Once in a Blue Moon (19 page)

He still walked like a lazy cat, with that sauntering sway of lean and manly hips, ruined at the last moment by the hitch in his stride. He hadn't changed, hadn't changed....

When I marry, it will he to a woman, not a scrawny, carrottop barely out of the schoolroom. She'll be a woman with breeding and money, not some provincial miss without even two beans to boil together to make soup.

But I love you.

Too bloody bad, Miss Letty. Because I don't love you.

Humiliation washed over her, as fresh as if it had happened only yesterday. She had laid her heart at his feet, and he had walked away. How amusing she must have seemed to him, how he must have laughed—silly Miss Letty with her moony ways, falling over cliffs and down mine shafts, and begging him to marry her. Silly child... How she had loved him then.

And how she hated him now.

Her first instinct was to turn and run, but she made herself stand tall and straight until he was almost upon her. He had left her so little pride that summer, had left it tattered and in shreds, but she wrapped it around herself now like an old mended cloak. She lifted a composed face, and the heavy serge skirt of her walnut brown redingote, and sailed past him, cutting him dead.

A footman in purple and gold satin livery dashed past her, nearly knocking her down. Suddenly she was enveloped by a whole gaggle of running footmen. Some gentlemen, bored with waiting for the sweepstakes to start, were matching their servants in a human race.

One of the footmen, his roly-poly body sausaged into tight crimson and silver satin, his periwig askew over one eye, lagged far behind the others, and his master was riding along beside him, ordering him to pick up his legs and move his bloody arse, dammit. The footman, puffing like a locomotive, leaped high and landed in a puddle. Muddy water splashed through the air. Jessalyn stood, stunned and dripping, until a hand closed around her elbow, guiding her out of the way.

"Well, well, if it isn't Miss Letty in trouble as usual. Somehow I always thought that if I should ever see you again, it would be in a place where you don't belong."

She had to swallow before she could speak. Her tongue felt rough with rust, and it seemed she had forgotten to breathe. She looked up into his face, so handsome above his tall, starched collar and cleverly tied cravat. Into his eyes, so dark and compelling. At his mouth, a mouth that she knew could be hard and then sulky by turns.

A mouth that had once kissed her.

"But I do belong here," she said, pleased that her voice betrayed none of the turmoil within her breast. "My horse Blue Moon is entered in the Crombie Sweeps, and I am here to see him run away with the prize, Mr.... Pray forgive me, but though your face is familiar, your name has slipped my memory—no, I have it. Trelawny. Lieutenant Trelawny."

Anger flashed in his eyes. Raw and ragged anger that was swiftly covered up. "It is Lord Caerhays now, and you remembered damn well who I am, Jessalyn. You didn't used to be so good at nasty, cutting sort of games."

"I was taught how to play by an expert." She gathered up her skirt again. "Do accept my condolences on your brother's death, and now if you will excuse me..."

She took a step, but he took a larger one, planting himself in front of her. His lips curled up at one end in an arrogant smile. "No, I will not excuse you. Miss Letty. At least not until we exchange a few more polite banalities. You shall ask me how I am faring, and I shall say: 'Tolerably well, thank you.' Then I shall ask how you are faring."

She made her eyes go wide and guileless. "I beg your pardon. I hadn't thought to be rude. I merely assumed that the state of my health is a matter of utmost indifference to you... since I harbor not the slightest interest in yours."

He leaned into her, so close she could see the beginning shadow of a beard on his lean cheeks and the shadows stirring in the dark pools of his eyes. "Now there you are wrong," he said, drawling the words in a deliberately seductive fashion, "for I have thought of you often in the last five years."

"I thought of you, too, my lord. In the beginning. But then I came to see that you were right: We did not at all suit. And so my thoughts moved on to other things."

To her shock his head fell back in laughter. "Well put," he exclaimed. "Cut to the bone, I've been. Skewered like a Christmas goose, pricked like a pincushion, sliced like an onion, stabbed like a—like a... dear me, I seem to have run out of metaphors. Tell me, Miss Letty—it
is
still Miss Letty? Or should I be addressing you as someone more matronly? Mrs. Respectable, perhaps? Mrs. Dull?"

The words built in her mouth to tell him about her betrothal to his cousin, for more than anything that would show him that she had survived what he had done to her heart and to her pride. But as she tilted her head back to speak, she caught his gaze upon her. The twin exploding suns blazed bright in his eyes, as disturbing as ever, and even after all this time she felt her heart pick up a beat.

She stared up at him, hating him for doing this to her— for knocking down in five minutes all the walls she'd spent five years building. "You've grown up, little girl," he said, his voice husky but with an underlying edge that promised a danger she was, oh, too familiar with.

Grown up... she must remember that she was a woman now, no longer the silly barefoot girl who had once made such a fool of herself over him. She had acquired a bosom that filled out her redingote. Beneath her fanciful Gypsy hat, her hair was pulled neatly back into a braided chignon. But it was still red, and her mouth was still too big for her face.

When I marry, it will be to a woman, not
a
scrawny, carrottop barely out of the schoolroom....

Jessalyn's stomach clenched into a tight knot. Away... she had to get away from him before...

But before she knew what he was about, he had taken her arm and was leading her over to the painted white markers that lined the home straight. His touch was light, impersonal, but she felt it deep within her like a bruise on the bone.

His hand released her to wrap around one of the posts. He gripped the wood so tightly the veins and sinews of his wrist stood out and the leather of his tan gloves pulled taut across his knuckles. She shot a quick glance at his face. He was staring at the tall white pillar that marked the starting point where the runners were gathering. A muscle jumped in his cheek.

The jockeys, bright as popinjays in their taffetas, were jostling for position. Through the misty drizzle, the horses were barely distinguishable from one another, their coats all dark and sleek like otters with the wet.

Out the corner of her eye she saw him move. He even started to walk away from her, and she let out a soft breath of relief. Then he whirled and took two hard, jerky strides. His hands fell on her shoulders, pulling her around. "Why did you name him Blue Moon?"

Whatever she had expected, it was not that. For a moment the shrill cries of the hawkers and legs faded away. She saw herself dancing before him, laughing, picking a moonflower to tuck behind his ear. She heard the sigh of the surf and felt the sea wind... that night of the blue moon, when he had taken her in his arms and kissed her the way a man kissed a woman he wanted. Hard and rough and hungry.

In spite of all her hard-won control, she felt the walls crumble some more. She looked into his eyes, to see if he remembered, too, and saw nothing there but shadows. "I named him Blue Moon because he's rare and special," she said, the words matter-of-fact, telling the truth, but only part of it. "This one will do it, my lord. He is going to win the Derby for us, for Gram and me. Now if you will please be so kind as to take your hands off me. I dislike being touched by people I scarcely know."

He opened his hands, fingers spread wide, and lifted them off her shoulders in an exaggerated motion. "I do beg your pardon, Miss Letty. I shall try to refrain from
touching
you in the future." He brought his face so close to hers his breath disturbed strands of her hair, and Jessalyn's heart thrust hard like a fist against her breast. "At least," he said, "until we come to know each other again."

She felt the shock of his words deep in her belly.
Again...
Unconsciously, her hands clenched. No, not again. Never again.

He hadn't moved, nor did he take his eyes off her face. The sleeve of his greatcoat brushed her arm. The wind whipped the bottom of her redingote open, slapping it against his leg. She heard him take a breath; she imagined she could feel his heartbeat.

"I hope your Blue Moon wins you many races," he said, and there was still an edge of rough anger to his voice. "But not today's. I already have a coper interested in buying my Rum Chaser, and he'll be worth far more as a stud if he can go out a winner. Not to mention the fact that I have a bloody fortune riding on his hide."

"You should not have plunged so deeply, my lord. For he'll have a hard time beating Blue Moon. Especially in this weather."

"A mudder, is he?" The creases alongside his mouth deepened into a sudden and unexpected smile, and Jessalyn's treacherous heart pitched and dipped.

"Blue Moon runs like the wind on anything."

He stared at her, his eyes on her mouth. The air vibrated between them like the strings of a viola tuned too tightly. She stared back at him, at the taut set of his face. She felt his heat, smelled him.

She stepped back and turned aside, suddenly afraid. Tension thickened the air until she couldn't breathe. Her chest felt heavy with a quiet despair, yet her heart was racing. It was as if she were falling down a mine shaft and her scrabbling fingers could find no purchase. Falling down, down, until she was back again in that bittersweet summer, not herself anymore but the girl she had been. Poor silly Miss Letty, loving him, needing him. Losing him. The first time had almost killed her, but she had survived.
Again... again...
She would never let herself be hurt like that again.

She licked her lips, tasting the rain, which was cool and tinged with smoke. I must be going," she said on an expulsion of pent-up breath, already turning away. "Gram will be wondering—"

"Wait!" The urgency in his tone stopped her. But when she looked back, his eyes were empty and as unfathomable as the sea. "The race is about to start," he said.

She looked to see if what he said was true. The runners were still lining up, a procedure that had been known to take up to an hour. She searched for Blue Moon and his jockey, Topper, and spotted them easily. The boy in the Letty colors of black and scarlet; the horse's bay coat looking almost bloodred in the murky light. The field was large, and the jockeys had to fight for a place in the lead, kicking and hitting one another in the face with the butt ends of their whips. The horses pranced and lashed out with their hooves. The jockeys bounced on their backs, their bright taffeta-covered skullcaps bobbing like fishing corks.

He was standing close to her again. She sucked in a deep breath. The wet, mulchy smell of the turf seemed to wash over her like a wave, then receded. "Which one is your brother's horse—"

"My horse."

"Yes... I'm sorry."

"You needn't feel sorry for Rum Chaser. I assure you that while I have many vices, I am invariably kind to animals. It is my one soft spot."

He had done this the first time they'd met, talked in circles around her so that she'd emerged from a conversation with him feeling dizzier than a top. "I meant that I am sorry to learn of your brother's death," she said.

"Why should you be sorry? No one else is. He put a pistol in his mouth and blew his brains all over the pink-flocked wallpaper, leaving me not only his title and champion racehorse but all his bloody debts as well. And further upholding the proud Trelawny tradition of dying young, violently, and in disgrace."

She looked up into his face, noting the bitter slant to his hard mouth. "And will you uphold the tradition now that you are the earl of Caerhays?"

He pinned her with his gaze. "Probably."

For a moment she thought she saw real pain smothered behind the shadows of those dark eyes. She turned abruptly away from him. "You never said which one is your horse. My lord."

"Rum Chaser's knight is wearing green and yellow. Miss Letty."

Around the Turf the jockeys were called knights of the pigskin. Jessalyn had always loved the fanciful expression, which came from the pigskin saddles the jockeys rode on. She spotted the green and yellow taffeta of Rum Chaser's knight mounted on a dark chestnut with four white socks. The jockey seemed to be having trouble holding the horse in check. The big chestnut was curvetting and rearing and tossing his head. His massive hindquarters revealed his power and speed, and his arched neck his pride. Black Charlie had been right: Rum Chaser was of a showy turn. Jessalyn could only hope the leg's touts were also right about his not being fit.

The wind blew, bringing with it not the smell of the turf this time but the scent of the man beside her—of maleness and danger and of something that fanned a flame low in her belly. He had the whole wide heath to move about in, yet he was standing so close to her that they could have shared the same coffin. She smiled at the absurd thought.

"I still hate it when you do that," he said.

Her head snapped around. "Do what?"

"Smile as if you know something I don't know."