Song From the Sea (13 page)

Callie cocked her head to one side and regarded Adam closely, taking advantage of his turned head. His profile was strong, the nose straight, the full lips curved up slightly at the corners, the cheekbone finely sculpted, his dark hair curling crisply over the collar of his jacket. She couldn't help thinking of the fine Greek sculptures of Apollo: not just the noble head, but the body perfectly proportioned, the broad shoulders and chest harmoniously balanced by a lean abdomen and hips, strong back, and powerful buttocks, the long, muscular legs carrying the weight of the body easily as if to spring to action at any moment.

Adam Carlyle might have been the model for any one of the Apollo sculptures.

Callie's cheeks burned with fire as she realized the image she'd conjured up. Not a single sculpture of Apollo wore a scrap of clothing, not even so much as a fig leaf, leaving nothing to the imagination.

She might just as well have stripped Adam bare. She put a hand to her face, wanting to sink into the earth and disappear. What on earth could she be thinking? She was—she was positively
wanton
.

Adam chose that moment to look back at her. “Callie?” He quickly caught her under the elbows. “Are you feeling ill? Do you need to sit down?”

“No,” she said, trying desperately to regain her composure. “I—I felt warm for a moment, that's all. I'm better now.”

“Warm? Is your fever back?” He lightly touched one hand to her cheek, which did nothing at all for Callie's equilibrium. “You are warm. I should take you inside immediately.”

“Please, Adam,” she said desperately, knowing that if he didn't take his hand away immediately, she really would sink to the earth. Her knees had started to tremble in the most alarming fashion. She quickly took a step away from him and removed her elbow from his grasp. “I am perfectly well. There's no need to fuss.”

“Your head doesn't ache, you have no dizziness?”

“I promise you, I am the picture of health. I shouldn't have looked directly up at the sun, that's all. Some people sneeze when they do such a foolish thing. I go hot all over for a moment. It's that simple.”

Adam regarded her with disbelief. “You go hot all over when you look at the sun.”

“Yes. The solution is simple: I shouldn't look directly at the sun.”
Or directly at you
, she thought with a shiver. What on earth had come over her? She was behaving like a silly miss who had never been exposed to a handsome, healthy male before. The next thing she knew, she'd start tittering behind her hand and batting her eyelashes at him.

“As a general rule, it's probably not a good idea.” He still didn't look terribly convinced, and little wonder. Adam did not strike her as a fool, and she'd already pushed the limits of her credibility.

“Do you think we could continue our walk?” she asked, hoping to distract him. “I would like to see more of the grounds, if you have the patience.”

“It is not my patience that is strained,” he said, a flicker of speculation in his eyes.

Callie's heart skipped a beat and her cheeks started flaming all over again. She quickly bent down and made a great show of admiring a clump of flowers at her feet, barely seeing them. “How lovely they are,” she said. “Such an attractive shade of yellow.”

“Do dandelions not grow in Italy?” he replied in a muffled voice. “They are considered a common weed in England.”

Callie winced. “Of course they do, although they tend to be more of a light lemon in color,” she said, improvising madly. Straightening, she said, “Did you know that dandelions are medicinally useful for an assortment of ailments? The infused tea makes a very effective digestive aid, and I personally believe a decoction of the root makes a wonderful antiinflammatory.” She was babbling out of sheer nerves and she prayed that Adam hadn't noticed.

To her relief he appeared oblivious to her discomfort. “Come, then,” he said easily enough, “let me take you over to the walled fruit orchard if you're sure you're not too tired.”

“I'd like that very much. The trees must be coming into bloom. Do you keep bees at Stanton? I am very fond of bees.”

“As it happens we have some hives in the orchard that you might be interested in communing with. The beekeeper tells me that he's been having a devil of a time keeping one of the hives from swarming. The queen seems to be unhappy about something or other.”

“Oh, that's easy,” Callie said in an offhand manner, waving a hand in dismissal. “Somebody probably didn't tell her something about what was going on up at the house. It's most likely a matter of having me introduce myself. The queens are very keen on knowing about people coming and going, you see.…”

She didn't see the amused smile on Adam's face, mainly because he took great care to hide it from her.

As soon as Adam had returned Callie to the house and safely into the clucking care of Mrs. Simpson, he went directly to the stables and had his gelding saddled. For some reason he had an overwhelming urge to ride out to the cliffs, as if a good stiff wind could blow the puzzlement out of his head.

“I think we're both in need of some hard exercise, Gabriel,” he said, swinging into the saddle and turning his horse's head straight for the sea as soon as they'd left the stable yard. Gabriel, three years old and full of suppressed energy, sensed Adam's mood and tossed his head with a soft whinny, stretching his legs as he moved from a canter straight into a gallop. Adam let him have his way and gave him his head, and they flew like the wind.

The sun danced and dazzled around them, and for a time Adam forgot everything but the feeling of the magnificent horse beneath him, their power joined as if they were one mind and one flesh as they pounded over the fallow southern fields. Adam didn't bother stopping for the gates. He set Gabriel at them and the gelding took each one easily in a smooth soaring motion. Only as they approached the cliffs did Adam sit back in the saddle and check the reins. Gabriel resisted for a moment, leaning against the bit, and Adam let him have it for just a minute, then checked him again, breaking his stride. Putting his head down, Gabriel danced for a moment, then sweetly straightened his hindquarters out and settled into a respectable trot.

Adam couldn't help laughing as he patted Gabriel's withers. “You've needed that, haven't you, my friend? It's been too long since we've had a good run just for the fun of it.”

He frowned, trying to remember just how long it had been. He honestly couldn't remember. He looked back to find time had blurred, as if he couldn't distinguish one day from the next, the events of one week or one month from another or even the last two years from each other. They all seemed to run together in one dull, gray blur. The last thing he could remember with any real clarity in terms of time was the funeral …a fine spring day just like this one, the sun shining brightly, flowers burgeoning forth with life as he'd consigned his dead wife and son to their dark tombs. He still couldn't bear the smell of comfrey.

Adam drew Gabriel to a halt at the edge of the cliff, his brow drawn together with effort as he tried to push the twisting pain away. Why the hell did he have to go and remember that now? For the full space of a morning he'd actually managed to forget. The realization rocked him. He honestly hadn't had a single thought of Caro or Ian, and he didn't know whether to feel guilty or relieved. Best not to dwell on that at all, he decided.

The cliff fell away to the water, washing gently up on a long, smooth stretch of sand. Gulls circled overhead, their high, wailing cries carried away by the wind as they swooped on the updrafts, then dived like bullets in pursuit of fish. Looking down at the foamy surf that ebbed and flowed in a soothingly rhythmic fashion, he carefully brought his focus back to Calliope Magnus. She was without a doubt the most peculiar woman he'd ever come across, and he had absolutely no idea what to make of her.

After having spent the morning with her, he was still as sure as he could be that she really didn't have any detailed memory of her life, although she certainly had enough details in her head about other matters. That at least confirmed his theory about selective memory.

What struck him as particularly interesting was that even without a wholeness of memory, Callie was nevertheless a complete personality, and one with absolutely no regard for any of the usual conventions. He'd been hard-pressed not to burst out laughing when she'd gotten down on all fours on the riverbank, her little bottom sticking up in the air like an excited puppy. If she'd had a tail, it would surely have been wagging with delight.

A moment later his suppressed laughter had vanished as she'd blithely called the swans over to her. To his horror they'd come immediately, their potentially vicious beaks only inches from her face, and before he'd even had a chance to move and pull her out of harm's way, she'd fed them from her hand as if they were no more than a pair of tame pigeons.

Adam slowly shook his head. He had no explanation. He knew those swans. They'd never let a soul come within a stone's throw of them, not without threatening to attack. He couldn't help remembering the strange behavior of the gull that had followed them back to shore as if it had been protecting Callie, but the idea that Callie had some special affinity with birds was absurd.

And yet there had been the bees. He hadn't been serious about her communing with them—he'd only thought she might enjoy seeing the orchard. But Callie hadn't hesitated, marching straight through the door to the walled garden and over to the hives before he could stop her. Even the beekeeper, being a sensible man, wouldn't go near them without protective clothing from head to toe and a smoking torch to stun the insects.

Not Callie. She'd blithely parked herself at the entrance to the most troublesome hive where the bees darted about, disturbed and angry. He hadn't even bothered to try to rescue her this time, not seeing any point in both of them being stung to death. And then she'd proceeded to chat away to the inhabitants as if they had a long and intimate acquaintance.

Stranger still, the bees seemed to listen, their frantic darting ceasing as they settled down; a lazy hum began to fill the air. If he hadn't known better, he'd have thought they were responding to Callie's soft-spoken words.

All he could think of was that the warmth of the noon sun had suddenly made them sleepy. Then she'd stood with a self-satisfied expression and brushed herself off. “That should take care of that,” she said, as if she'd explained everything, and marched straight past him and out of the orchard.

Adam ran one hand over his face. Yes, indeed, Calliope Magnus was going to take some getting used to.

He didn't for one minute believe that she could talk to bees any more than she could talk to birds, but apparently she thought she could.

Maybe the blow to her head had knocked something loose in her brain other than her memory. He'd have to keep a careful eye on her, make sure that she wasn't afflicted with any other alarming aberrations—like looking into the sun. Not that he'd believed that story for a minute, either.

He hadn't imagined the heat in Callie's cheeks that had bloomed red as roses or her suddenly flustered state, and he didn't have the first idea what might have caused either. He hadn't said anything out of the ordinary, had he? He'd been over and over the conversation and could think of nothing objectionable, unless she'd taken exception to his character analysis of her, but that had been half in jest and surely she'd known it.

She'd looked unusually pretty in that moment, all blushes and confusion, making a fuss over a pile of weeds as if they were the rarest of orchids. If she'd been any other woman he would have concluded that she'd been overcome by a sudden fit of awakened attraction to the opposite sex— he being the only target at hand—but as Callie had yet to behave like any of the typical misses who had crossed his path in years past, romantically fancying themselves in love with him, he couldn't credit the notion. Callie had given no indication that she found him anything more than an overbearing autocrat.

Adam shook his head with a smile. He had to admit that he found Callie surprisingly good company: sweet-natured, undemanding, and unusually intelligent. She'd exhibited not a single sign of airs or graces, thank God, and she possessed a refreshing sense of humor. Thinking about it, he couldn't find a single objection to her company, which was all to the best since he would need to spend a good deal of time with her if he was to gain her trust and succeed at his campaign.

“Do you know, Gabriel,” he said, “I actually think I'm going to enjoy myself.” He idly stroked the gelding's mane. “All I have to do is let Callie prattle on willy-nilly about whatever subject she chooses, and eventually some sort of picture will come together. It should be no more difficult that putting the scattered pieces of a puzzle together.”

Gabriel pricked his ears forward in response to Adam's voice and turned his head slightly sideways.

“I'm delighted to see that you agree,” Adam said wryly. “Do let me know if you have any clever ideas of your own. I can use all the help I can get if I'm going to make any sense out of the girl, and I want her whole and gone as soon as possible.”

He wasn't sure why, but something in that statement didn't ring entirely true. He chose not to examine the reason too closely. He had too many other things to think about, like the scheduled dredging of the river mouth.

Turning Gabriel back toward the fields, he nudged him into a loping canter, but he couldn't help hearing an echo in his head of something Callie had said as they'd walked to the river.

People have a difficult time distinguishing between what they think they want and what they really need …

He forced her words to the back of his mind and returned to the more practical matter of dredging.

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