowed the feeling of satisfaction to settle over him when the ship operated like a well-executed piece of machinery. He didn't need to bark orders at these men: they knew what they were about. Even if it wasn't precisely a joy—all traces of that emotion had been stripped from him two months ago—he felt less numb for this moment. It didn't repair the gaping black void in his soul, but it did offer him a moment's relief.

"There's a boat drawing nigh," the coxswain called in his direction, spyglass pressed to his eye.

"Must be Gibbons and the men returning." Nylander didn't bother looking. Along with a small delivery to the Grange, he'd instructed the men to secure a few casks of the Grange's cider from the Devil's Books. Their price had been bloody extortionate, but it hardly mattered. It was something of his time here to bring with him. He'd ever had trouble releasing lost dreams to the wind.

"Nay," the coxswain continued after a bit. "This vessel is a sight smaller than the jolly boat Gibbons took out. This is a dinghy." He twisted the spyglass to focus it. "Besides all that, couldn't be Gibbons, not unless 'is hair turned to flame while 'e was on shore. And 'e grew six inches to boot. And"—he paused long enough to build a little drama around his next words—"'e's taken to wearing ladies' silk dresses beneath 'is overcoats."

Nylander's gut flipped. It might not be her. "Is the dress green?"

"Aye, 'tis."

It was her. His hand shot out, snatched the spyglass from the coxswain, and pressed the brass oculus to his eye.

It was most definitely her, silk dress flashing green beneath a worn winter overcoat, huffing, puffing, and having a devil of a time maneuvering that dinghy across waves choppy with a newly arrived breeze. A breeze that was the Fortuyn's signal to weigh anchor and set sail before the snow began falling.

He wouldn't look away. As long as he kept his eye on her, she couldn't vanish. It was clear that she hadn't much experience with the mechanics of rowing. Her oars struck the water out of sync with one another and at ineffectual angles, splashing sea foam onto her lap and doubling the work she had cut out for her. Adding to her burden, she didn't seem to understand how to use her legs in the effort, and her arms had a heaviness to them like they felt like falling off.

This struggle of a titled lady grappling with the sea in her silk dress might've been comical if it didn't feel so deadly serious. Like his life depended on its outcome.

"Lower the dinghy," he barked to anyone who would snap to and take the order.

Once readied, he wasted no time boarding the small vessel and setting its oars into motion across waves growing choppier with the breeze that was strengthening into a wind. A quick, practiced rhythm developed between arms and legs, and he was covering the distance with one stroke that took Callie ten.

He glanced up and saw that she'd stopped altogether, her eyes a squint across the distance that separated them. With every pull of his oars, he drew closer, and the question he should've asked himself the moment he saw her through the spyglass hit him: Why was she here?

When his boat bumped against hers, he didn't ask quite so delicately. "What the bloody hell are you trying to accomplish? Your death?"

Her mouth opened. "I—" Her mouth snapped shut, and she stared out at him. Her cheeks were stained scarlet and her eyes bright with exertion. Perspiration blotched the green silk of her bodice, and flame-red hair clung to her cheeks in damp strings. If the gust of wind that blew past him was telling the truth, she smelled.

A large wave rolled beneath his boat, then hers, rocking them violently from side to side. He reached for a length of rope and worked at tethering her dinghy to his. "We need to get to shore."

Eyes wide, her arms braced to either side of the narrow vessel, she nodded. He set his oars into motion and made for the nearest cove, a few hundred yards in the distance. His load doubled, progress was slower, but soon enough the bottom of his boat was scraping against sand and rock. He jumped out, grabbed the rope linking his boat to hers, and pulled her in until she was beached as well.

He reached out a hand. She took it, and his pulse jumped in his veins. With that simple touch, he felt more alive than he had in months.

"I could carry you to shore." His instinct was to gather her in his arms and protect her from the weather about to break over their heads. He resisted the urge, and added, "To save your dress." That last part emerged with the awkwardness of a green youth who'd found himself alone with the fairer sex for the first time.

A little smile ticked up at the side of her mouth. "There's no saving this dress, I'm afraid." Her smile fell. "I think it's better if I go under my own steam."

"Right," he said. Of course, he didn't say.

He handed her down and stepped aside, gesturing for her to lead the way. As he waded to shore through frigid, ankle-deep water, again the question came to him: Why was she here?

She stopped on the edge of the waterline and faced him, waiting for him to join her, choppy waves skating across brown sand until they were nothing more than tiny licks at her boots. She looked an utter, bedraggled mess. Brown overcoat heavy atop the silk dress that sagged in a limp, sodden mass beneath, damp hair hanging about her face and shoulders.

But there was something more to the way she looked. A nervous energy vibrated about her. Eyes unnaturally bright, her hands clenched and unclenched anxiously at her sides. She had something to say.

To him.

He refused to give that last bit air to breathe. It might encourage hope.

He stopped at the water's edge. It wouldn't do to get too close.

"What took you so long?" she blurted.

The question took him by surprise. "To do what?"

"To come back."

"I didn't know I was—" He stopped. Welcome, he didn't say. Too much complication resided within that finish. He kept it simple. "There were matters that had to be sorted in London. Family matters mostly," he added and instantly regretted it. She didn't want the details of his damaged family.

She nodded, thoughtful. "The lad who was with Jack Le Grand in the cave, is he your?—"

"Brother? Aye. Had to see him sorted and in school. I'm his guardian now, which was a whole other laborious legal process." Why was he explaining all this to her? Best to get to what she was really here for. "You received the deed?"

"I did."

"Did you sign it?"

"I did not."

His brow furrowed. "Do you have a question about it?"

"One."

She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. He tried not to watch, and failed.

"Why?"

"I don't know the first thing about managing a five foot square of land, much less an estate like the Grange." He tried to believe the next words out of his mouth. "I would've run it into the ground."

"You would've been the best thing to ever happen to the Grange."

Nylander shifted on his feet and tried to let her words wash over him without soaking in. Without letting a belief in them take hold.

Fire snapped in her eyes. "Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Avoiding praise."

Taut silence stretched between them. She was awaiting his response. Well, she'd be waiting for a good long while. He took the conversation another direction. "Underneath your coat."

"Yes?"

"Your dress."

"What about it?"

"It seems mightily impractical."

"You liked it, so I wore it. I thought it might—" She threw frustrated hands into the air. "I didn't plan for ocean spray and choppy waves and wind and"—she exhaled a defeated sigh—"sweat."

"It seems to be falling off you."

Self-consciousness quenched the fire in her eyes. She squirmed inside damp silk and tugged at various places to situate the garment better on her body. Nothing helped. In fact, she might have made it worse. A pink shadow, that may or may not have been a nipple, peeked above the low neckline. Nylander used every bit of will-power he possessed to keep his eye fixed on hers and not explore the possibility further.

"I couldn't button it."

He stepped forward without thinking. "Let me assist you."

Callie splashed a hasty step backward. "We'll get to the dress later. You've already done enough as far as it goes."

What in the blast was the woman going on about?

With a decisive sweep of her hand, she cleared her face of the red frizzy strings of hair that clung to it with sea spray and, yes, sweat. Somehow, she managed to maintain a regal bearing. "I owe you an apology."

"You don't owe me anything."

"I was utterly, shamefully wrong to have believed for even an instant that you were in league with Jack Le Grand."

He shook off her apology. He had to. "You weren't in the wrong for believing it. I would have."

Her eyebrows drew together. "Why is that?"

A short laugh escaped him, its bitterness leaving a metallic taste in his mouth. "The offspring of the unholy union of an infamous pirate and a dockside whore? It wouldn't be natural to believe otherwise."

Her visage went as dark as the clouds overhead. "I care not one whit about your parentage."

"You do, you just don't realize it," he began, unable to plug the truths that wanted release, that had plagued him all his life. "When you know a thing like that about a person, you can't unknow it. It's a knowledge that loosens a poison that infects and kills the entire relationship. This isn't the first time it's happened, and it won't be the last."

It will be the last, Callie ached to shout at the blasted, cross-grained man. Except he wouldn't believe her.

"But…" She struggled for words, the right ones. The ones that would take his pain away. "You're you. That's all that matters to me. It's all that will ever matter."

He crossed his arms over his chest, a skeptical look in his eye, silent. She had her work cut out for her, and she wouldn't be leaving here until she'd done it. "I'm the daughter of a respectable union and look at what I did. I struck a deal with a notorious pirate."

His broad shoulders shrugged, laconic. "You were pushed to it."

"Don't make excuses for me."

"Your back was driven to the wall."

"Stop that," she demanded. "I need to know. Can you forgive me?"

"There's nothing to forgive. Again, who wouldn't have done the same?"

"You."

His lips pressed together, and the muscles of his jaw worked as if he was grinding his teeth.

"You would've found an honorable way to accomplish your goal, because that's what you, the son of a pirate and a whore, are. You are honorable." When he opened his mouth to protest, she held up a staying hand. "Why did you sign the Grange over to me? You placed your heart's desire in my hands."

"You wanted it."

"But you wanted it, too. In fact, it's everything you ever wanted."

"Not everything. Not even the main thing."

Words abandoned her.

"I love that about you," he said.

"What?"

"The way you roll your bottom lip between your teeth when you're thinking."

She released her lip. Their little game had returned. Here, at last, was her opening, and she must seize it with both hands. She couldn't lose him. Not again. "Your hair. I—" She hesitated, still unaccustomed to speaking the next word. "I love it. The way it riffles in the breeze like summer barley."

His brow lifted.

"I love your forearms when you milk a cow. The way your muscles roll beneath your skin like you're the most alive man in the world."

The beginnings of a smile crinkled at the corners of his eyes. How she wished he would follow through with it.

"But most of all, I love"—she swallowed around the lump in her throat. She suspected it was her heart—"you."

The smile that had begun, fell away. "That can't work."

"Why?" she cried out.

"Look where I come from. Where you come from. Where I belong, and where you belong. The gap between us is too wide."

"Where I belong? Where you belong? Can't you see? We belong together. Nothing else matters."

"Those differences are all that matter in this world."

"Then let's blow up the world."

"Callie—"

"All that matters is you… me… here… now."

"You've never lived out in the world."

Something about his resistance worried at Callie. It was as if he—Oh. Frustration with the blasted man gave way to understanding. "You don't know, do you?"

His eyes narrowed. "What is that?"

"That you could be loved." She allowed a beat to pass. "That you are worthy of love."

He flinched.

"Love has done nothing but hurt you. It failed you. But"—she reached inside her bodice and dug out papers that were mostly dry—"you and I can fashion a new world. A better world."

"Callie—"

She shook the deed at him. "Right here, we have all we need to make our world what we want it to be. You are worthy of being loved. And I can't think of a love more worthy than yours. To be loved by a man like you… to be loved by you… there is nothing in the world I crave more."

"Not even the document you hold?"

"It's nothing without you."

The balance of her future hung on those words, immutable, true.

He moved forward, his boots a soft splash in the water, halving the distance between them before she could blink, his gaze holding hers in its blue thrall.

At last, she did blink and snapped out of her trance. "Wait."

He halted, and his brow knitted in confusion.

"I, um," she stammered. "I can't think when you're close."

"Maybe we don't need to think right now."

Again, he halved the distance between them, and halved it again. He was so close his warmth reached out and invited her to nestle inside. He tucked her hair behind one ear, then the other, and she wanted nothing more than to turn her face and melt into his strong, calloused hand. Instead, she placed her own smaller hand on his chest, on the tattoo above his heart.

"Dweller on new land," she uttered. "Come, dwell here, with me, in this land. It'll be our new land, together."

Unnamed emotion clouded the blue of his eye. He took her waist in hand and drew her close. His mouth found her ear. "I've loved you since the moment your eyes threw murderous daggers at me across Jake's study and all the other moments since, even when you're driving me mad." The velvet gravel of his voice threatened to turn her knees to jelly. "Maybe especially when you're driving me mad. I love you, Callie, and I'll protect you to the end."

So many emotions surged, she couldn't differentiate one from the other. They just swirled together and made her feel whole and loved and utterly ferocious. "And I'll love you to my very last breath."

He shifted to meet her eye. "We'll build our world of two, just you and I."

"Just you and I," she repeated. "Oh." She broke from his embrace and stepped back. Her heart thundered in her chest. Now was the time. "There is something I must tell you."

His brow furrowed in bewilderment.

"About my dress."

"There is something you must tell me about your dress?"

"It won't button up anymore."

"Here"—he reached for her—"let me see what I can do."

She evaded him. "You can't do anything." She shook her head. "Well, that's not precisely true. You've already done quite a bit."

"You're not making any—" He stopped cold. His brow released a hard beat of Callie's heart later, and his gaze dropped to her stomach. "Are you saying?—"

"Aye. It's a world of three we're building."

His face softened and warmed her to her bones. "May I?"

Words choked in her throat, and she nodded. Trembling fingers traced over her belly, from hipbone to hipbone.

"You're willing to give this little mite my name?"

"I can't think of a more noble one."

He went solemn and serious. "You're mine forever."

As if Nature would punctuate his point, the sky released a single glittering snowflake that landed on the tip of his nose and instantly melted. Then another caught in his hair, and another in his eyelashes. He blinked, and Callie laughed. All around them the world was transforming into a wonderland, magical and perfect.

She moved fully into his embrace and lifted her heels until she reached the tips of her toes. Her mouth found the cup of his ear. "Just try to get away."

His face angled, and his mouth found hers on a low growl. She swayed into him, the length of her body pressed full into his.

He broke away on a groan. "The crew."

"The crew?" she asked between shallow breaths.

"You can bet we're giving them an eyeful."

She supposed he was right, even if every last fiber of her being protested otherwise. "Shall we adjourn to our home, Captain Nylander?"

"John."

"John," she repeated softly. Direct and strong, his name suited him.

In the world of their own creation, they would ever be straightforward, plainspoken John and sweet, feisty Callie.

It was the only world that would ever matter.