Chapter 2
Callie’s stomach performed a nifty trick and flipped before dropping straight down to her toes. Her heart raced to catch it, and perspiration sheened every square inch of her skin as her body went hot, clammy, then hot again. She opened her mouth to speak, but words refused to budge.
She tried again. “You’re selling the Grange?” The question nothing more than a whisper uttered on the hope that she’d misheard him through the wool plugging her ears.
Cool, contained, St. Alban continued. “The fact of the matter is the estate is unentailed.” He lifted empty, indifferent hands. “And I haven’t the faintest interest in it.”
“No interest? But it runs at a profit.” Her voice clawed its way to the surface and grew stronger with each word she spoke. “In the last year, the sheep flock has doubled in number. The dairy is producing enough milk and cheese to sell in the Barnstaple Saturday market. And, since we learned how to properly prune the apple trees, the orchard is exceeding all expectations. Our cider has gained a bit of renown throughout Devonshire and our first batch of brandy will be ready for market in the spring. We even have our own?—”
She stopped wasting her breath. This man didn’t care that the Grange had its very own rare Charentais alembic still that would produce fifty barrels of apple brandy this season alone. Or that she had an appointment with a London distributor tomorrow morning to discuss a potential arrangement for its distribution. If he cared about those details, he wouldn’t be selling.
Further, he likely viewed her intense unladylike display with distaste. In a matter of seconds, she’d gone from being utterly unlike herself to too like her unvarnished self. Mayhap there was a middle ground. She sought it by asking the most obvious and pressing question. “Who is buying the Grange?”
“I’m offering it to a friend.”
“A friend?” The question emerged an eek, a croak, incredulous. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh in hysterics or explode in outrage.
“A friend, yes, he’s?—”
“From Devon?” Even as her heart sank into the floor, a dark and primal anger surged up.
St. Alban shook his head. “But he has experience running things.”
“Experience running things?” Disbelief swelled with each word. “How do you know he will want the Grange?”
“He will.” The reply came succinct, certain.
Cold steel wrapped around Callie’s heart. “And what is this friend’s occupation?”
“He captains an East Indiaman.”
“A ship captain?” she scoffed. “What does a man like that know about running the Grange?”
“A man like that?” St. Alban’s eyes narrowed, guarded and wary. “I take it you don’t have a high opinion of sea traders.”
Callie almost snorted. Almost. That was the important part. “We see our share on the north coast of Devon. They’re a cagey lot.”
“I captained a ship before I came into the viscountcy.”
She’d put her foot in it. “Undoubtedly, there are exceptions.”
The words rang hollow, and she knew that he knew she didn’t mean them. Beneath his implacable visage, she might have detected a glint of humor, but she couldn’t be sure.
Subtly, through the riot of emotion assailing her, slinked the sly, familiar nag. This is your chance. The opportunity to walk away from Wyldcombe Grange and claim the life her heart had wanted since the moment she’d agreed to marry Georgie.
But how could she give up on the Grange and everyone it supported? This had been their most successful year yet. And if the quantity of apples populating the orchard was any indicator, this would be their best cider and brandy season yet, too.
She couldn’t… she wouldn’t leave the Grange in the hands of an outsider who didn’t know the first thing about it. Someone who would run it into the ground. Someone who didn’t love it.
But does it love you back?came the unwanted refrain.
It wouldn’t sway her. She had a duty, and she wouldn’t shirk it.
She stiffened her spine and sat forward. Her voice found itself. “I’ll rephrase my question. What does your friend the ship captain know about running a six-thousand-acre agricultural estate?”
The viscount shifted the slimmest fraction in his seat. But she caught it. That shift spoke of unease. “He’s a quick learner.”
A nervy feeling swelled inside Callie. She had nothing to lose. “So you haven’t offered the Grange to this friend of yours yet?” The word friend refused to sound like anything other than a curse from her mouth.
The viscount steepled his fingers before him and narrowed his glacial gaze. She knew this look. It was the look that formed when a man began to understand her true nature, that beneath her skin and bones ran an iron will. “I’ll put the question to him tonight. It was to have been arranged before you arrived tomorrow.”
Silently, Callie blessed the dry heavens above that had allowed her to arrive a day early. She gathered herself, willing her voice not to shake when she spoke her next words. They needed to be absolute steel. This was a man she was dealing with, and a man’s world she was navigating. A woman’s voice, quaking with emotion, wasn’t respected here. “Give me a chance.”
“My lady,” began the viscount, “I have considered that. Perhaps you would like the position of estate manager. We might be able to arrange?—”
“To buy it,” she bit out, only stopping herself from adding you nodcock. No good could come from calling a viscount a nodcock. Even if he was one.
St. Alban set his hands to rest on the desk before him. “When I arrived in England nigh on a year ago, it was my lot to sort through your late husband’s papers.”
He hesitated, the tips of his forefingers tap-tap-tapping each other meditatively. Callie braced herself for what he would say. If someone pulled the chair out from under her, her body would remain locked in its seated position, she was sure of it.
“And debts. A mountain of them, in fact.” His countenance softened, grew conciliatory. He was attempting to let her down gently. “You’ve done an excellent job of managing the Grange and rehabilitating it back into the black, but I don’t see how you have the necessary funds to purchase it at its current value.”
His words gave the ember of anger that had been glowing inside her the oxygen it needed to flare into a full bonfire. “I’ve earned the right to buy the Grange.” She all but banged her fist on the desk for emphasis.
The viscount let her words blow past him. A full minute dragged out beneath the silence, and Callie’s mind raced, even as she acknowledged he only spoke the truth. She had no ready cash. Every year, she reinvested every last farthing of the Grange’s profits back into the estate, which left her, technically, penniless. Still, what could she say to convince him not to do this awful thing?
Her attention shifted beyond his shoulder and fixed on the garden outside. In a symphony of color bloomed blue plumbago, purple aster, and white bugbane. Fall flowers had always been her mama’s favorite. Nature’s last little gift before winter.
Mama… An idea struck.
Words began falling out of Callie’s mouth before the import of them fully formed in her mind. “My mother left me monies enough to buy the Grange.”
Disbelief communicated itself in the skeptical lift of the viscount’s brow. “It seems I should have known about these monies sooner.”
Callie unstuck her tongue from the roof of a mouth gone dry. “Well, they aren’t exactly in my possession, but I can access them through my father. A little time is all I need.”
“How much time?” St. Alban asked. “This matter was to be resolved by tomorrow.”
“Until—” Her mind raced. Think. “Until… after the Baptism of the Duke of Muck.”
St. Alban’s brow knitted in perplexity. “The Baptism of the Duke of Muck?”
“It’s our harvest festival.” Her mind performed a quick calculation. “About four weeks from now.”
St. Alban held her gaze, searching. “You’ll have one hundred thousand pounds at your disposal?”
The number nearly knocked Callie to the floor. One hundred thousand pounds? She struggled to hold steady. She’d gone too far, and this man surely knew it. “Mayhap we can work out a plan for payment if I give you”—again, her mind calculated—“twenty percent up front. That’s twenty thousand pounds.”
An unconvinced, “Mayhap,” was all he gave her by response.
She must say something, anything to plead her case. No, not anything. Only the truth would do. “I’ve earned the right,” she repeated, this time softly, the words a quiet force, the legitimacy of them plain and irrefutable.
St. Alban sat forward, clearly arrived at his decision. Callie’s breath froze in her chest, and her head grew light, as if it had floated clear of her body and was watching these events unfold from above.
He extended his hand. “You have a deal.”
Before he could change his mind, her hand shot out to seal his words. If he felt its cold clamminess against the dry warmth of his own, he betrayed not a hint. The man was a gentleman. Grudging thought.
Callie reclaimed her hand, and relief surged forward on a wave of misgiving. What she’d done was less than honorable. Those monies of her mama’s, well, they weren’t quite the truth of the matter. In fact, they were an outright lie. But those phantom monies had done their job: they’d bought her time. Four weeks’ worth.
There was her appointment with the spirits distributor tomorrow. It would have to be canceled. No honest deal would yield her the funds she needed as fast as she needed them.
Honest.Her mind snagged on the word and twirled it around, testing its weight. Another solution presented itself, one that had been proposed to her only this past spring, one that had naught to do with honesty. It was an offer practically in hand. All she had to do was reach out and take it.
In truth, this particular solution was underhanded and dirty, but… possible. That was the important part. Unlike those phantom monies from her mother, this possibility existed.
No, no, no. How could she even consider it? The mistress of Wyldcombe Grange didn’t enter into business deals with notorious pirates.
Urgency swelled inside her to bursting, and she shot to her feet. She hadn’t a moment to lose. Unlike her apples, solutions weren’t exactly growing on trees. “My lord, if you will pardon me, I must return to the Grange posthaste.” And see to the securing of monies that don’t officially exist, she didn’t add. “As you may or may not know, the apple harvest is under way.”
St. Alban had the sense to appear somewhat abashed by the unspoken fact that he’d pulled her away from the Grange at its busiest time of year. “Night is falling, my lady, surely you’ll wait until the morrow.”
“I shall take the mail coach. It travels by night, and I’m most keen to be on my way.” Vast understatement.
“The mail coach?” St. Alban’s brow creased in disbelief. “You didn’t arrive by?—”
“Mail coach? Of course not. I traveled the stage by day.”
“Stage? Not by hired post-chaise?”
Callie only just didn’t roll her eyes at this privileged aristocrat. “To travel in such luxury would be an egregious waste of the Grange’s resources.”
Did the man think she was made of money? Well, he did think she had thousands of pounds at her disposal, so maybe he did.
He released a long-suffering sigh. “Lady St. Alban and I are having a few guests to sup tonight, please stay and join us. I’m certain we can arrange a more suitable travel conveyance for your return journey.”
Callie opened her mouth to refuse the viscount’s generous offer—why did the man have to be so blasted honorable?—when a long shadow stole into the room. She glanced right and found a massive figure filling the height and breadth of the doorframe.
“I haven’t arrived at a bad time, have I?”
St. Alban’s head whipped around, and a smile spread across his face, instantly transforming his visage into someone Callie might be able to like under different circumstances. He shot to his feet and crossed the room in a handful of exuberant strides. “Why if it isn’t Captain Nylander, as I live and breathe.”
Captain Nylander.
Dread filled Callie’s gut as she watched the two men shake hands and manfully clap each other on the back. These men were most definitely friends.
“St. Alban,” the captain replied, the words succinct, but their tone warm.
His voice was deep enough to shake the foundations of this mansion loose. Certainly deep enough to rattle Callie, her breath shallow and her mouth dry. She rose to a stand by slow increments and stood so silent and so still that she imagined she might be forgotten. Then the captain’s gaze met hers over St. Alban’s shoulder, and all hope was lost. His eyes narrowed in question, and she lifted a single, imperious eyebrow in response. The Grange knew that eyebrow well, and she sensed it was her best defense against this man in this moment.
Before her stood the man who would never be her friend. He was her rival… her enemy. Soft gaslight caught the golden strands of his unfashionably long, slightly unkempt hair and the glint of clear blue sky in his eye. For all his modern English attire, the man could have been a Viking, a Norse god even, from the tales of yore come to life. All he lacked was a shield in one hand and a hammer in the other.
Callie’s breath had no choice but to catch in her chest. Her enemy was imposing, yes, but did he also have to be so blasted, devastatingly… god-like?
Greetingsand back claps out of the way, Jake stepped back. “You’re looking well, my friend. How long has it been? Six months?”
“Thereabouts,” Nylander said, distracted, his eye steady on the curious woman beyond Jake’s shoulder. She stood quietly, a straight vertical line of a woman, tall and not a curve on her. Her hair shone the fiery red of an East Indian sunset.
Jake cleared his throat. “Shall we toast to your safe arrival?”
Nylander jutted his chin toward the woman. “If you’ve still some business to conduct, I can wait.”
Jake’s brow darkened, as if unhappy to be reminded of her. “Just finishing up some business with the Dowager Viscountess St. Alban.”
A Dowager Viscountess. Right.
She stepped into the light of a gas wall sconce. She was all long limbs, gangly like a colt who had yet to grow into her legs. High cheekbones. Strong nose. Eyes, not conventionally blue and round, rather dark and almond shaped. A mouth too wide and full to be called pretty, but appealing. Her individual features were none of them fashionable, but they synthesized to form a face attractive and compelling. She was a difficult woman to look away from. He couldn’t if he wanted, so strong was the magnetic pull of her.
Yet she stood glaring at him with the hostility of a woman who had a serious bone to pick. He’d never encountered her in his life; he would’ve remembered. So why was she looking at him like she would strap lead weights to his ankles and toss him into the sea rather than lay eyes on him ever again?
Jake glanced back and forth between them, a deep furrow in his brow. “Shall I introduce you?”
“There shan’t be any need for that,” she said tightly.
Shame, bitter, hot, and familiar, sliced through Nylander, a shame he’d never been able to shed. Its stigma wrapped tentacles around him and squeezed. Though he was dressed in the finery of a nob, this woman wasn’t fooled. People of quality always saw straight through to who he was, who he really was. Jake didn’t see it, because he loved him like a brother, but this woman did with those coal dark eyes of hers that pierced and burned. She knew him for what he was: an orphan, a cast-off, a man to be used and discarded when the whim suited her.
Perhaps not that last part for her. Unlike many a lady before her, she clearly wanted nothing to do with him, not even the pleasure his body could offer hers.
A throat cleared behind them. “My lord, another guest has arrived.”
A flash of annoyance crossed Jake’s features. “Show the guest into the drawing room. Lady St. Alban will know what to do with him. Aren’t we to go into supper any moment?”
“To be sure, my lord. But this guest?—”
The remainder of the servant’s words were cut off by a series of shocked gasps and a few startled eeks in the foyer. Jake’s eyebrows drew together, and he brushed Nylander’s shoulder as he raced from the room.
That left only him and the woman. Their eyes collided, and an odd tension charged the air. He’d met any number of people who’d looked down their noses upon him, but never one who so nakedly hated him at first sight. Not like this woman clearly did.
He swept his arm toward the empty doorway, gesturing for her to precede him out of the room. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, even if he wasn’t one. Her mouth set in a resolute line, she swept past him with nary another glance. He reckoned she didn’t have much of a care for the dirt beneath her shoes.
He tugged at the cravat that was attempting to strangle the life out of him. How did these London dandies do it? One hour in this garb and he was ready to set sail for the South Seas where three articles of clothing were two too many. He swiped at a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. The furnace that had begun in his chest had spread through his body and hadn’t cooled by a single degree.
At the woman’s heels, Nylander found a foyer much altered from the empty one he’d passed through not five minutes ago. Presently, it was crowded with a dozen wide-eyed lords and ladies dressed in the first stare of fashion.
This altered foyer did share one similarity with the earlier one: its dead silence. But this silence wasn’t peaceful or static. It pulsed with a latent energy that begged to be allowed its head as everyone focused on a single point near the front door. He followed the collective gaze toward the object of their rapt attention and found a lone man standing at the foot of the grand staircase.
Recognition hit him. The man was none other than the mysterious passenger he’d picked up in Gibraltar. Except now, he was clean, shaven, and buffed to a noble shine in his evening blacks. The man was still too thin and called to mind a lone, rangy wolf, but it was clear as day that he was one of them, a lord.
Jake stepped forward, a bewildered smile on his lips. “My good sir, I’m afraid you have the wrong address for your evening out.”
A petite blond woman gasped as one hand flew to her mouth and the other to her belly large with child. Jake glanced at her, concern radiating from every cell of his being. Two facts were immediately clear. She was Jake’s wife, and she knew that man.
A regal silver-haired gentleman stepped forward. “Percy?” he asked, the name carried across the room on incredulous wings.
Jake’s brow furrowed, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. That dark look didn’t bode well for this Percy. Lady St. Alban’s hand wrapped around her husband’s upper arm. She knew it, too.
Beside him, Nylander felt the flame-haired woman’s presence. She was following the action like him: as an outsider, as clueless about the shadowy undercurrents eddying through this room as he. She observed, curious, speculative, as if she was accustomed to taking in gatherings as an outsider. It connected them in a strangely tangible way.
Across the room, Percy said, “Papa, the servants told me I would find you here.” His gaze shifted. “And, Lady St. Alban, may I congratulate you on your nuptials and—” He gestured in the direction of her ripe belly.
Like a coil breaking free of its tension, Jake sprang across the foyer on a low, guttural growl, and the room burst into utter chaos. Without pause, Jake’s right arm reared back and shot forward in a quick, well-aimed jab to Percy’s nose, surely breaking it for all the blood that spewed forth and sprayed across black-and-white marble and wrought iron balustrade.
“Oh, well landed,” a lady’s voice rang out. It was Lady Nicholas, a pleased smile on her lips. Nylander hardly knew her, having transported her to Paris last year, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine her reaction entirely in character. She was just that sort of woman. Her husband was a lucky man.
Ahead, a large quantity of blood dripped down Percy’s chin, a scarlet stain spreading across his formerly white shirtfront. Nylander had seen his share of bloodied broken noses in his day, but had there been quite this much of it? Was it possible that one nose had so much blood to spare?
Heat blazed through him. He blinked and swiped the back of his hand across his damp forehead. The room was going gray at the edges, and with each thud of his heavy heartbeat, it went ever blacker. He shook his head. Rising voices and shouted obscenities shrilled through the air, but they were muffled as if he was hearing them through a tunnel at a very great distance.
Pinpricks of sweat surfaced from every pore on his body, and his stomach lurched. He reached out to steady himself and found himself grasping the arm of the woman beside him. She tried to wrench her arm away, but his grip only tightened. Somehow, she was the only barrier between him and the floor.
Then that wasn’t true anymore as the floor rose to meet him, and his head clattered against cold marble. The last thing he saw before the room went completely black was the woman’s dark eyes staring down at him.
The last thing he heard from the far reaches of the dark tunnel was, “Who would’ve thought the sight of a little blood could fell a man like you?”
And the last thing he wondered was what he’d done for her to treat him like she loathed him with every last fiber of her being?