Once in a Blue Moon (24 page)

The prostitute, sensing their interest, pushed off the wall and sauntered out into the piazza. She stepped into the circle of light cast by the flambeau, and Jessalyn sucked in a shocked breath. For the woman was not a woman at all, but a girl no older than fifteen. Her mouth was covered with weeping sores, and someone had recently beaten her, for liver-colored bruises ringed both eyes. "Buy yer pleasure, yer honor?" she whined, plucking at McCady's clothes with scabby fingers. "Anything ye wants, yer honor. Any ways ye wants it."

He put a coin into the girl's hand and waved her away, and Jessalyn could tell from his face that he felt no shock or horror. In truth, he felt nothing at all. He had been exposed to the stews of London too young, had partaken of their dark pleasures too often, ever to be shocked or horrified by anything again. He turned, and his gaze—fierce and arrogant, and perhaps a little wary—pierced her. She had thought it all a game, but he had been deadly serious. He had set out to teach her a lesson again, and this time he had succeeded. Succeeded better than he knew.

"Well, Miss Letty? Have you seen enough?" he said in a mocking, cutting voice, and in that moment she hated him.

She hated him for showing her that some sins had consequences too terrible to bear and that even innocence had a price. She hated him for showing her that love could be ugly. She whirled to run, but he seized her from behind, wrapping one powerful arm around her and flinging her around. She fought him, going for his face with her nails, and he encircled her wrists in a bruising grip, twisting her arms behind her back. She opened her mouth, and he covered it with his own.

Beneath his kiss she tasted bitter, smoldering anger, yet her mouth opened wide to his. His lips softened, gentled. He let go of her wrists to tangle his fingers in her hair, bending her head back so that he could probe her mouth with his tongue. She seized his mouth like someone starving, tasting him, drinking of him. She kissed him back with all the passion of a girl's lost love and all the hunger of a woman yearning, needing, to rediscover love again. And the pain of it was too much, too much.

She tore free of him, backing away, her head shaking wildly back and forth. "Not again... not again."

She took off running, turning into an alley, not knowing where she was going, not caring. A dandy in purple-and-green-striped pantaloons spilled out the door of a smoke-filled coffeehouse, and she slammed into him.

He clasped her arms to steady her. "Well, well," he said. His breath, reeking of brandy and tobacco, wafted over her face. "What have we here?"

"Let her go," McCady said in a voice she had never heard before. The dandy's gaze shot past her, and his fingers opened, releasing her. He held his gloved hands palms out in front him as he backed up. Then he spun around and walked rapidly away out the back end of the alley.

Jessalyn stood unmoving now, panting, fighting back tears. She kept her back to McCady as he came up to her. But when he planted himself in front of her, she slowly lifted her eyes to his. The face of the devil in a rage would look like that, she thought. Not hot but searing cold and utterly merciless. His hand clamped around her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh and heating the blood in her veins until she burned inside. He was being deliberately cruel, and all she could feel was a sweet, piercing pleasure at his touch.

She stared down at the fingers that gripped her so cruelly, those scarred and burned inventor's fingers, and the thought hit her with a violent jolt that she had never stopped loving this man. Even while hating him, still she had loved him. This man with his shadowed eyes and dark soul, and his stirring visions of iron horses and horseless carriages. This man who owned her heart in a way that no other man ever would.

Who owned her heart and didn't want it.

"Take your hand off me," she said.

His mouth tightened into a hard smile. "I am done assaulting your bloody virtue for tonight. But neither am I going to let you indulge in a childish tantrum and run alone through the streets."

He led her back out into the piazza. The fingers that had clasped her arm so cruelly now rubbed gentle circles on her bruised skin.

"I won't run. Just, please... don't touch me," she said, her voice choking.

He cast her a sharp look, but he let her go, whistling for the hackney. She heard him give the driver her direction, and she didn't even think to wonder how he came to know where she lived. They rode the short distance in a silence that crackled with tension. In the silvery flashes of light that penetrated beneath the carriage's hood, his expression seemed sharpened, more dangerous than ever.

The hackney was still rolling to a stop when she jumped out, not waiting for the steps to be lowered. She hit the pavement hard, stumbling a bit, then regained her balance, racing down the Adelphi Terrace that fronted the river. "Jessalyn, wait," he called after her. She fumbled with the front door of her town house, praying that Becka had remembered to leave it unbolted. His footsteps pounded on the stone behind her. The latch lifted, but one of the hinges was stiff; it had needed oiling for months now. Swearing like a drunken tinner, she pushed with panting desperation against the door, and at last, at last, it swung open. "Jessalyn!" His shadow, cast by the flaring streetlamp, fell over her, consuming her. "Jessalyn, goddammit..." She slipped inside.

He closed his hand around the jamb to keep her from shutting the door.

She shut it anyway, slamming it as hard as she could.

He snatched his hand back, cursing. She shot the bolt and sagged, gasping for breath, pressing her flushed cheek against the smoothly painted wood.

She thought she heard his receding footsteps, and she straightened to peek through the judas-hole. He stood across the terrace, leaning against the grilled railing that overlooked the river, his hair falling over his forehead. He was sucking on his knuckles and looking like a hurt and lonesome little boy. She wanted to go back out to him and hold his head to her breast and comfort him. She turned around and, pressing her back against the door, slid slowly to the floor. She hugged her legs, rubbing her face across the hard bones of her knees. A wetness seeped through her spangled hose. She touched her cheeks, shocked to discover they were wet and sticky with tears.

Napoleon came out from his bed beneath the stairs. He entwined himself around her legs, his loud purr grating like a watchman's rattle. But when she went to pet him, he bit her hand and streaked off, orange and white tail flying high. Even her cat didn't love her. The ridiculous thought brought out a soggy laugh and got her on her feet.

Becka had left a candle burning on the newel-post. On her way to her bedroom Jessalyn paused to open her grandmother's door. The old woman lay flat on her back on the bed, her hands outside the covers, straight at her sides, lying so still that Jessalyn went into the room and held her fingers to her grandmother's lips. She was not aware of the depth of her fear until she felt the knee-quivering wash of relief that came with the warm caress of her grandmother's breath. Lady Letty had to take so much laudanum now for her rheumatism that she slept like the dead through the night. Like the dead. Fear clutched again at Jessalyn's chest, the same fear she had felt that afternoon at Newmarket. It was a dread of loneliness, she knew. She couldn't bear the thought of life without Gram, of spending the years alone.

Once in her own room, she did not undress for bed. On the top shelf of her walnut wardrobe, shoved way in the back, was a bandbox. She had to stand on a chair to fetch it down. Inside was a little cottage bonnet made of chip straw and decorated with a posy of yellow silk primroses. The straw was cracked and unraveling at the brim, the silk flowers drooping and faded.

She put the hat on and studied herself in the round looking glass that was inset into the wardrobe's door.

It was a pretty little hat, but it was meant for a much younger girl, a girl just emerging from the schoolroom, awkward and giggly and apt to take herself much too seriously. A tightness squeezed Jessalyn's chest as she thought of the girl who had worn this hat that long-ago summer. For the first time she understood just how incredibly young she must have seemed to him.

Turning away from the mirror, she pulled off the hat with a savage gesture. It was an old, useless thing, meant for the rubbish heap; she shouldn't have kept it.

Yet with care now, and gentleness, she put the hat back in the box, and as she did so, she noticed, beneath the tissue that lined the bottom, the corner of a green leather book. She took the book and went with it to the window seat. As she ran her palm over the embossed leather, the smell of mildew wafted up at her. She saw where splotches of black fur marred the gold gilt. The sight of the decay filled her with such a deep sadness her chest ached.

A primrose lay pressed against the flyleaf inside. It was nearly transparent, so dry she feared that if she so much as breathed on it, it would crumble into dust. Taking extra pains not to disturb the flower, she turned to the first page. The ink had faded, but she could still read the words.

I met a man today...

The front door opened with a squeal of its unoiled hinges, and Jessalyn jumped at the noise. She scooped up the stack of tradesmen's bills, shoving them beneath a pillow. She sat on the pillow, then snatched up Napoleon and the Weatherby Racing Calendar and planted them both in her lap. Settling back in an Egyptian couch with crocodile claw feet, she assumed what she hoped was a look of angelic innocence.

She heard Becka's voice in the front hall. That would be Gram coming home. Gram, who persisted in giving away money they didn't have. Just this afternoon she had gone to deliver a new pair of crutches to the rag-and-bone dealer's crippled son. And she had taken to buying so many baked potatoes from the thin, ragged girl who sold them on the corner that even Becka professed herself to be heartily sick of them. But Jessalyn couldn't ask Gram to economize on charity, and she didn't want to worry her. So she kept the mounting bills a secret and prayed for a turn in the abysmal Letty luck.

Jessalyn heaved a gusty sigh. The movement disturbed Napoleon, who let his displeasure be known by digging his claws into her thighs. He had grown into a crotchety cat, though still runty. He did not like London and had yet to forgive her for bringing him here.

Four years ago the Sarn't Major had come to Gram and said it was now or never if they were going to make one last run in the big races. So he had walked their string of horses to Newmarket, and she and Gram and Becka had taken the stagecoach. They had moved into her mother's house here in London, one in a square block of contiguous town houses called the Adelphi.

Outside, the house was made of brick, delicately ornamented with pilasters in the honeysuckle design. Inside, the beautiful classical rooms had been turned into something only Cleopatra would feel at home in. Lotus bowl chandeliers and walls papered with hieroglyphics and sphinxes, sideboards with water lily carvings, and chair backs shaped like coiling serpents. In the dining room stood a table made of a single piece of white marble in the shape of a sarcophagus.

Lady Letty couldn't enter a room without shuddering, and Becka claimed all the sphinxes and crocodiles gave her hillas. But Jessalyn secretly loved the house. She would wander the rooms, wondering about the woman who had lived here, the woman who had betrayed her husband and deserted her child to follow a Grand Passion. She would study her face in the looking glass, searching for that woman in herself. But her big mouth and fiery hair, her long lankiness were all Rosalie the bal-maiden's. She was a child of barren moors and sea-battered cliffs. Of that mysterious, exotic woman who had liked lions and lyres, she saw nothing.

That woman, the mother of her memory, had been fair and dainty with a whispering voice and an elusive, musical laugh. That woman had held her to her breast and kissed her forehead when she had fallen on the stairs and bumped it on the newel-post. It was the one clear memory she had of her mother. That woman must surely have loved her. But not enough to keep her.

The door to the drawing room opened, and Jessalyn lifted her head, expecting Gram.

"Oooh, me life and body!" exclaimed Becka Poole, exhaling a deep, shaky breath. She stood in the doorway, a goose wing duster in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. The scar was as red as a whiplash on her pale cheek.

Jessalyn jumped up, spilling Napoleon onto the floor. He hissed and swiped a paw at her skirts. "Becka? Have you taken ill?" A sudden fear stole her breath. "Is it Gram?"

Becka's raisin-colored eyes focused slowly on her mistress. "'Twere a man."

"A man?

"A gennelman's gennelman. He brought this letter for
ee."
She held out the piece of paper clutched in her fist.

Jessalyn reached for it, but the girl wouldn't let it go. "Becka?"

"Eh?" Becka started, releasing her grip on the letter. "That gennelman's gennelman, miss—he were the handsomest man I ever did see, with golden hair and strange eyes, all pale shimmery brown like brandy. Sadlike, they were. They put me in mind of the crucifixated Jesus in that painting what's in St. Paul's Cathedral. He looked at me with them eyes, an' I felt these contraptions low in me belly. Spasmslike." She started to rub her stomach, then noticed the duster in her hand. She stared at it as if she'd never seen it before. "Never have I felt such a wambling of me innards afore. Mebbe he be the devil in the disguise of an angel what tried t' put a hex on me. 'Tes a good thing I be wearin' me hagstone."

She shuddered dramatically, touching the leather cord at her neck. "Cor, miss, I looked up into them eyes of his an' nearly perspired right there at his feet!"

Jessalyn deftly turned a laugh into a cough. "Perhaps you ought to lie down for an hour or so to calm your nerves."

"Ais, miss. A lie down would do me proper. Me nerves be scattered something fierce."

Becka left, moving like a sleepwalker. Jessalyn smoothed out the crinkles in her letter. She felt a shiver of excitement, for no one had ever sent her a letter before. It was expensive hot-pressed paper, creamy and gilt-edged. She broke the wafer and unfolded the paper, and a bank note floated to the floor. There were five of them—five ten-pound bank notes. His direction was embossed at the top, but the only thing written on the paper was a signature: "Caerhays" in bold black handwriting.

A cold anger filled Jessalyn as she left the drawing room and climbed the stairs to her bedroom. With calm deliberation, she changed into an old kerseymere walking dress with a matching spencer. There was an ink stain on the cuff, and the cloth was of a color that resembled the sludge that collected in the London gutters when it rained. She could not remember when or where she had acquired the hideous thing, but it would certainly serve her purpose today. Today she wanted him to see that she cared not the slightest whether she impressed him or not, as she set about telling him where he could go with his bank notes and what he could do with them when he got there.

Her hair was braided in a coronet on top of her head, and she left it alone, merely covering it with the ugliest hat she could find, a plain black poke bonnet. Within a bare ten minutes she was in a sedan chair, being carried to a certain earl's lodgings on St. James's Street.

They had just turned off Piccadilly when the chair was dropped with a sudden jolt that rattled her teeth. She could hear shouts and the pounding of feet; then something hit the chair with a thud, rocking it so hard it nearly tipped over. Fearing a riot, she cautiously raised the window shade and leaned out.

A coal wagon had run into a huge dray loaded with chickens in crates, spilling black briquettes and squawking fowls into the street. It seemed that all London, including her chairmen, had converged on the scene to make off with the chickens and the fuel to cook them with.

Jessalyn got down to walk the rest of the way, leaving the money for her fare tucked in the frayed satin seat. Chicken feathers swirled and floated in the air. The fog had worsened considerably since that morning. It was like being smothered by heavy, foul-smelling fleece. Her eyes burned, and she tasted coal soot when she swallowed.

At last Jessalyn spotted the building she was looking for. But a group of young bloods was between her and it, lounging against the stone bollards that separated the sidewalk from the street. In unison they lifted their quizzing glasses and ogled her, clucking like the chickens as she came toward them.

Jessalyn stared through them as if they did not exist. One thrust his walking stick into her path, and she went around it. Another stuck out his boot, catching her skirt with his spur. She jerked, and the material came free with a rip. She was shaking, and her palms were sweating in her limerick gloves by the time she gave the iron bellpull a tug.

The stranger who opened the door was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, with gentle golden brown eyes and a finely sculpted head topped by short blond curls. He was wearing only a shirt and buckskins, and the muscles in his arms and legs were like anchor chains. He could have been cast in bronze and mounted in a museum and not looked out of place. Jessalyn realized suddenly that she was staring at him with her mouth gaping open.

"Guid afternoon, Miss Letty," he said, his voice melodious with a Scottish lilt.

Jessalyn hesitated, surprised the man seemed to know her. "Is this where Lord Caerhays— Is he expecting me?"

"His nibs's precise words were—begging yer pairdon, miss—that once I had delivered his missive, I should expect ye here within the hour, clacking like a dog with a can tied to its tail. If ye come in, I'll go and wake him."

"So Caerhays is still abed in the middle of the afternoon, is he?" Jessalyn said, stepping into the narrow vestibule. "Did his lordship get foxed last night?"

He turned his eyes on to her, eyes that were the exact color of brandy when warmed by a candle flame. Yet they held a tinge of sadness, like those of a gentle and forgiving priest who still couldn't help being disappointed by the foibles of his flock. "Aweel," he said softly, "far be it for me to comment on his nibs's nocturnal habits, miss. But he spent the wee hours in a Jermyn Street hell. Drinking, gaming. He tells me such things are what earls do."

"They are the sort of things the mad earls of Caerhays do," Jessalyn said.

He let loose with a sigh as mournful as a funeral bell. "Tis in the bluid, I fear. When the bluid wears thin, it becomes susceptible to mental afflictions. This way, if ye please, miss."

With an air of stately gloom he led her up the narrow stairs to the modest bachelor lodgings. Jessalyn followed, wondering if the man was playing some game at her expanse, for he was unlike any manservant she had ever encountered, with his beautiful face and his salty Scottish brogue peppered with London cant.

He ushered her into an apple green parlor that was cheerful even in the dim light of a foggy day. The room was elegantly appointed, with carved pine paneling and light satinwood furnishings. But it also had a lived-in look: A pair of boots lay kicked off beside a reading chair; riding gloves and a crop had been left on the mantel. A patent lamp cast a warm glow over a desk, where that morning's
Times
lay ironed and cut, beside a dog-eared issue of
Mechanics Magazine.

The door opened behind her, and Jessalyn whirled, her heart thudding.

But it was only the manservant, back again and bearing a tray. The smell of coffee and toasted crumpets filled the room.

"If ye've come to return the blunt, miss," he said, "ye might want to suggest to his nibs that he toss a wee bit of it in my direction. We've been so let to pockets around here I've holes in my stockings ye could put a fist through." He had set the tray down on the desk, and now he pointed to a glass of cloudy liquid that sat next to the japanned iron coffeepot. "And see that his nibs drinks his tar-water. For if he awakes with the very devil of a heid, I should not be surprised."

Jessalyn thought she saw laughter lurking in the man's remarkable eyes, although his mouth remained turned down like an inverted bowl. "How long have you been with Lord Caerhays, Mr...?"

"I go by the moniker of Duncan," he said, and suddenly she could have sworn that he winked at her. "Although I'm not saying I was born with it, ye mind. I was his nibs's batman in the war. Now I'm his valet when he wants to act all dukey and put on airs. Aweel, life was simpler before he became a swell, that I can tell ye. Give him a hot supper and a dry cot and he'd purr like a kit. Now he's got a railway to build and debts so's he can't sleep come night— no matter that 'tis on a feather mattress—and a bruither what goes pegging off and leaves him with a title he don't want and even more debts. Tis enough to choke a man." He paused at the door to heave a great mournful sigh. "The army was simpler, miss. Then all I had to worry aboot was him getting some beef-witted notion in his noddle to be a hero and get himself killed."

Jessalyn said nothing. She didn't want to hear about McCady's troubles. She didn't want to start feeling sorry for him when feeling anything for him at all was so dangerous to her vulnerable heart.

The door closed behind the manservant with a gentle click. Left alone to wait, Jessalyn made a slow circuit of the room.

Thrust into one corner stood an old table heaped with draft drawings. Half of the scarred oaken surface was taken up with the model of an iron horse that ran around a miniature circular track. The locomotive was similar to the one she had ridden on that long-ago summer, except this boiler was more streamlined and the—the
cylinders,
he had called them, now slanted upward at sharp angles, so that they resembled a grasshopper's legs. The model engine had tiny carriages and wagons hitched to the back of it. A tightness squeezed Jessalyn's chest as she imagined cartloads of people and goods being whisked from one end of England to the other on McCady Trelawny's incredible invention.

McCady Trelawny's incredible folly.

For that was what they were calling it—Trelawny's Folly. Although she could never forgive the callous, jaded lieutenant who had rejected her, there had been times during the years while reading the ridiculing stories in the newspapers when she had wanted to weep for the young man with a fire in his eyes who had taken her for a ride on his marvelous locomotive.

Experts had been quoted, saying that crops would be ruined by the belching smoke and fields set afire by spewing cinders. Cattle would be scared into infertility by the dreadful noise. The passengers and freight Trelawny hoped to carry on his infamous railway all would be blown to smithereens. One man had even attempted to prove, with charts and diagrams, how all that steam being released into the air would affect the tides, causing a great wave that would rise up and swallow the whole island of Britain.