Once in a Blue Moon

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 13

Jessalyn stood frozen in horror as men and horses surged around her, spilling onto the track. She took one stumbling step, and then another. It felt as if she were in a nightmare, running through the boggy turf and getting nowhere. Blue Moon still lay on the ground, unmoving. God, oh, God, he's dead, Jessalyn thought. Topper was crawling through the mud toward the horse, his mouth open in a shout that Jessalyn couldn't hear over the shrieks and the pounding of hooves, over the pounding of her own heart.

Suddenly Blue Moon jerked into movement, struggling back onto his feet. Jessalyn sobbed with relief. He'd only had the wind knocked out of him by the fall. But Rum Chaser still rolled on the ground, thrashing and neighing in pain. His jockey, bright green and yellow taffeta now smeared with mud, swayed groggily to his feet. The earl of Caerhays stood stiff and still beside him, his head bent beneath the pelting rain.

The clang of the referee's bell rent the wet air, announcing Candy Dancer the winner. Followed seconds later by a flapping noise, like sheets in the wind, of the pigeons carrying the results to London.

Someone handed McCady a pistol.

"No!" Jessalyn cried, stumbling toward him.

He swung around to her, and she recoiled from the killing rage that blazed in his eyes.

His hand lashed out, his fingers biting deep into her arm. "Come here, damn you," he snarled, hauling her roughly up against him. "You started it, so you may as well see the bloody end of it."

The great Thoroughbred's cannon was broken so badly the jagged edge of the bone had torn through the thin flesh. He was screaming from the pain. "Oh, God," Jessalyn cried, turning her head aside.

McCady put the barrel of the pistol against her cheek and forced her head back around. He brought his face close to hers. His breath washed over her, hot as a caress, but his voice was like shards of ice. "You watch, dammit."

For one suspended moment he kept the pistol pressed hard against her cheek. Her whole face felt stiff and cold. Rum Chaser's screams faded until she heard only a rushing in her ears, like the surf at End Cottage. Oddly the smells she breathed in were homey ones, of horse sweat and crushed grass.

He turned and pointed the gun at Rum Chaser's head and squeezed the trigger.

The sound of the shot smacked against her. Jessalyn flinched, but she didn't cry out. The chestnut's big body jerked and was still. The air stank of sulfur. She lifted her gaze to McCady's face. She could see his fury in every hardened line of his body; she could feel it radiating from him in waves, like heat from a Midsummer's Eve bonfire. But she couldn't understand why it was directed at her.

His voice slashed through the air like a dueling blade. "How much did you win?"

"Win! We lost a hundred and twenty-five pounds, plus the race stake. We lost."

"I don't believe you lost a bloody farthing." His grip tightened, squeezing so tightly she had to set her jaw to keep from whimpering. "Either your jockey was got at or you paid him yourself to crimp the race, because you had your blunt riding on Candy Dancer instead. You probably planned to lose the easy way by running a dog race, but when Rum Chaser entered at the last minute, you had to take more drastic measures. And this is the result." He flung the pistol to the ground, next to his dead horse.

Jessalyn stared up at him, her eyes wide and blank with shock. He was a peer, and thus his status would carry weight with the Jockey Club, the awesome body that regulated the English racing scene. If the club were to put any credence into his accusation, she and Gram could be warned off Newmarket Heath, even permanently barred from the Turf altogether.

"No!" she protested. "I didn't... I would never—"

He flung his head back and then with a vicious jerk brought her crashing against his chest. His eyes flared, and his gaze fell on her mouth. His head dipped down, and she had the strangest thought that he was about to kiss her. But then he thrust her away as if touching her disgusted him. He spun around and strode through the crowd.

She had to run to catch up with him. Grasping his arm, she pulled him around to face her. "How dare you accuse me of such a hateful thing! I am not to blame if you were such a fool as to wager a thousand pounds on a horse that wasn't fit."

He pried her fingers loose from his sleeve, then dropped her hand. "I know what I saw, and that collision was deliberate."

"Indeed?" She lifted her chin. "Go ahead and make your accusation then. But after I have proven you wrong, I shall expect a public apology for the slur you have cast upon the Letty name with your smearing lies." Her lower lip curled into a sneer. "Or is honor a concept too far beyond a Trelawny's understanding? My lord."

His face whitened, and a muscle bunched along his jaw. He stared back at her with eyes as stony black as the granite cliffs of Cornwall. Then he spun around on his heel and walked away. She watching him go, feeling battered and bruised inside, but this time she had matched him blow for blow. You are silly Miss Letty no longer, she thought, feeling proud of her woman's self.

But unfortunately, when it came to McCady Trelawny, her treacherous heart had a tendency to care nothing of pride.

The Sarn't Major had taken charge of Blue Moon, putting a hood over his head to calm him, layering rugs over his sweating back. Jessalyn ran up as the trainer was about to lead the Thoroughbred off to the thatched lean-tos where the horses were temporarily stabled on race day. The bay's left hind leg was curled up beneath his belly, the big splayed hoof only skimming the ground.

She searched the Sarn't Major's grim face, appealing to him mutely with her eyes to tell her that the injury wasn't serious.

He shook his head. "Got a badly twisted hock," he stated in his usual terse manner.

Jessalyn ran her hand over the swollen joint. She was shocked at the heat that radiated from the horse's flesh; it was like holding out her palm to a coal fire.

"He'll not be racin' anymore this year," the Sarn't Major said. "Tes a proper question whether or no he'll ever be fit t' run again."

Jessalyn pressed her face into Blue Moon's neck, rubbing her cheek against the rough wool of the rug. As if sensing her despair, the horse turned his head and looked at her, his great intelligent eyes staring calmly at her out of the black hood. Jessalyn blinked hard against a rush of tears.

She asked the Sarn't Major if he had seen the accident.

"Aye," he said.

"Do you think... did it look to you as if it were deliberate?"

"Aye," he said again. "It had the look of bein' a crimp race."

"But Topper wouldn't—"

"Nay. Not Topper. I said it had the look of bein* a crimp race. I didn't say 'twere one."

Jessalyn bought a meat pie and rice pudding wrapped in paper, paying a boy a shilling to carry the food and a message to Lady Letty. She went with the Sarn't Major to see Blue Moon safely settled in his box with a bag of oats and a nourishing dram of canary wine. Then she went looking for Topper.

She spotted him talking with the winning jockey beside the gibbetlike weighing scales. He had already changed out of his colorful riding taffeta, but his small, wiry body was still clothed as flamboyantly as a costermonger in an orange shirt, blue-checked waistcoat, yellow breeches, and purple neckerchief. A red felt hat, sporting a pheasant feather, covered his snow blond hair.

Jessalyn thought Topper loved such flashy togs because so much of his early life had been spent in a world of gray and black. The youth was one of Lady Letty's strays. One day four years ago, shortly after they had moved into the London house that Jessalyn inherited from her mother, the parlor chimney had caught on fire and they'd had to hire a man to put it out. The chimney sweep had brought a climbing boy along with him to send up the narrow flue. The child was naked and emaciated, caked with soot and grime. His hideously callused knees and elbows were scraped raw and bleeding; his enormous blue eyes filled with fear and a dull acceptance. Lady Letty had taken one look and bought the boy off the sweep for two guineas. They had thought his hair was black until they'd given him a bath.

They had also thought him about six or seven—he was so small—but he told them he was sure that he was at least thirteen. He had vague memories of another life, a cottage in the country and a white pony. He didn't know his name, but the sweep had called him Topper. It was the Sarn't Major who had first put Topper on a horse and had discovered the boy's natural balance and sensitive hands.

Jessalyn caught Topper's eye now and waved. He bade good-bye to the other jockey with a jaunty salute, walking around the weighing scales. Jessalyn came from the other side to meet him, almost planting her half boot in a pile of steaming horse dung.

"Ere now, watch yer step, Miss Jessalyn," he said in thick accents that revealed his rookery childhood. As he reached out to assist her, a grimace of pain twisted his elfin face.

"Oh, Topper. Were you hurt in the fall?"

"I got me a gammy arm, but I reckon I'll live." His mobile mouth split into a wide grin, revealing the gap in his front teeth that had been lost to the butt end of a whip during his first race. Missing teeth were a badge of honor among the knights of the pigskin. "Don't tell Becka about it, ye mind. She'll dose me up with one of them boluses she's always tryin' to force down me throat." He pulled a face. "Gawblimey, some of that stuff tastes worse'n rat bane. Ye got a frown on ye down t' yer knees, Miss Jessalyn. Blue Moon's got a gimp hock, 'tis true, but he's a game un. He'll run again, ye'll see."

She forced a smile. "Topper, Rum Chaser's owner is accusing you of deliberately causing that accident in order to throw the race."

Topper turned his head aside and spit through the hole in his teeth like a coachman. "Too risky, by half. If I was to crimp a race, see, I'd nobble me horse with a physic afore-hand. Duck shot made up with putty or opium balls ud do the trick. To ride foul is bleedin' crazy, not t' mention dangerous to me 'ealth."

He squinted at her through his pale lashes and wrinkled his sharp nose. "I ride honest, and ye can say as much to his bleedin' lordship. It was his knight what caused the bust-up, not me. It was his man what was boozed so deep he was lolling in the saddle like a walleyed dog right before the off. Mebbe it was his high and mighty lordship who had a bit laid off on the nag what won."

Jessalyn closed her eyes, picturing the scene. Rum

Chaser's jockey had certainly looked dazed. He could have been drunk, but he also could have simply been concussed from the fall. And McCady—Lord Caerhays... there was no doubting that his fury was genuine, a fury born of despair. He had behaved like a man badly dipped, who had wagered more than he could afford to lose.

A sheet of wind-driven rain slapped her face, and she rocked on her feet, shivering. For the first time she realized how wet and cold she was.

Topper's voice came to her as if from the bottom of a mine pit, and she opened her eyes. "... I promised me mates I'd meet 'em at the Laughing Footman for a tot or two of the wet stuff."

She remembered suddenly that Topper's share of the winning purse would have been ten pounds, and she fumbled with her reticule. "I have a few shillings with me."

He stilled her hand. "Never ye mind, Miss Jessalyn. I've plenty of tin."

With a final grin he sauntered away, whistling through his broken teeth. Frowning, Jessalyn watched him go. Topper could never have deliberately sent Blue Moon crashing into Rum Chaser. He loved the horse too much to risk hurting him.

No, Topper couldn't have crimped the race. Angry and disgusted with herself for allowing McCady—Lord Caerhays to plant the ugly suspicion in her mind, she hurried to where Gram waited for her in their shabby rented cabriolet.

A lone man leaned against the betting post, deserted now in murky twilight. At the sight of him, her step slowed. Shadows darkened the hollows beneath his flaring cheekbones, and his eyes glittered at her, black and empty. He had looked like that the first time she had seen him. A fallen angel.

She turned her back on him and walked away, her head high.

Clarence Tiltwell could never enter Brooks's without feeling immense satisfaction. It was as if his membership in the exclusive men's club had become a symbol of all that he had accomplished. He would stand inside the marbled entrance hall and breathe deeply of the odor of beeswax, scented candles, and old money. And he would think of his father. Or rather, of the man who was nominally his father.

It pleased him, oh, how it pleased him, to know that Henry Tiltwell—with his rough country accent and tutworker's hands—would never be allowed through the club's hallowed front door.

That evening Clarence's thoughts did not dwell long on Henry but moved inevitably to the other man who might have been his father. The first thing he had done upon becoming a member was to search for the earl's name in the betting book. It appeared many times, along with those of his three sons. The Trelawnys were profligate gamblers to a man. Why, just this afternoon, or so he had heard, the twelfth earl of Caerhays had hazarded an incredible one thousand pounds on a horse that had not even managed to cross the finishing post.

Before long, Clarence thought—with grim satisfaction and a piercing quiver of guilty joy—the only trace of a Trelawny to be found in Brooks's would be their names, fading on the pages of the betting book.

A servant appeared and relieved Clarence of his walking stick, hat, and gloves. He crossed the hall, his bootheels clicking on black and white tiles. He paused to check his appearance in a gilt-framed mirror, adjusting his intricately tied cravat and smoothing back his blond hair. He mounted the stairs, past Roman busts resting stone-faced in their niches. Tonight he felt like those Roman Caesars—a conqueror.

He entered a small parlor on the second floor. The only other occupants were two men checking the Weatherby Racing Calendar off against the studbook. They nodded a greeting, then went back to their serious calculation of the horses and their odds. Clarence asked the wine steward to broach a bottle of the best port.

The room was all masculine refinement: crimson damask wallpaper and red brocade curtains. Clarence flicked back the tails of his coat and sat down in one of a matching set of tufted green leather chairs before the fire. He adjusted the buff and blue cockade in his lapel, which proclaimed him to be an avid member of the Whig party.

Two years ago he had been elected a member of Parliament, representing the Cornish borough of St. Michael. He had an income of more than thirty thousand pounds a year, and in another two years he expected that figure to double. Recently he had purchased a house on Berkeley Square between a baron and a marquess, where soon he hoped to be setting up his nursery with Jessalyn as his wife. And now, something he hadn't even allowed himself to think of before, something he wanted so badly that he knew already he would be devastated if it didn't come to pass.... His patron had hinted over dinner last night that a knighthood might one day be forthcoming.

A rush of exquisite pleasure thrummed through him. A knighthood. Sir Clarence Tiltwell. Sir Clarence.

He turned his head at the soft fall of footsteps on the green and red patterned carpet. The club's majordomo approached, followed by the tall dark presence of the twelfth earl of Caerhays.

"This way, my lord," the majordomo said.

My lord. Clarence noted the deferential way the servant treated his titled cousin, which was slightly less deferential than the way the servant had treated him. Oh, it was nothing overt—a flicker of an eyelid, a certain set of the mouth —but Clarence was aware of it. He swallowed down a sour taste in his mouth.

The cousins' eyes met, and McCady's dazzling smile broke across his tanned face, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. As always, Clarence found himself irresistibly drawn to that smile. He looked up at his cousin, and his chest felt tight with a strange and convoluted mixture of love and hate, envy and longing.

"Mack. Sit down, please. Some port?" he said as McCady settled with lazy grace into the facing wing chair. The rich leather made a sighing sound as it absorbed his weight. Clarence deliberately hadn't addressed his cousin by his tide. The truth was he couldn't choke it past his throat. A knight, he thought with bitterness, was nothing to an earl.

McCady leaned forward, reaching for the port, and gaslight from the cut-glass luster shimmered off the gold loop that pierced his ear. Clarence frowned. An English gentleman should never make such an uncivilized spectacle of himself. If I were the earl... he thought, as he had thought so often in his life. But no matter what he did, no matter how lofty his accomplishments, nothing would ever correct the appalling injustice surrounding the circumstances of his birth.

But then Clarence's frown faded as he reminded himself of the power he had over the man sitting across from him. His cousin, his brother...

"I am afraid I have some unwelcome news," Clarence said.

McCady tilted back his head and finished off the wine in one swallow. He said nothing, but the whitening of the knuckles on the hand that clutched the glass revealed his inner tension. By now, Clarence thought, hoped, McCady Trelawny, the earl of Caerhays, must be growing very desperate indeed.

The cousins had seen a lot of each other during the last two years. Since McCady had formed the British Railway Company, the first of its kind, for the conveyance of passengers and freight between Falmouth and London. Since Parliament had set up a committee to oversee the scheme. Since Clarence Tiltwell had maneuvered for himself an appointment on that committee.

Thus far Parliament had granted the brC permission to lay only a single, experimental line between Plymouth and

Exeter, a distance of some forty miles. Yet the cost of laying those forty miles of track had been staggering, for it had required huge engineering feats: a viaduct, numerous cuttings and embankments. The tunnel alone had taken almost six months to dig—all done by navvies with pick and shovel. It was an enormous gamble for McCady and his company. For only if the committee deemed the experiment viable would Parliament grant the brC the right to build the remainder of the line.

The committee, Clarence thought, my committee, had the power of life and death over McCady Trelawny's railway. Over McCady's dream.

"A division has developed within the committee," Clarence now said, his gaze focused on his cousin's taut face, "a division between those favoring steam power locomotives to operate the new railway and those who want the more traditional method of rope haulage by a fixed engine."

McCady's arrogant mouth tightened slightly. "Rope haulage? You cannot be serious."

"Very serious, I'm afraid. We have voted that the way to resolve the disagreement is to hold trials to determine which method is most effective."

McCady muttered a foul word beneath his breath, and Clarence bit back a smile.

"You can still build your locomotive and run it in the trials," Clarence said. "But others will be allowed to compete as well. The trials will be held in August, over twenty miles of the completed portion of the line. There will be rules and stipulations—I won't go into those now. The winner will be granted the license from Parliament allowing him to supply the British Railway Company with the engines necessary to operate the public tramway."

"That contract was to come to me," McCady said, his voice deceptively soft, and Clarence felt a clenching of fear in the pit of his stomach. He would rather have faced a regiment of highwaymen on Hounslow Heath than McCady Trelawny in an angry and dangerous mood.

Clarence wet his lips. "There are those on the committee—"

"Bugger your bloody committee."

"—who don't trust your judgment," Clarence went on. The fear was fading; he mustn't forget that the power was all his now. This wasn't a knoll in Belgium, and McCady couldn't slash through his enemies with a sword. "They find it difficult to put their faith in an ex-lieutenant from a rather unfashionable line regiment, just recently come into a bankrupted title. A title you inherited from a brother so reviled for his degeneracy that even the devil would cut him dead if he met him on the street. A brother who shot himself, leaving twenty thousand pounds' worth of gaming vowels that have yet to be paid."

"I am not my brother. And the vowels will be paid."

With what? Clarence wondered, though he didn't say so aloud. "Of course, you are not the complete rakeshame your brother was." He allowed himself a small smile. "But then neither can you claim to be a saint. In truth, there are only one or two on the committee whose feelings against you are so personal. The others merely believe steam locomotion is dangerous and unworkable. You must admit it has not proven very effective thus far."

"That is because it has never been given a chance—" McCady cut himself off. He stared at Clarence with a furious intensity that lifted the fine hairs on the younger man's neck. "Are you one of those others, Clarey? Dammit, I deserve that contract. The rail line wouldn't exist if it weren't for me. I built the bloody thing!"

The other two men looked up from their studbook as McCady's harsh voice disturbed the genteel silence. "Shhh," one hissed. McCady cast a look in their direction that said, Bugger off. He had never cared what others thought of him. There were times, many times when Clarence envied his cousin the freedom that such indifference must bring him.

"There is no need to shout at me," Clarence said, pitching his voice low and hoping his cousin would follow suit. "You can be assured that I argued your point of view. But we must tread warily, Mack. The truth is, Parliament are still very nervous about this whole railway affair. And there are powerful interests opposing it most vigorously—landowners, barge- and stagecoach operators, toll collectors... well, I hardly need name them to you."

"Christ, Clarey." McCady leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He looked like a man with his back to a cracking dike, trying to hold back a flooding tide with his fingertips. "I cannot wait until August for that contract. I need to raise ten thousand quid by the first of July to meet the interest on my notes or the brC goes under, and I go with it."

Clarence's chest puffed with righteous anger. "And did you think the way out of your difficulty was to take the thousand pounds you did have and hazard it all on a deuced horse?"

The reckless smile of the born rebel flashed across McCady's face. "Desperate circumstances require desperate measures. If the bloody nag had won..." He lowered his head, thrusting his fingers through his hair. "Ah, hell, Clarey."

Clarence looked from his cousin's bent head into the dark, winking red eye of his port, hiding the satisfaction he felt. He brought the glass to his lips, savoring the fruity bite of the wine on his tongue. Clarence walked past Fleet Prison nearly every day; he had stared often at the poor wretches thrusting their tin cups through the iron bars, begging for pennies. Pray remember us poor debtors...

A sudden, sick elation filled him as he reached for the decanter, pouring them both more wine. An ancient name and tide would not spare McCady Trelawny from conviction in a bankruptcy court. And for a man of his fierce arrogance and pride, such a place as Fleet Prison would break him. The way you broke a seasoned hickory stick... by putting your foot on it and pushing hard and slowly, until it cracked with a noise like a scream.

"I saw Jessalyn Letty today."

The statement, coming from nowhere, so startled Clarence that he jerked, nearly knocking over the decanter as he went to set it back on the table. In all these years, not since that ghastly summer, had McCady ever once mentioned Jessalyn. Clarence tried to keep his face blank, but he doubted he succeeded very well. "Really? And where was that?"

"Newmarket."

Clarence frowned. He might have known McCady would come across her there. It illustrated just the sort of scaff and raff she exposed herself to by frequenting the racing scene. He bridled at the thought of all the money wasted on those so-called Thoroughbreds that Jessalyn had inherited from her mother. Coddled in their expensive lodgings, eating their heads off, all for a chance in a few races a year, which they invariably lost. He laid the blame for the entire nonsense at Lady Letty's door. Once Jessalyn was his wife, he would put a stop to it. He would dispose of every one of those worthless nags and forbid her to set foot within a mile of a racecourse.

"I suppose she lost as well," Clarence said, his frown deepening. Jessalyn's propensity for gambling was another thing he would curb once he became her husband.

McCady shrugged. "Miss Letty and I did not part on the best ol terms five years ago, and thus our reunion was not a congenial one. Pity that, for she grew up to be exceptionally beautiful."

McCady toyed with the stem of his wineglass, looking almost bored, yet there was a brooding set to his mouth, and strange shadows moved within the dark depths of his eyes. Clarence felt a shudder of alarm. McCady might have scrupled to seduce Jessalyn when she was only sixteen, but at twenty-one she would be fair game. That terrible summer would start all over again. Once more he would be forced to stand aside and watch while the girl he loved succumbed to that powerful and degenerate Trelawny charm.

But not this time... He was no longer the calf-hearted boy he had been that long-ago summer. Now he was rich and powerful in his own right, and Jessalyn Letty was his.

He felt his lips stretching into a tight smile as a place deep within him grew hard and cold. "What a happy coincidence that you should mention Miss Letty, Mack. Indeed, you might wish to offer me congratulations, for I have just this week asked Jessalyn to do me the honor of becoming my wife and—"

The fragile port glass shattered in McCady's hand. Dark ruby wine dripped off his fingers, looking like blood.

Clarence half stood, holding out his handkerchief. "Good God, man, you don't know your own strength."

McCady took the delicately embroidered linen, wiping his hand. "She has accepted you?" he asked, his voice so devoid of emotion they might has well have been discussing the weather.

Leaning back, Clarence put three fingers into his fob pocket. He rubbed the two gold sovereigns he always carried for luck. "Of course, she has accepted, but then it was always understood between us that we would marry someday. We've set a date for the first week in June, but truthfully, old boy"—he leaned forward and put on a just-between-us-men smile—"I don't think I can wait that long."

McCady pinned him with his fierce gaze. Suddenly there was something dark and dangerous in the room, and Clarence wished he hadn't gone quite so far. After all, Mack had wanted Jessalyn very badly at one time.

"You will be good to her, Clarey," McCady said.

"I—I love her," Clarence answered, startled.

A ripple of feeling stirred in those dark eyes. "Don't tell me you love her. Love is a fool's emotion, another pretty word for lust and a moral excuse to fuck. All I care about is how you treat her. If you ever hurt her, Clarey, I will kill you."

"If anyone hurts her, it is likely to be you!" Clarence blurted, his face flushed.

"I will kill you," McCady said again.

Clarence stared into eyes that were utterly savage. The back of his neck and ears grew hot, and he jerked his gaze away. He cleared his throat. "I realize the committee's decision has been a bit of a setback for you," he said, desperate suddenly to shift McCady's mind off Jessalyn. "But it is really only a matter of stretching the company's assets until your locomotive can win the trial."

A fleeting emotion quivered in his cousin's face. Clarence suddenly had the unpleasant feeling that McCady was laughing at him.

Clarence cleared his throat again. "Unfortunately, with me serving on the committee, any financial transaction between us would present the appearance of collusion on our parts. Some could even look upon it as in the nature of a bribe." He studied the toe of his boot. "I have plenty of surplus capital lying around just itching to be invested in a worthy cause. A pity there isn't some way I could put it to good use and help you over this little setback." He lifted his head. "After all, Mack, even for cousins we are extraordinarily close. In some ways you are like a brother to me."

Clarence searched the face of the man across from him. Say it, he thought, look at me and acknowledge that I could be your brother.

McCady did look at him with those shadowed dark eyes, but he said nothing.

Clarence got to his feet, pulling out his repeater's watch and making a big show of being an important man with important things to do. He thought he should feel triumph, and he could not understand why all he felt was desolation.

At the door he paused and looked back at the man who stared, brooding, into the fire. He felt a pang at the sight of that harsh and elegant profile, the haughty cheekbone and sullen curve of that hard mouth. The beloved and hated face of his cousin... his brother.

Oh, McCady had found a few starry-eyed dupes willing to invest in his foolish dream, but the bulk of the debt was his. Only one bank had dared to risk lending the money to back his fledgling company.

Sometime toward the end of June, McCady Trelawny, the twelfth earl of Caerhays, would come to the Mechanics Bank of London, hat in hand, begging for an abeyance of the interest due on his promissory notes until the locomotive trials had been run. But he wouldn't get it. Clarence knew he wouldn't get it. Few people were aware of it, in truth, only two others knew of it besides himself, but...

Clarence Tiltwell owned the Mechanics Bank of London.