Once in a Blue Moon (28 page)

She was never going to get over him. It didn't matter whether they were in the same ballroom or on opposite sides of the world, she could feel the dangerous desire to give in, to give in to the temptation to believe that she alone out of all the women in the world could change him. That she alone could possess his heart.

Another quadrille had formed on the floor, blocking her view of him, and her heartbeat slowed. Only to stop completely when she saw that he was circling the room, in that lean-hipped, slightly hitching saunter that was uniquely his, and coming right at her.

She looked around with wide, frantic eyes and spotted a window alcove furnished with a marquetry side table that bore an enormous white glass vase and a smoking pastille pot. She made for it like a rabbit for a bolt-hole. She slipped into the alcove, craning her head around to see if he followed, and struck the table with her hip, sending the vase crashing to the floor.

"Bloody hell," she exclaimed beneath her breath.

"It
was
a rather hideous thing, wasn't it?"

Jessalyn whipped around, startled to find that her bolt-hole was already occupied by a young woman with pattern-card perfect features and silvery gold spindrift hair styled into a short cap of curls. Diamonds sparkled in her plumed headdress, and her silver lame dress shimmered in the bright candlelight. She twinkled like a skyful of stars.

Jessalyn remembered shaking this young woman's hand at the top of the stairs, and the flush that stained her cheeks burned hotter. "I am so sorry, Miss Hamilton. Please, you must allow me to replace the vase."

"Oh, pray do not consider it." Wisteria blue eyes danced with amusement. "We have put the wretched thing in every room in the house in the hope that some accident would befall it. My aunt Lucinda gave it to us, you see. She means well, the poor old dear, but she has a squint—can't see a thing, no matter how ugly it is, unless it's directly beneath her nose."

As a sign of the Hamilton wealth, the window curtains were cut extra long to puddle on the floor. To Jessalyn's astonishment the girl lifted the heavy brocade and swept the glass shards underneath with her feet. "There now."

She dusted her gloved hands together and sent Jessalyn a conspiratorial smile. "If anyone asks us what has happened to the wretched thing, we shall deny all knowledge of its existence."

"You must still allow me to replace it with something," Jessalyn said. "I insist."

"Why not make it something truly ugly, then, and we can give it to poor Aunt Lucinda?" She had a lilting laugh that curled up on the ends like flower petals. "I'm afraid you've caught me in an act of a most shameful cowardice, hiding in here. But if I have to perform one more curtsy tonight, I know my knees will give out." She peered out into the crowded ballroom, releasing a delicate sigh. She had an enviable bosom that swelled over the blond lace tucker that edged her stiff stomacher. "You are a friend of Mr. Tiltwell's. Miss Letty, is it?"

"Yes, but I am surprised you remember. You must have greeted five hundred people tonight, and surely you couldn't name all of them as an acquaintance."

"You don't know Mamma. I have been shown off like prime breeding stock at every crush, rout, and ball for the last three Seasons. A lure for a Title." She said the word with bitterness and as if it were possessed of a capital letter. "Of course, it is not my blood that is the bait but the enormous sum of money that is to be my dowry."

"I shouldn't mind an enormous dowry," Jessalyn said, and was pleased when Miss Hamilton laughed. She felt an odd sort of kinship with the other girl. It was one of those rare instances, she thought, when you know you have just met someone who is going to become a good friend.

Again Miss Hamilton leaned out of the alcove to scan the room. Jessalyn wondered if she was looking for someone in particular. She was nervously twisting a small hand-painted fan in her fingers. It was the sort of elegant trifle a girl's beau would give her when he paid a call.

Miss Hamilton noticed the direction of Jessalyn's gaze, and she lifted the fan, spreading its leaves. A waltzing couple was painted on the stiff silk. A smile played around her small mouth. "I shall tell you a secret," she said, "although it is not to be a secret much longer. A—a man has asked me to be his wife. He is very handsome, and he does have a title."

"You must be very happy."

Miss Hamilton's purple-blue eyes darkened. "I would be if The Title weren't so obviously marrying me for the settlement. Until three days ago we had never laid eyes on each other. And he is not the sort of man to pretend feelings that he does not have."

But already she loves him,
Jessalyn thought.
Poor girl.

A bedizened and bejeweled woman in beaded puce was working her way down the length of the room, searching in all the window niches. "Oh, drat, there is Mamma." Miss Hamilton heaved a heartfelt sigh. "She is wise to all my little tricks." She looked at Jessalyn, and a brightness lit up her blue eyes—wisteria bathed with sunshine. "I should like it very much if you would call on me sometime, Miss Letty," she said, and though the smile remained bright, there was a loneliness in her voice.

Jessalyn smiled in return and held out her hand. "Please, my name is Jessalyn."

She gave Jessalyn's hand a gentle squeeze. "I am Emily."

They walked together out of the alcove, and Emily went forward to intercept her mother. She was so small and dainty, and she moved with a fluid grace that Jessalyn longed to emulate. Mrs. Hamilton had her fingers firmly fastened around the arm of a man, a long-nosed man with thinning blond hair and a haughty demeanor. The Title, Jessalyn supposed, and she felt a rush of pity for Miss Emily Hamilton. For he looked like the sort of man who would keep his wife in a gilded cage, while he amused himself with an aviary of ladybirds.

Suddenly a rough hand seized her wrist, pulling her around. She looked up into a dark angel's face, and her heart knocked against her chest. "What are you doing?"

"Waltzing with you," he said in a voice as gentle as a dawn wind. His arm slid around her waist, a possessive hand pressed into her back, and he swept her out into the middle of the dance.

For a moment her startled gaze locked with that of Clarence, who stood just inside the doorway with two glasses of champagne punch in his hands. But then they were swallowed up by the rest of the dancers.

She met McCady's gaze, and she felt the concussion of it like a blow. His mouth was set in that hard, tight line that always made him look a little cruel. "Are you still going to marry him?" he demanded.

"Yes," she lied, and looked away from him, down at her feet, which were moving as stiffly as stilts across the floor.

"If you ask me," he said, "you're making a mistake."

"I haven't asked you, and now if you will be so kind as to release me..."

"Come now, Miss Letty. Where are your party manners? When a gentleman begs for the honor of a dance, it is impolite to deny him."

"You hardly begged. You didn't even ask."

"A small oversight." He lowered his head until his breath stirred in her hair like a sea mist. "And you, Miss Letty, still can't waltz without looking at your feet."

To her shock she started laughing. It was nerves, and she tried to make herself stop, but she couldn't. Her laughter, wild and lusty, floated up to the ballroom's gilded ceiling. She didn't see, for her head had fallen back, but his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth winced as if he were in pain.

The arm that was lightly resting around her waist tightened. "Jessalyn... remember that summer and the night of the blue moon?"

Her startled gaze fell to his face. There was an uncertainty, a vulnerability in his eyes that she had never seen before. As if for just a moment the shadows had opened to reveal a part of his soul. She swallowed around a thickness in her throat. "I could never forget that night."

Although the music hadn't stopped, he eased her out of his arms. "Neither will I," he said, a strange roughness in his voice. "As long as I live. No matter what I must do... what happens, I will never forget that night. Or you."

She stared at him, trying to divine what he was telling her. It was almost as if he was saying good-bye.

Clarence stood before her with a glass of champagne punch in each hand and a baffled look on his face. "But we can't possibly leave now," he said. "It's barely midnight. What will people think?"

"I do not
care
what—" Jessalyn drew in a deep breath. "Tell them Gram has taken suddenly ill."

"If it's Caerhays, if he's insulted you, I'll demand satisfaction."

"Will you challenge him to pistols at dawn?" Jessalyn retorted, though she instantly regretted it. She pushed a great sigh out of her chest. "Oh, Clarence... we only danced."

Only danced.
She didn't know why she had been left with this terrible sense of loss. She only knew she could no longer bear to be here among all the gilt and laughter and music. "Please, just take us home."

Clarence thrust the glasses of punch at a passing footman and slipped his hand beneath Jessalyn's elbow. "Very well. But I thought you understood how important it was for me to be here tonight. Aloysius Hamilton might not possess a title, but he has influence in government circles that most of your precious dukes and
earls
could only dream of. As my future wife you should be giving
a
thought, my love, to the advancement of my career in Parliament."

Jessalyn had to swallow back the need to tell him that she could never marry him now. But this wasn't the time or place to jilt the man who was, despite it all, still her dearest, her very best friend in all the world.

They had almost forced their way through the crush blocking the door when a great blasting toot slammed through the air, and silence descended in the room, sharp and sudden, like a clap of thunder.

All eyes turned toward one end of the grand ballroom, where Aloysius Hamilton stood mounted on a small dais, with a sheepish grin on his face and a brass coaching horn in his hand. "Now that I have your attention," he said,
and
his startled guests broke into relieved titters of laughter.

Aloysius launched into a rambling speech, most of which Jessalyn couldn't hear, but she supposed this must be the announcement of the big secret—Emily's betrothal to her title. And indeed, Emily soon joined her father on the dais. Aloysius took his daughter's hand and raised it to his lips. He kept her hand in his as he beckoned with the other to someone in a crowd of people to the left of him.

In spite of the heavy sadness pressing on her chest, Jessalyn could not help smiling as she watched her new friend, Emily Hamilton, hold out her free hand and draw a man up onto the dais with her. She was smiling still as she watched that man lift Emily's hand and kiss her fingers, before laying them on his bent arm. Smiling, smiling, smiling as a wash of pain froze her breath and blinded her.

Beside her, Jessalyn heard Clarence suck in
a
gasp of shock. Voices battered her ears:
Betrothal... marrying an earl, Caerhays... They are all rakehells, but this one is mad. He's laying down rails from here to Cornwall, and he thinks to run iron horses... riding for a smash. And Hamilton, the bloody rich nabob, will have himself an earl's get for a grandson....

Although every eye was on him, he stood still and looked slowly around the room. His gaze stopped only when it found her. Their eyes clashed and held. She saw nothing in his face. Nothing at all.

If she had any pride at all, she would go up to him now and she would smile and wish him happy, wish them both happy, and act as if she were happy, happy, happy, without a care in the world. Oh, God...

She looked around for Clarence, but he had disappeared. She tried to push through the crowd of guests all trying to go in the opposite direction, toward the dais, to offer their congratulations. Suddenly she felt suffocated, as if all these people were a great weight crushing her, pressing her into the floor.

Someone touched her, taking her arm. It was Clarence. Oddly his face was blanched with shock, and a small tic was throbbing beneath his right eye. "He only got enough upon the betrothal to pay off his brother's gaming vowels," Clarence said, and though it made no sense to her, Jessalyn thought she heard a note of strained relief in his voice. "The rest of the settlement won't be his until after the heir is born."

Her own face felt so stiff, as if she'd been dumped in a vat of starch. She had to get away before she started cracking in a million pieces.

He stood within the shadows of the portico's pillars and watched her leave. The street was still clogged with carriages and swearing coachmen, for most of the guests would not depart for hours yet.

He watched until Tiltwell's scarlet town coach rolled down the street on well-oiled wheels, turned the comer, and was gone.

"Lord Caerhays?"

He turned. Emily Hamilton stood within the pool of light cast by the flickering torches. A look that was half worshipful, half fearful marred her pretty face.

"What do you want?" he demanded. Then immediately regretted the harshness of his words when he saw her flinch. They had been betrothed for three days, yet she couldn't bring herself to call him by his first name. Doubtless she would be calling him Lord Caerhays on their wedding night.

"My father wishes to speak with you, my lord." Her mouth trembled into a sweet smile that he tried, and failed, to answer.

"I cannot imagine why you and Tiltwell wanted to attend that crush in the first place, gel," Lady Letty said as Becka opened the door to them. "But once there, the least you could have done was stay above an hour or two. Instead you insisted upon leaving just when my luck was about to turn. There is nothing for it—I am going to bed."

"I'm sorry. Good night, Gram," Jessalyn said to her grandmother's departing back. She stood unmoving, half in, half out the open door. A breeze blew in off the river, and she turned her face to it. She yearned suddenly for Cornwall and the sea. She wanted to go
home.

There was such a weight of unshed tears in her chest that needed to come out. She was going to start crying soon, and when she did, she was not going to be able to stop. Her tears would flood the world until she drowned in them.

"Evenin', Mr. Tiltwell, sur," Becka said. "Ye be lookin' handsome this night. Done up to the nines ee be. 'Tes enough to set a girl's heart to fluctuatin' in her breast, just to look at ee." She giggled, then winked, then followed Lady Letty inside.

Clarence touched Jessalyn's arm. "Walk with me out on the terrace?"

"Unchaperoned?" she said, forcing a smile. "That wouldn't be proper. Think of your reputation."

Clarence didn't smile with her. As usual he had not understood her teasing. Poor Clarence, everything in his world was all so ponderously serious.

"Jessalyn, I have known you your entire life," he said. "When have I ever behaved toward you in any manner other than what is considered proper?"

She swallowed a sigh. "Never," she said. Almost never. He had kissed her twice. Once on the day she had accepted his proposal of marriage, and once before the Midsummer's Eve bonfire the summer she was sixteen. The summer she had been taught all about love, but not by him.

She allowed him to lead her toward the iron railing that faced the river. Beneath the terrace were great arched storage vaults, empty now except for the river scavengers who lived like moles within them. On calm nights she could hear the crackling of their fires and occasional snatches of drunken laughter. Tonight the river was flat and tinseled with silver ribbons from lanterns on the boats and bridges.

Clarence cleared his throat. "Jessalyn, I wonder if you have given any more thought to the idea of moving up the date of our wedding?"

"Oh, Clarence..." She spun around to face him. Then wished she hadn't, for she knew that even in the cloaking darkness he could see the dismay on her face.

"I had reason to believe that you were as anxious as I to begin our life together," he said stiffly.

"Oh, Clarence, I'm so sorry..." She laid a hand on his rigid arm. "You are my dearest friend, and I love you. But I have come to see that it is not in the way you want. In the way it should be between husband and wife. I—"

"Are you trying to tell me that you are experiencing second thoughts?"

She dragged in an aching breath. "I'm sorry."

"I see." He turned away from her. His gloved hands wrapped around the railing. He spoke into the night, his voice calm, assured. "Your debts here in London and at

Newmarket are mounting, although I know you've been trying to hide the direness of your circumstances from me and from your grandmother. But you cannot go on like this much longer, Jessalyn, and then what are your choices?
To
become a governess
to
a passel of screaming brats. Or the paid companion of a crotchety old dowager with smelly pug dogs and numerous disgusting ailments."

She thought of her silly self, riding around and around the rotunda at Vauxhall Gardens, turning somersaults in her bird mask with its wiggly beak. "I should run away and join the circus before it comes to that," she said, and a strange gurgle escaped out her tight throat.

He jerked around to glare at her. "Are you laughing
at
me?"

"No, I'm not. I'm sorry."
That's all I seem able to say,
she thought.
I'm sorry, sorry, sorry...
There was this thick, unrelenting ache in her chest. She tried to expel it by pushing out a sigh. But it remained, making it hard for her
to
breathe.

"My circumstances are not as dire as you make them out to be," she said. "We shall get by until spring, when we will go to End Cottage so that Gram can get a dose of the sea air. Then, if Blue Moon is recovered, we shall come back up to Epsom and race him in the Derby. The winning purse is a thousand pounds."

He barked a harsh laugh. "If you win it! Ah, God, Jessalyn..." His head fell back. He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers, then let his hand fall helplessly to his side. "I love you. I've loved you for years. All that I've done—the seat in Parliament, the house in Berkeley Square, the fortune I am building, a possible knighthood— it was all done to make myself worthy of you." He clasped her upper arms, startling her with the strength of his grip and the fierceness in his voice. "Jessalyn, I love you."

I love you.

She squeezed her eyes shut. He was her friend and she was hurting him and she couldn't bear this. "P-perhaps I just need a little more time," she said, and knew she was being a coward. But she just couldn't bear any more pain right now.

His grip tightened, hurting her. "How much? How much time does it take to decide if you want to become a man's wife?"

She opened her eyes. His face showed everything: bewilderment and despair, and the last desperate glimmerings of hope. She had known this man since she was six years old. They were friends. They were...

"Just a little more time, Clarence. Please. Give me until spring, like we planned."

McCady... Lord Caerhays would be married to his heiress by then. She would have accepted it by then. She would be used to it—oh, God, how was she ever going to get used to it?

Clarence released her, straightening his cravat and the lapels of his coat, as if he had to put himself back into order again after that uncharacteristic outburst. "I know that you will give all that I have said fair consideration, Jessalyn," he said. "You're only experiencing those nuptial eve fears that all young brides go through. They'll soon pass. You'll see if I'm not right." She heard the relief in his voice and felt ashamed.

He cupped her cheek, tilting her head back. "Just think of the life I can offer you and your grandmother. But most important, think about how much I love you."

Great pots of golden chrysanthemums decorated the choir and high altar of St. Margaret's, Westminster. The sun shone through the stained glass window of Christ Crucified, casting red and blue and yellow patterns on the stone floor. It was, the guests all agreed, a beautiful day for a wedding.

The bride stood before the chancel rail, looking radiantly beautiful in a dress of white and silver lace and a veil weighted with hundreds of seed pearls that flowed over her arms to sweep the floor. The groom looked dashingly handsome in a blue town coat with long tails and straw-colored trousers. His hair hanging long beneath his silk top hat and the gold ring flashing in his ear gave him a piratical air that stirred the heart in more than one feminine breast.

There was to be a breakfast after the ceremony, and most of London that counted had received the engraved gilt-edged invitations. But only the Hamiltons' most intimate friends were at the church for the ceremony. They stood now within boxed pews, and the men envied the groom the dowry he was getting. The women envied the bride her groom. Fifty intimate friends invited to witness the indissoluble bond of matrimony.

And one who was not invited.