Chapter 4

Callie's eyes flew open.

A moment later, she gathered her bearings and remembered where she was. The Dog and Duck coaching inn,in her room, her ears attuned to whatever odd sound that had cut through the inn's general cacophony to jar her from an already fretful slumber. For there was such a riot of noise: mail coaches clattering in and out of the courtyard below; the arrival bell announcing said mail coaches and late-comers; the ongoing drone of the ground floor tap room, periodically punctuated by raucous proclamations and spikes of laughter.

But, no, none of those sounds had startled her awake. A different sound, one clear and intentional, had done it. Still as stone, she lay, eyes wide, ears waiting for it. Scratchy eyelids grew heavy and her blinks ever longer as exhaustion pulled her into seductive slumber. Perhaps it had been a dream.

A sudden thump-thump-thump drummed at her headboard, and through the wall came a muffled shout. She shot upright. There!

What in heaven's name was happening? Was there a lunatic or an injured person on the other side of that wall? The next instant, her brain caught up with the question. This was the wall she shared with the Viking. According to Mrs. Bickle, his fevered ramblings were worse at night.

Callie reached for a pillow and dragged it across her face. That should do the trick. For a moment, it seemed to. Then, through sparsely populated goose down, another shout sounded. How long could this go on? Where was Mrs. Bickle?

One minute passed, then another and another, as she reached for sleep. But she couldn't find it, not with the random bang of a fist against the wall at her head, accompanied by the odd exclamation. At last, she gave up.

She swept blankets off her body and jerked on her nightrail. Cautiously, she poked her head through the crack in her door. When she saw that no one occupied the corridor, she traversed the short distance to her neighbor's door, her feet a quiet tiptoe against floorboards. Not that she needed to bother. A solitary woman's footsteps couldn't compete with the bedlam below.

Electing not to knock, she twisted the handle and tentatively pushed, expecting to find it locked. Instead, it opened on surprisingly silent hinges. A scold ready on her lips, she strode inside, scanning the room for Mrs. Bickle, who was most assuredly passed out from too much drink. The nurse's cot, however, was empty, and the privy corner, too.

Of a sudden, she felt it… a presence. Her body and her breath stilled; her mind and her heart raced. To her left lay the bed…

And the Viking.

Inch by slow inch, her gaze traveled up the foot of the large central bed, over feet and legs covered by blankets, her body heating up by a degree with each inch spanned. The blanket ended at his hips, and she braced herself. She released a sigh of relief when she saw that the upper half of him was clothed in a white linen shirt, his trim waist widened all the way up to broad shoulders that took up nearly half the bed. He was such a very large man, not an inch of excess on him, just massively built.

She inhaled a deep breath and, at last, reached his head, hair strewn about in golden streaks. The word for his hair, the one that had been on the tip of her tongue for days, came to her: lustrous. The man had lustrous hair.

At last, she made herself meet his eye, which was surprisingly lucid and decidedly unimpressed. "All done?" his voice rumbled deep and grumpy down the length of bed.

Callie opened her mouth to reply, but words refused to form. She snapped it shut, her throat gone dry as the desert, and clutched her nightrail tight to her throat. It wouldn't do for him to see her blush.

"Is it possible I've been kidnapped?"

"Hardly," came her retort before she could control it. The very idea! So, he didn't remember her from St. Alban's manse? Well, she would be a forgettable sort of woman to a man who looked like a Viking god. "You are here at the behest of Lord St. Alban."

"And here is?"

"The middle of Somerset."

His eyebrows drew together and released in an instant. "This conversation promises to be a long one. Before we continue, can you bring me another pillow? This one is flat as a flounder. I'd get it myself but"—he shifted, and for a breathless second Callie thought he might rise, but as quickly he fell back—"I can't seem to find the strength. And a cup of water," he added. "My throat feels as though I drank a pint of sand."

Callie glanced about the room, its furnishings consisting entirely of a bed, side table, wardrobe, privy screen, and cot, and located the washstand near the open window. Since the room was no longer or wider than three strides in any direction, she had a water pitcher in hand in a matter of seconds. Hand shaky, she poured a tin cup halfway full, the Viking's slitted eye upon her the entire time. Her heart raced as fast as a hummingbird's in spring. The way he was ordering her about, he must think her a servant, possibly a nurse.

If he'd been a sheep with, say, foot scald, she'd move him to another pasture and have him well on his way to recovery in a matter of minutes. But this man wasn't a sheep, and he certainly didn't have foot scald. And she certainly was no nurse. Still, she could give him a pillow and a cup of water without inflicting too much harm.

Cup in one hand, she reached for the pillow on Mrs. Bickle's cot. Where was the blasted woman? Hesitant, wary, Callie crept closer, stopping two feet away from him. His form covered by a pile of blankets, he didn't look so much like her enemy as a man in need.

"Which do you prefer first?" she asked, her tone at once brisk and wobbly. She alternately held up the cup and the pillow.

He rolled onto his side, facing her. "The pillow."

She stood, pillow extended, her feet rooted to the floorboards, perplexity increasing with each second that ticked by.

He cast an impatient glare over his shoulder. "Well?"

Oh.He meant for her to tuck the pillow behind him.

She took a few steps forward and set the cup on the bedside table. The distance separating them—less than a foot now—was about the closest she'd ever come to a man who wasn't her husband, and, even then, she hadn't come much closer to him.

Eyes clenched shut, she bent over, careful not to touch any part of him, and wedged the pillow between his back and the bed, giving it a few pushes for good measure. In all, the task took no longer than three seconds, but in that time her brain was able to sift out one prevailing sensation: the heat of him. Not the expected clammy heat of fever, but the heat of a large body pulsing with banked energy. He might be weak as a kitten now, but soon, too soon, he would be a jungle cat, up and moving, vibrant and curious, and entirely too much for her to handle.

Even as a frisson of warning crawled through her, she experienced another sensation, one more tangible and immediate in that three second span. Humid and searing, his breath filtered through her nightrail and shift, reaching the bare skin of her thighs in short, shallow bursts. Warm, liquid heat snaked through her, pooling in the pit of her stomach, and even lower to her?—

She shot upright, every muscle in her body aligned in the ramrod straight line of utter, complete, soul-deep shock. "That should do it."

He rolled onto the flat of his back with an accepting grunt and thunked his head solidly on the oak headboard. "Water," he growled, eyes closed on a wince.

She almost felt sympathetic, but she had a more pressing concern. How was she going to get the water into this man? Without… without coming close to him?

She cleared her throat and reached for the cup. Angling her body so only the parts that absolutely had to come close, came close, she pressed the cup against his firm lips. When they parted to admit the drink, she tipped the cup, and he swallowed. Her eye followed the undulation of his throat, the muscles connecting to collarbone and shoulders below his shirt, the beat of his pulse visible on his neck. So strong, so vulnerable. He was all heat and vitality and man.

His eyes flew wide, and alarm shot through her. At once, he began coughing and wheezing, the strangely intimate moment instantly transformed into sputtering chaos.

"What can I do?" She'd never felt so inept.

He shifted to his side until his coughing fit resolved. "Water," he croaked again.

"Are you sure? It didn't go so well the last time. Perhaps all you need is a little?—"

"Water," he repeated.

Blindly, he reached out to grab the cup from her hand, just as she reached forward to place it there. Time stretched and slowed as water sloshed into the air on a high arc before landing with a splash on the Viking, soaking his hair and shirt to the skin, turning white linen disconcertingly translucent. What a lot of mess a little water could make.

"Will I never quench this thirst?" he growled, his eye catching hers and holding. "Nursing might not be your calling."

"I'm most definitely not your nurse," she shot back.

It was almost laughable the way his eyebrows met in confusion, but he wasn't wrong. She was a terrible nurse, and she hated being terrible at anything. Work and diligence always made her the best at any endeavor she set her mind to, except this one. She might have to concede the possibility that even the slovenly, drunken Mrs. Bickle was a better nurse than she.

Mrs. Bickle… Of course.

What Callie was good at, however, was knowing exactly what action to take when the moment required it. She held up a staying forefinger when the captain opened his mouth to ask the inevitable bevy of questions. "If you'll excuse me."

She caught another bewildered knit of his brow before she fled the room and flew down the staircase toward the main tap room as fast as her feet would carry her. She would wager every last acre of the Grange that Mrs. Bickle was there.

It was only when she reached the bottom step that it hit her: she was clad in a nightrail, a shift, and not a stitch more. Mumbles and whispers crackled in the air, and eyes darted left and right to gape at her. She raised her chin a notch and cinched the sash tighter at her waist. Her bare feet squirmed on the sticky floor. There was no turning back from here.

A room much altered from its earlier incarnation greeted her. Then, it had been warm, cozy, its pace slow and inviting. Now, it was hot, smoky, cacophonous with strident fiddle and shouted conversations from a dozen tables.

A loud, brassy laugh rose above the din. Instinctively, Callie pointed her feet in the direction of the sound, weaving through the densely packed room in a series of starts and stops as she attempted not to brush against anyone else's person and failing miserably.

Again, the laugh sounded, closer now. She rounded another two tables, and there her quarry appeared before her, sitting on one man's lap while flirting with another. What sort of nurse was Mrs. Bickle anyway?

Callie stopped directly in front of the cozy trio. At times, she could use her height to great effect to gain attention and a grudging respect when she needed it. This was one such occasion. "Mrs. Bickle."

The woman tipped her head all the way back on her neck and met Callie's eye. She expected to find distress there, or at least a bit of sheepishness at having been caught out in the dereliction of her duty, but she encountered no trace of guilt in the woman's bold gaze.

"My, oh, my," Mrs. Bickle began, clearly having knocked back more than a few pints of the inn's house brew. "If it ain't the lady of the manor." Mrs. Bickle made a big show of eyeing Callie up and down, inviting a few snickers. "Yer a long 'un, that's sure."

Callie ignored the woman's rude appraisal. She'd been called worse. Still, she clutched the closure of her nightrail tighter at her neck. "Your patient needs you."

Another brassy laugh erupted from the nurse, and she snuggled deeper into the man's lap, who gave a lecherous waggle of bushy eyebrows. "There's no 'elp fer that man. Just let the fever run its course and see whut's on the other side. Never know, the bloke might still be alive." She let out a boisterous guffaw before draining the last dregs of her pint, belching the loudest burp ever to cross a pair of female lips, and calling out for another.

Callie knew when she'd been dismissed, soundly. Without another word, she swung around and retraced her steps toward the staircase, catcalls, whistles, and hoots trailing in her wake. The absolute nerve of that woman.

She could take Mrs. Bickle's advice and leave the Viking to sweat it out. Perhaps the innkeeper could find her another room, one that didn't share a common wall. But it wouldn't do. She had a responsibility to the blasted man.

Dread carving grooves into her gut, she stomped her way up the stairs. She arrived at his door and slowly twisted the handle, unable to fully commit to the decision she'd made only seconds ago. Perhaps providence had taken mercy on her and delivered a miracle to this room by plunging him back into fever and unconsciousness.

She poked her head inside and found no such mercy had occurred. The Viking now sat completely upright in his bed, his lucid stare trained entirely on her.

"And she's returned," he said, his tone dry, his voice rumbly. "For a woman who most definitely isn't my nurse, you're remarkably concerned about the state of my health."

"It's not concern," Callie retorted. "I'm responsible for you, you nodcock."

The insult had been lying dormant in her belly for days, and its release felt good. Then his eyes narrowed, and his head canted to the side, speculative. Perspiration pinpricked her skin, and her sense of bold triumph tucked its tail between its legs and scuttled away.

She might regret her acid tongue yet.

Memory teasedat the edge of Nylander's consciousness. He should recognize this woman, he was certain of it, but memory refused to make itself known.

"We've met," he said, slowly, a statement of the obvious that would earn him another nodcock if he wasn't careful.

She breathed out a long-suffering sigh. "In London. At St. Alban's manse."

That was it. How could he forget the way those eyes of hers had seared into him? Though they'd lost a measure of their former intensity, they were no less hostile. "My memory of that day is a bit foggy."

"No surprise there, considering how hard you cracked your skull on St. Alban's marble floor."

That would explain his wallop of a headache. A memory of the world going black at the edges pushed forward. His collapse must've quickly followed, its cause becoming increasingly clear, given his current state of fogginess and bone-deep exhaustion. He pointed toward the table beside her. "Bring that here."

She glanced down and appeared surprised to find the discarded cup of water near at hand. She gazed at it as if it filled her with dread.

"You left it there when you hied off like the three Furies were at your back."

On an irritated roll of her eyes, the woman grabbed the cup in an unceremonious slosh and walked it carefully over. Then she shuffled backward until her back hit unyielding wall. He suspected she would disappear through stone and plaster if she could. What a confounding, difficult woman.

Cup drained, his eyes couldn't help closing in satisfied bliss. They opened to find her gaze steadily fixed upon him, her eyes those familiar onyx orbs of hostility. "So, Somerset," he said by way of a conversational bridge.

She nodded once, tightly, as if the affirmation cost her. "On our way to Devon. St. Alban thought it would be best if you recovered in the country from your?—"

"Malaria," Nylander rumbled, low, more for himself than for her. "And he sent you with me."

She shifted on her feet. "Something like that."

Interesting."So, if you aren't my nurse, then who in the blazes are you?"

"Just the country bumpkin relation of a grand London aristocrat," she replied with the shrug of an indifferent shoulder. The movement, its intent, struck a wrong chord. Though he hardly knew this woman, he understood at a fundamental level that she was indifferent to nothing.

Another memory skirted the edge of recognition. They'd been introduced at St. Alban's manse, but he couldn't grasp the details, except that her adamantine eyes had been the last thing he'd seen before his complete descent into darkness. This, he also knew: she was telling him something important. But he had neither the strength nor the patience tonight to pull the truth from her. An altogether more immediate issue was foregrounding itself. Namely, the noxious fumes emanating from his person.

He eyed the woman up and down, and, again, she shifted beneath his scrutiny. She didn't care for his appraisal. "I find myself weak as a cub and in need of your assistance, but you might not be strong enough."

"I'm plenty strong," she retorted.

He couldn't help himself, he smiled. This particular grown woman's petulance was surprisingly winsome. "In that case, I require your help to remove my shirt."

Her face soured as if she'd swallowed a lemon, whole. "Why?" she squeaked around it. "We've established I'm no nurse."

"Well, you're here and better than nothing?—"

"I wouldn't be so sure of that."

"—And in case you haven't noticed," he persisted, "I smell as if I've been keelhauled through London's sewers and hung out to dry on the beak head of an East Indiaman that hasn't been to shore in six months." Her eyebrows met in confusion, and her face took on an ashen hue. "To be clear, I need a bath, and the only way to do so effectively is to remove my clothing."

"You don't need—" The sentence died in her mouth. "You do stink to high heaven."

"Then if you'll assist?—"

"But," she cut in, "you must be too weak for a bath."

"A sponge bath will do."

She dipped her pinky into the washbasin, and relief stole across her features. "This water is cold. We can't have you catching pneumonia on top of malaria."

It was almost comical how little she desired to do with him. Almost. His desire to wash the sweat and stink off his body was the greater of their two desires. "I'm a sailor, I can handle a little cold water. Now"—he bent at the waist, shifting his upper body forward—"let's get this shirt over my head."

He stilled and waited. She might bolt. It was entirely possible. Except she didn't seem the type. A stubbornness hung about her, one that insisted she see a matter through to its end. Why else had she returned to his room? It certainly wasn't out of a liking for him. Still, he couldn't help adding, "I don't bite, unless?—"

Her eyes widened, and he stopped. Her ears went red to their very tips. She knew how that sentence ended.

Bloody hell.Now he'd given her every reason to bolt. "It was a sailor's poor attempt at a joke, forgive me." An uncertain moment passed, then her body relaxed by a fraction so small he sensed rather than saw it. "I've worked the hem up to my hips. All you need do is hoist it over my head and off." He made it sound so simple, matter-of-fact, like it would be no strange thing to help a man she hardly knew undress. "Got it?"

She nodded.

"Ready?" he prompted, unsure of her.

She squared her shoulders. "Of course."

That a girl.He inched his shirt to mid-torso. "That's about as far as I can get it."

Her eyes darted lower, beyond the edge of his shirt, toward his exposed stomach. She went stone still. "You've never seen a man's bare midsection?" he asked.

"I'm from the country and have four brothers, of course I have." She hesitated. "Loads of times." Another hesitation. "Just maybe not like yours."

He snorted. And he thought he'd heard it all. On another woman's lips those words might've been flattery, an invitation, but not on this woman's. "Can we get on with it?"

She inhaled a deep breath, coughed a little—he really did reek—and stepped forward like a martyr braced for the flames. Through the dregs of his odor came other scents: fresh citrus, flowery apple. For such a sour woman, she sure did smell like a sweet confection, the sort a man could gobble up in three bites and be left wanting more.

His cock jumped, and he gave himself a mental shake. Where had that come from? If he wasn't careful he would give her considerably more to view than his bare chest.

For her part, she couldn't have noticed the state of his partial arousal for she'd clenched her eyes shut to grab the hem of his shirt. The back of her hand brushed against his skin, cool and fluttery, as she lifted in one great heave, up, up, up, over chest, shoulders, head, his hair the last of him to slip free. Her eyes opened, and a startled "Yip!" escaped her in the instant before they squeezed shut again.

"I thought you'd seen a shirtless man before." He was unable to resist adding, "Loads."

One at a time, she blinked her eyes open. "You have, um," she stammered, clearly searching for the correct word.

Ah.It wasn't his body that shocked her speechless. It was his skin. Or rather the designs inked into his skin. A few tense seconds passed before he took pity on her and provided, "Tattoos."

"Tattoos," she breathed out.

"Have you never heard tell of them?"

"No, I mean, yes, I have. But I've never seen one." She rolled her bottom lip between her teeth. "Or four."

"Mmm," he grunted, a heavy sense of exhaustion replacing his interest in this conversational thread. He allowed his eyes to drift shut and propped his head against the headboard, gently. "About the sponge bath?"

"Yes?"

"If you could gather the requisite materials?"

"Oh, of course."

Eyes closed, he listened to her spring into action, at once sliding the washstand next to the bed before opening and closing and opening the drawers of the wardrobe, the muted sounds of her rifling through fabric, presumably to find a suitably clean cloth for washing. "Ah-ha," she crowed. His eyes slid open to find her holding up two cloths in triumph. In a thrice of seconds, she'd set them on the washstand next to a rather dingy bar of soap.

She backed away one step, then another, until she reached the door, hand on handle, her entire being poised on the edge of flight. "If that will be all…" she trailed.

"You're not going to finish the job?"

"I, um," she stammered.

A guffaw escaped him, and her eyes went flinty. Really, she made ruffling her feathers too easy. "Another poor excuse of a joke, forgive me," he apologized. Even he could hear that he only half-meant it. "I have all I need."

Her baleful eye lingered on him a beat longer than was strictly necessary before she pivoted on her heel and fled the room.

The woman didn't need to be told twice.