Once in a Blue Moon

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 11

The cat Peaches had been trying all afternoon to take a nap on the sun-warmed bricks in front of the kitchen door, but her kittens were giving her little peace. They crawled all over her, nipping at her ears, butting their noses into her belly, searching for a nipple. From time to time she would lift a lazy paw and bat one of the pesky creatures away from her.

The smell of soured cream drifted out the door, and the ground began to vibrate with the steady thump-thump of a butter churn pump. Peaches got up, arched her back in a big stretch, and sauntered inside to investigate, her kittens trailing after like rags on a kite. Except for the littlest one, who couldn't make it over the doorsill.

The runty kitten had thrived under Jessalyn's mothering. She called him Napoleon because though small, he was a fierce little tacker, and he liked to bully his other brothers and sisters. The black-backed gull didn't know, of course, that the kitten had been named after a man who had once been the master of Europe. Or that the little ball of orange fluff had become that summer the recipient of a young woman's fierce and overflowing love. He saw dinner, and he took it.

At the time Jessalyn was leaning against the paddock fence, watching the Sarn't Major break Letty's Hope to the lead. He did it slowly, introducing the filly to the halter by letting her smell it and rubbing the pliant leather over her neck and around her ears. He was just about to slip the halter over the filly's nose when she skittered back in alarm as a piercing scream shattered the afternoon.

"The gull!" Becka Poole ran across the yard, pointing up into the sky. "He's snatched Napoleon. Oooh, me life an' body."

Jessalyn whirled, her head falling back. The enormous black-backed gull swooped low across the courtyard, wings spread wide, little Napoleon dangling from its powerful beak.

"I'll get the musket," the Sarn't Major said, coming up beside her.

"No!" Jessalyn cried, the word made harsh with her horror. "You'd only end up killing them both." The gull banked in a broad, sweeping turn, making for the cliffs. Picking up her skirts, she ran after it.

Becka and the Sarn't Major watched their young mistress race across the headland on her hopeless chase after the gull. Her hat had fallen off, bouncing against her back, and her cinnamon hair snapped like a flag in the wind. Becka wiped a tear from her eye. "She loved that silly, runty kit."

"Aye," the Sarn't Major said.

"That gull will eat anything," Becka said. "He'll be consummating us next. The ravishing scavenger."

The Sarn't Major's answer was a grunt. But as he walked back to the paddock, his thick lips twitched, almost cracking into a smile. Then he thought of how Miss Jessalyn would mourn the loss of that runty kitten, and he went to get the musket. He was bloody well going to kill that bloody gull.

Jessalyn's steps slowed as she reached the cliffs. She breathed in great, gasping gulps, one hand pressed against the thrusting beat of her heart. The gull had disappeared. The cove was empty except for a fishing boat with copper- colored sails. Clouds, their bellies black like coal dust, lay low and thick on the sea. White-tipped waves stippled the sand, and suds swirled between the rocks.

The wind whipped at the cliffs, making high-pitched, wailing sounds like mourners at a funeral. She almost didn't hear it, the squeaky meow that came from Napoleon in a temper.

She scanned the pinnacles and pillars of rocks, which were tufted here and there with thrift and stunted gorse bushes. A splash of orange sitting on a jutting narrow ledge stood out among the plain grays and browns. The big bird must have lighted on the stony outcrop, released its prey, and flown off. Perhaps she'd made enough noise to frighten it away, but if so, it was bound to return.

She glanced out to sea, looking for the gull. The boat was tacking closer to the shore. She squinted against the glare of the water, trying to see more clearly. A young man stood at the tiller. Tall and lean, he wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal strong, tanned arms, and the wind tossed his dark hair. A black-haired girl sat beside him, and she must have said something at that moment because he half turned and looked down at her, and he laughed. The sound of his laughter, deep and husky, carried to Jessalyn on the wind. She gasped, nearly doubling over as suspicion blossomed into a terrible, stabbing pain in her belly.

Napoleon yowled.

Jessalyn swallowed, found her breath. "I'm coming, m'love." Straightening, she pushed her wind-lashed hair out of her eyes. I will not cry, she told herself. I will not. She cast one last agonized look at the boat, then started down the cliff path, blinking hard against the tears that kept threatening to come anyway.

The path sliced like a narrow, diagonal scar across the face of the cliff. It didn't pass close to the ledge where Napoleon sat, still yowling his displeasure. Since she couldn't reach him from the path, she would have to climb down the bluff, using the seams and pocks in the rocks like rungs on a ladder.

She removed her gloves for a better grip, then descended backward, feetfirst, feeling for and finding first one niche, then another. This would have been a difficult, though not an impossible, feat for a girl who had spent her childhood climbing all over the crags and steeps of the Cornish coast. But the fog had been heavy that morning, and the shale and granite rocks were wet and slippery.

She had gone about ten feet, out of reach now of the path, when the gull came back.

The great bird screeched and dived at her head. She caught sight of the white flash of his wings out the corner of her eye. Screaming, she flung out her arm to knock the bird away... and lost her balance.

She slithered down the rough rocks, banging her shins and knees. Her scrabbling fingers grasped at a naked furze bush, and she clung to it, swinging like a weather cock in the wind. She looked down at the sea, tumbling and foaming across the stony beach, and felt a rush of dizziness so strong she nearly retched. She shut her eyes, and the darkness seemed to intensify the sounds: her own harsh breathing, the smacking slap of the waves, Napoleon meowing, demanding to know what was taking her so long... and something else. Something distant, but coming closer.

The flap of wings.

As if he were possessed with a malevolent intelligence, the gull dived at her bare hands, pecking and slicing with his sharp, curved beak, then soaring up and away from her. Jessalyn screamed again in pain and terror, but she did not let go.

She waited, blood streaming down her outstretched arm from the gash in her hand, her breath sobbing in her throat, and then she heard it again, beneath the roar of the sea....

Flap... flap... flap...

"Oh, God..." She pressed her face against the slick rock and steeled herself for the bird's attack.

But it was the flap of lowering sails that she'd heard. Then the scrape of a boat's keel across the shingle and McCady Trelawny calling her name.

"Lieutenant!" she cried, her voice cracking in her relief. "Please don't let that plaguey bird come back."

"He's flown off. Miss Letty, how did you... Never mind. Just don't let go."

He seemed to be a long time in coming, and her arms grew tired. "Are you going to rescue me or not?"

"Not." He appeared on the cliff path overhead, looking tall and stark, silhouetted against the sooty sky. He had brought a bowline from the boat, and he dropped it down to her. "I am going to stand here and watch you fall to your death. Not only would it be far more amusing but it's what you deserve for being so bacon-brained as to try to climb down sheer rocks when there's a perfectly good path— ugh!" He grunted as she grasped the rope with both hands and swung outward, trusting that he would bear her weight. Instead of climbing straight up, she went down first, to get Napoleon.

She had no trouble making her way back up the bluff with him pulling on the rope. Grasping her under the arms, he hauled her to her feet. But when she put her weight on her right leg, she drew in a sharp breath, sucking on her lower lip. "I must have sprained my ankle somehow, I—"

She looked up to find his gaze fixed on her mouth. A muscle in his jaw clenched. With no warning, he swung her into his arms and carried her up the path. It felt so wonderful being held, being touched by him. Jessalyn wrapped one arm around his neck and let her cheek fall against his chest. His shirt was wet with sea spray and smelled like him.

He deposited her on top of the stone hedge that ran along the headland. "You are quite safe now, Miss Letty," he said. His fingers grasped the arm she still had fastened around him. "There is no longer any need to cling to my neck like a blowfly."

Her cheeks burning, she pulled away. She always got caught doing such foolish, reckless things whenever he was around. He must wonder if she did them deliberately, to get him to notice her. The possibility that he would think so made her squirm. She filled her lungs and expelled the ache in her chest with a breath.

Jessalyn set little Napoleon down next to her on the hedge, and he immediately wandered off after a beetle, completely oblivious of how close he'd come to being gull food. Lieutenant Trelawny stood between her spread legs, his hands on his hips. Unable to meet his eyes, she stared at his chest instead. The wind plastered his shirt against his body. His flesh showed dark and muscular beneath the thin, wet cloth. Her heart was pounding so hard she was surprised he couldn't hear it over the boom and hiss of the surf.

"Is it too much to ask what the bloody hell you were trying to do—fly to France?" he said. "Did you wake up this morning thinking you were a gull?"

Her head jerked up. His mouth was set in a thin, taut line. "I was rescuing Napoleon," she said, then laughed as his eyes widened and his brows lifted. "My kitten, you silly goose. Not the emperor in exile on St. Helena."

The creases beside his mouth deepened. "Of course," he said. "How stupid of me to think otherwise." He stepped back, bending over, and his shirt pulled across the broad width of his back. "Let me take a look at that ankle."

His hand encircled her ankle, and the touch of his fingers even through the stiff leather of her half boots sent a shiver up her leg. "I'm probably going to have to cut your boot off," he said.

Her breath came out in a great gush. "Oh, do try not to. Gram will flay me with her tongue for going through two pairs of boots in one summer. Is Sheba Stout your lover?"

His fingers tightened, and she sucked in a sharp breath. "Ouch!"

"Whom I take to my bed is none of your concern," he said.

"I was only making conversation."

"That wasn't conversation. That was vulgar curiosity." He jerked at the laces of her boot.

"Ow! Bloody hell, that hurts!"

"Shut it." He worked her bootheel back and forth, trying to pull it off, but his touch had gentled. "And clean up your attle gutter language while you're about it," he said. "It's obvious you've been keeping bad company."

She looked down at his bent head. She wondered how it would feel to press her lips there, where his hair curled over the nape of his neck. She touched it instead. It was surprisingly soft, like a child's, and damp from the sea air. "You've taught me other things besides how to curse like a soldier," she said.

His head went still beneath her hand.

"For instance, I have learned how to tell when a man wants to kiss me. You want to kiss me now, Lieutenant."

He let go of her ankle and straightened, backing a step away from her, as if she were a fire that had suddenly grown too hot. "For God's sake," he said, his voice so taut it cracked, "you are behaving worse than a Covent Garden doxy."

Her heart was thrusting so heavily in her breast she could barely breathe. She knew she played a dangerous game. Pushed too hard, he might not stop with a kiss. He would take her, fiercely and hungrily, the way a man took a woman he wanted. Her throat went dry, and she trembled at the possibility, but whether from fear or excitement even she didn't know.

She eased off the hedge and took a hopping step to put herself right up against him. "Tell me you don't want to kiss me."

His eyes flickered away from her, then settled back on her face. Cold, empty eyes, dark, like mine pits. "I don't want to kiss you, little girl."

But she knew him now. Knew that he never said what he meant, and his eyes never showed what he was really feeling.

She curled her hands into the front of his shirt, feeling the solid flesh burn underneath the cloth and the way he shuddered. She wanted his arms around her; she wanted to yield to all his frightening strength and power. By yielding to him, she could make him hers. By touching his man's body, she could touch his man's soul.

She slid her hand up his chest, around the strong, tense curve of his neck, her fingers tangling in his damp hair. His hands closed around her upper arms, his fingers gripping hard enough to bruise. Tremors shimmied through him, his whole body vibrating like a wire pulled too tautly.

"I'm stopping this," he said on a harsh gasp as if he were in pain. She swayed, leaning into him, and he tried to shove her away. "Stop it!"

She pulled his head down until their lips were a breath away from touching. Her mouth parted open. "McCady," she said, and that was all.

He covered her lips with his, smothering his own ragged moan. His mouth was hot and wet and tasted of him. He made a low, wanting sound deep in his throat. He was hungry for her, fierce for her. The kiss he gave back to her was all raw and savage longing. It was like swallowing fire.

The force of his weight pushed her against the hedge, the stones digging into her back, but she didn't feel them. He gripped her hair so that he could hold her mouth in place while he thrust his tongue in and out. She clung to his arms, her fingers digging into the tense, rigid muscles, and the blood pounded in her ears, drowning out the slam and roar of the surf.

He tore his mouth from hers, and her head fell back. His lips trailed down the taut tendon of her neck, sucking and licking, and fire crackled over every inch of her skin like tiny balls of summer lightning. His hands were all over her breasts, his fingers pressing her taut nipples through the thin cloth of her dress. It almost hurt, but not quite, and all her muscles coiled up tight, tight, tight, and she thought she would come flying apart, burst all to pieces, and die.

He raised his head and looked at her out of dark, tortured eyes. "Jessa, for the love of God, I'm only a man. God help me, I don't think I can stop—"

Stones clattered on the cliff path, and he snapped away from her like the backlash of a whip.

Bathsheba Stout appeared over the top of the bluff. She pushed the tangled black mass of her hair out of her eyes and stared at them a moment, unsure, her mouth in a soft pout.

She shrugged, her breasts lifting and pushing against the faded material of her worn frock. "We'd best be getting the boat back, sur. If me da notices it missing, he'll be takin' the strop to me."

Lieutenant Trelawny leaned against the hedge, his chest heaving as if there suddenly weren't enough air in all the world. His face was flushed, and a pulse jumped in his temple. His sex, thick and rigid, strained against the confines of his tight breeches. As if he felt her eyes on him, on that part of him, his head swung around, and Jessalyn took the impact of his gaze like a soft blow to her belly.

His eyes were like raw wounds in his face, hot with fury and lust. And something else...

Something akin to hate.

Jessalyn limped through the back gate, the kitten clutched tightly to her breast. Something was not quite right. The Sarn't Major stood in the middle of the courtyard, a musket in his hand, the big gull lying dead and bloody at his feet. The sight was odd, but odder still was what came toward them across the barren, broken moorland. A lone man riding a black hack, a stranger who lolled and bounced in the saddle, as if he weren't used to having a horse between his legs.

Jessalyn hugged the kitten to her chest, watching the figure on horseback come closer. A vague dread built within her, cutting off her breath. They never got visitors at End Cottage, and she had never seen this man before.

The Sarn't Major made an odd choking sound, drawing her attention away from the coming horseman. Tears streamed into the seams and cracks of the studmaster's face, and he kept shaking his head back and forth, in a slow, ponderous movement. "She be dead," he said. "The filly be dead."

"Dead?" Jessalyn repeated, thinking that he'd made a mistake, that he must be talking about the gull.

The words spilled out of him, more words than she'd ever heard out of his mouth all put together. He had shot the gull, and the sound of the blast had startled Letty's Hope. There must have been a weakness in the filly's heart because it had given out, just stopped. One moment she had been galloping around the paddock, kicking and lashing out with her hooves and tossing her head, and then she had plunged onto her knees and fallen over dead.

Jessalyn stared at him, her eyes wide and confused. A part of her understood what he was saying, but she couldn't make the words seem real. She heard the clatter of hooves on stone, and she twisted around. The stranger had reached the gate now and was turning in. She kept thinking that all she must do was wait for him and then everything would be all right. As if the stranger could save her from what the Sarn't Major was saying.

The man dismounted and came up to her, removing his hat to reveal a head of thick hair the color of ripening corn. He had a long face and gray hollows beneath his eyes, and his forehead was pleated with deep lines. "Miss Letty?" he said, his voice rising upward in uncertainty.

Jessalyn nodded. A part of her was aware that the Sarn't Major had left and was now walking toward the stable, and

Letty's Hope was acting strangely, lying in the paddock next to the rubbing post, not moving. The kitten squirmed, meowing and scratching her hand. But she didn't put him down. She didn't dare put him down because the black-backed gull might come back. Except the gull was dead. She stared at the mangled heap of blood and feathers, reassuring herself of this fact.

The strange man with the haggard face and thick thatch of white-blond hair looked her over, taking in her dirty, ripped dress and the bloody gouge on her hand. "Miss Letty?" he asked again, as if still not quite sure that he had the right person. "My name is Geoffrey Stanhope. I am your mother's, er... friend."

Jessalyn shook her head once in a sudden jerking movement. "But I don't..." Something—a sort of bewildered hope, mixed with fear—squeezed at her chest. "My mother?"

"Yes." A door opened behind Jessalyn, and the stranger's gaze fluttered away from her. His eyes reminded her of a deer's, soft and brown and liquid. "After he—after your father died, your mother, uh... chose to abide with me," he said.

"Aye, the pair of ye have been abidin' together in sin for years." Lady Letty came toward them, her cane rapping on the stones that paved the courtyard. The old woman's speech had taken on a rough country burr, straight from the slag heaps of Wheal Ruthe. "Is the slut worth it? Do ee get much pleasure from a woman who'd make a cuckold of her lawful husband on his very deathbed an' then desert her only babe?"

The man licked his lips, which were full and soft, almost womanly. His deer-eyed gaze fastened on to Jessalyn's face. "We couldn't help falling in love, your mother and I. I would have made her my wife after he—after your father died. But I was married myself to—to someone else." A soft sigh blew out his lips. "Am still married to someone else." He turned to Lady Letty and held up his hand as if pleading with her to understand. "Emma and I... Our love could never be sanctioned by God and society, but we couldn't bear to be apart. We thought the child would be better off here with you. Away from the scandal of our, uh... liaison."

Lady Letty snorted. "An' so she was. Better off. What are ye doing here now? What does yer slut want?" Her out-thrust chin suddenly trembled, and her arm wrapped hard around Jessalyn's waist as if she could physically bind her granddaughter to her. "She'll not be getting the gel back. I'll see her dead first."

"She is dead. Emma's dead." His voice cracked on the last word. His gaze went to Jessalyn. "I thought you should know." His head swiveled back to Lady Letty. "The girl is her daughter after all. She has a right to know."

Jessalyn couldn't move or speak. The Sarn't Major had entered the paddock and was walking toward Letty's Hope, dragging a blanket behind him. For a moment she wondered what was wrong with the filly, why she was lying so still like that in the middle of the paddock. And then she remembered: The filly was dead.

The stranger was talking again, and she struggled to pay attention. "There's a house in London," he said. "By right, it belongs to you, for your father purchased it shortly before he... It's heavily mortgaged, of course, but there it is. We had expenses. It's expensive, living in Town. There was also some money, but I'm afraid most of it's long spent. And horses, Thoroughbreds. We had to have a dispersal sale a while back, just before she got... sick, and so most of the good stock is gone. Still, she's left you a racing stable of a sort."

"Why?" Jessalyn said.

The man blinked, and his lips sucked inward as he drew in a deep breath. "Well, you are her daughter. Her only child."

"She never came to see me. Not once. She didn't even write to me. Why?"

His gaze shifted away from hers. Color mottled his cheeks like two identical raspberry stains, and his big hands crushed the brim of his beaver hat. "The scandal. We thought... she thought..." His breath eased out of him in a sigh. "No matter what, you are still her daughter."

But it hadn't been the scandal, Jessalyn thought. Not one visit, not one letter in ten years. She had been in the way. In the way of her mother and her mother's life with this man.

"Not anymore," Jessalyn said to the stranger. Her mother's lover. The kitten was purring now. Jessalyn rubbed his furry body against her cheek. He was warm, and she could feel the fluttering beat of his heart. "I haven't been her daughter for a long time now."

She turned away from the stranger and walked toward the paddock and the Sarn't Major. And the blanket-covered mound that had been a filly called Letty's Hope.

The wind was quick and salty. It fluttered the ribbons on her hat and flattened her skirt, revealing her leggy slimness.

The tide had gone out recently. The man in scarlet regimentals limped toward her across the wet sand, leaving footprints like scars behind him. He stopped beside her, not speaking. She didn't acknowledge his presence but stared out at a sea that was striated with ripples of colors, from green to blue to the cool, clear gray of her eyes.

"Miss Letty? Becka told me about your mother, and about the filly. I—"

"Don't tell me you're sorry. Whatever you do, don't tell me you're sorry." Wisps of hair blew across the sunburned skin of her cheeks, and the smell of her came to him, of sun-drenched beach and hot, earthy longing. He felt overwhelmed with an aching need to gather her into his arms and hold her.

But holding her was not all he ached to do to her, and that was the trouble.

The sun moved from behind a cloud, tinting her skin so that the blush of freckles across her cheekbones glinted like gold dust. His gaze traced the sharp flare of a brow, the straight slope of her nose, the deep indentation above her wide and puffy lips. He had never thought her pretty, but he saw now that in a few years she would be strikingly beautiful. It didn't matter anyway, for the things about her that so intrigued him were already there: the sunbeam smile, that unrefined, raucous laugh, her gamine warmth. She drank of life. She gulped it down as if it were a big glass of bubbling champagne and then held out her hands for more, laughing... all the while laughing.

She was not laughing now.

The sea brushed the beach in a gentle caress. She turned to look at him, searching his face. "Why are you here, Lieutenant Trelawny?"

She spoke as if her throat hurt, and her heart was in her eyes, those deep eyes that were the wells of her soul. Life hadn't taught her yet how to keep her feelings hidden. Life hadn't been cruel, until now.

"I've come to tell you good-bye," he said, deliberately making his voice cold. "I'm off to Plymouth, where I'll board a ship to rejoin my regiment."

She stared at him a moment longer, then looked away. "There are some officers, surely, who take their wives to the West Indies."

"Only a fool or a man with little regard for his wife. It is too unhealthy a clime for women."

"But there are some, surely, who have wives who wait at home for them."

"Those that can afford wives."

"I do not need much."

Something swelled within his chest so that he could barely breathe, let alone speak. What she was asking, what she wanted, was impossible. It couldn't have been more impossible than if he were a shepherd and she a bal- maiden turned into a hare. At least then they could have had their nights of the blue moon.

He reached across the short distance that separated them and brushed her face with his fingertips, then wished he hadn't. For just that briefest of touches fired a raging hunger in him that left him trembling.

But that was all it was. Hunger. He could appease that hunger now; he could bear her down onto the sand and take her and then walk away without looking back, because he knew all about hunger. And he knew himself. And she... she thought she loved him, but what she thought wasn't real and never lasted, couldn't last. Because love didn't exist in the first place. It was an appetite, nothing more, an appetite satisfied in bed and gone by morning. He'd known this truth since he was twelve years old.

"You need more than I can give you," he said, shocked at the way the words tore at his throat. "You deserve more."

"But you don't understand." She turned to face him, pain and yearning stark in her eyes. "I don't want to save myself for some dull, steady man. A man who will marry me but love his mistress, who will go to church on Sundays and ride to hounds on Fridays, and be drunk on port every other night of the week. The sort of man who will give his servants a whole extra shilling come Christmas and expect to be thanked for it."

"Who is this paragon? Perhaps I ought to marry him myself."

"Oh, God..." A ragged gasp of laughter tore out her throat, turning into a sob. But the enormous gray eyes that looked at him shone with a fierce light. They were filled with an emotion he didn't understand, something that struck terror deep within his soul. "I want to spend my life with you," she said. "You. With your hard and sulky mouth, and your rough and gentle hands, and that wonderful, irreverent way you have of looking at the world. I want the man who built an iron horse and then dared to take me for a ride on it...."

She was looking at him as if he were the most marvelous man who'd ever lived. She had no idea what he was really like, the things he'd done.... And she had no earthly idea of what it was to follow the drum, moving from post to post, living in hovels and shacks, in tents, trying to stretch his meager pay from month to month as the babies started to come. If he took her with him, she'd only end up leaving him someday. The day the hunger died. He knew that as surely as he knew that night followed even the sunniest of days, and warm, sweet summers turned into bitter winters.

He drew in a deep, steadying breath. "You don't know—"

"I do! I know what you are going to say, and it doesn't matter." Tears started from her eyes. She dashed them away with the back of her hand. "You are the man I want to marry. I don't care what you are, or what you think you are, or how young I am, or how old you feel. I don't care if we're poor—"

"Well, I do! When I marry, it will be 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."

She stood still, and there was no sound but the whisper of the water across sand and stone. Yet there was a scream on her face, as if he'd ripped out her heart.

"But I love you," she said at last, so low her voice might have been a part of the suck and curl of the sea. But he didn't need to hear the words to feel them.

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

He spun around and left her, while he still had the courage. He was running away from her, away from all that she thought she could be for him. And all that he knew he could never be for her.

"McCady!" she cried after him. "You can't leave me, I love you!"

He lengthened his stride. It was better to hurt her once, cleanly, than to hurt her over the years a thousand times, in a thousand ways. That warm and shining light he'd seen in her eyes wouldn't last. It would die the day the hunger died. She would hate him then and hate herself for having been such a fool. And he didn't want to be around when that happened because he would not be able to bear it.

He stopped halfway up the cliff path and turned to look back. She stood with her shoulders hunched, her face buried in her hands, and he knew she was crying. He must have heard that wonderful rusty laugh of hers a thousand times this summer. He wished his last memory of her didn't have to be one of tears... tears over him. She was just so bloody young, too young to know better than to let herself care for a man like him. Young enough still that she would get over him.

He had meant to keep walking, but at the top of the bluff he paused. She stood straight and tall now, her slender figure a stark and lonely sentinel against the milky Cornish sky. The wind whipped the trailing ribbons of the hat that he had given her, the hat with its posy of yellow primroses. He supposed there would come a day when he could take a walk along a beach of white sand and blue water and not think of this moment.

But he knew that no matter how long he lived, he would never be able to bear the sight of yellow primroses.