Using Nard from VirtualBox with a Direct Ethernet Connection

[Caleb Place]

Nard looks really cool and like exactly what I need, but I've been having a
heck of a time (a week of 3-4 hours of frustration a day) installing it. I
am on Windows, so I installed the Fedora VirtualBox VM and am trying to do
things from there. I managed to build the image and write it to the SD
card, but now I've hit trouble. My computer is connected wirelessly to my
home's network. I wanted to be able to use SSH simply with the make target,
but it seems that (for some reason) the both the Pi and the computer must
be connected to ethernet. Is that the case, or am I just reading the manual
incorrectly? I've read seemingly all the blog posts, forum topics, and
what-have-you on the internet about connecting the Pi over an ethernet
cable, but none of them have worked for me. Either you must execute
commands on the Pi (which I can't do without SSH) or you must use Windows
(which I have but can't do because I want to use make ssh from
VirtualBox). How can I skip the router and just do this with an ethernet
cable and my laptop using VirtualBox?

- Caleb