CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 19
His hot breath seared the back of her neck.
She ran down a path choked with brambly vines that burst into fiery pinwheels and sent sparks shooting into the air. She ran and ran, and still he was there, breathing against her neck, burning her skin. Tongues of hellfire licked at her legs, scorching, melting. A red-hot wind roared and crackled, consuming her screams. Yet she could hear him still, calling out to her, offering sweet promises she knew were lies, and she would not stop running, she would not turn around to look into his face. Because once she saw his face, she would be forever damned.
He laughed his devil's laugh. You may as well look, Jessalyn, oh, yes. Because you cannot escape me. You can never escape me. You surrendered your soul to me when you were sixteen, and I own you now. So you may as well look...
He seized her around the waist, enveloping her in a lover's embrace, and where he touched her she turned into fire. He spun her around, and his hot breath bathed her face, and though she kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, she knew he smiled his devil's smile. Mine. At last, at last you are mine... kiss me, Jessalyn. Become one with me and you will live forever. Her will dissolved, betrayed by old powers, dark longings. She opened her eyes and looked into bright sunbursts floating in black pools, burning sunbursts, devouring sunbursts. His eyes, his eyes, McCady's eyes...
She screamed...
And woke up in hell.
The wall at the foot of her bed was a sheet of fire. Thirsty flames licked at the old silk paper melting it into instant ash. Black smoke billowed like wind-tossed clouds. Orange and yellow lights danced, reflected in the looking glass and windowpanes.
She sat up, blinking in confusion, not sure if she was dreaming still. Then she felt the heat and sucked in a breath choked with smoke, and she knew the fire was real. Throwing off the bedcovers, she leaped from the bed.
"Gram!"
At the door she paused. Smoke curled beneath the threshold in ghostly fingers. Flickers of eerie red light shone on the polished floor. Her hand reached out, hovering, afraid of what lay on the other side of the door.
The brass latch was so hot it seared the skin off her palms. She screamed from the pain and from terror, flinging open the door. The flames, fed by fresh air, flared with a whoosh.
The sudden fierce blast of heat drove her back, sucking the breath from her lungs. The fire hissed along the black oak floorboards, raising blisters that popped and curled like thick boiling soup.
She plunged through the flames and ran down the smoldering Turkey carpet to Lady Letty's room. Heat undulated in waves from the front stairwell. A pall of ocherous smoke hugged the ceiling. In the kitchen below, something was whistling and popping like the fireworks at Vauxhall Gardens.
Jessalyn reached for the latch, whimpering in expectation of the pain, but although the metal was hot, it wasn't burning. She pushed open the door and slammed it quickly behind her.
The fire had not reached this room yet, but the smoke was so bad it was like trying to peer through a wool blanket. Years' worth of varnish in the wood paneling released noxious fumes that blinded her eyes and tore at her throat, stealing her breath. Choking, Jessalyn groped her way to the bed.
It was empty.
"Gram!"
She fell to her hands and knees, searching the floor with her outstretched hands. Gram wasn't in the room, she wasn't here, oh, God, what if she left and Gram was still in here somewhere, unconscious, suffocating, burning...
The ceiling above her head exploded into flames.
"Gram!"
Sobbing, Jessalyn pushed herself half upright. She banged into the nightstand by her grandmother's bed, bruising her hipbone. She didn't even feel it. Pain was everywhere, with every breath.
Something clawed at her ankle, and she screamed before she realized it was Lady Letty. She fell back down to her knees again and wrapped her arms around the old woman's thin shoulders. She felt Lady Letty's chest jerk with her harsh breathing.
Streams of smoke were now pouring beneath the door. She tightened her grip on her grandmother. The old woman reached up, grasping her hand. "Leave me... too old..."
A jar of barley water sat on the nightstand above her. Jessalyn ripped pieces off the bottom of her night rail and soaked the cloth strips, tying one over her nose and mouth and doing the same for Gram. For a moment the sweet malty smell of barley filled her nostrils, but it was soon replaced by the smoke.
She hauled her grandmother upright as easily as she would lift a portmanteau. Fear and youth and determination made her strong.
Bearing almost all of Lady Letty's frail weight, Jessalyn carried her to the door. The only way out of her grandmother's bedchamber was into the hall and down the stairs. The room's large double mullioned windows overlooked the courtyard, a straight two-story drop onto granite stone. She could perhaps survive such a fall with only a broken bone or two, but not Gram.
Jessalyn staggered through the flickering tongues of fire, bent over, half dragging Lady Letty toward the stairs. Her throat was raw. Every time she swallowed it felt as if she were eating the flames. The heat seared the inside of her lungs and roasted her skin. Her ears hurt from the roaring noise the fire made, louder than any wind, louder than the angriest of seas.
Snakes of flame curled up the stair banisters and slithered along the steps and risers. Jessalyn stopped and looked down, and it was like staring deep into the heart of a blast furnace. The fire was a living thing. Red and orange and yellow flames fed and consumed and went on to feed again, growing ever brighter and hotter and hungrier. The world below had taken on a red glow, as if it had been submerged in a pool of blood.
Lady Letty dug her nails into Jessalyn's arms, shaking her. "Can't get out that way, gel," she choked.
Jessalyn blinked and shuddered. She looked down and saw only death. Panic squeezed out what little air she had left in her lungs. Gram was right, they would never make it down the stairs and out the front door alive. There remained only her room. It was a short drop from the window onto the roof that sheltered the front parlor, and a longer drop to the ground, but to dirt, not stone.
They turned back. A fiery beam fell from the ceiling, barely missing Jessalyn's head. She didn't even see it. She burned her hand on the door latch again; this time she made not a sound. The old-fashioned box bed, where she had gone to sleep last night and all those nights of her childhood, was now a flaming pyre. She propped Lady Letty against the wall beside the window, the only wall not burning. Using a chair as a battering ram, she broke through the wooden casement and thick diamond panes The raucous fire drowned out the sound of shattering glass.
Jessalyn hefted Lady Letty over the ledge, out onto the roof, then turned back with some half-formed thought of trying to make it up to the attic to save Becka. Suddenly the door exploded, and flames roared into the room as if out of the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon. Searing heat buffeted her, throwing her back against the shattered window frame. Sobbing and choking, Jessalyn crawled on her hands and knees out onto the rough cedar shingles, and though she cut herself on the broken glass, she didn't feel it.
They stood together, straddling the blunted peak of the gently sloping hipped roof, sucking in drafts of sweet, cold air. The sea wind whipped at Jessalyn's hair and the ragged skirt of her night rail; it felt like ice against her blistered skin. But the fire blazed on in the parlor below, and the thin cedar strips beneath her bare feet were hot and growing hotter. She knew that it was only a matter of seconds before the shingles, too, would burst into flames.
A flutter of movement in the paddock below caught her eye, and she heard her name, snatched away by the wind.
"Becka!" she cried, shocked that it came out only a croak. "Get the ladder! In the stables!"
Becka was shouting and pointing. Jessalyn saw Prudence, the only horse still living at End Cottage, gallop out the open door of the stables, followed by a man with the ladder beneath his arm. She heard a sizzling crackle, felt a wave of heat break against her legs. The parlor roof had caught fire.
And then the man was on the burning roof with her, taking Gram from her arms. It was Duncan, the earl's manservant.
She followed him down the ladder. Her bare feet touched the earth, cool and moist, and her legs began to tremble. Her head reeled, and she swayed on her feet. "Miss Jessalyn!" Becka cried, seizing her around the waist.
"Oooh, Miss Jessalyn, don't ee faint here. Come over where 'tes safe."
Duncan carried Lady Letty to the grove of wild nut and hawthorn trees, out of harm's way of the flying cinders and choking smoke. Jessalyn, supported by Becka, followed.
He propped Lady Letty against the trunk of a tree. In the red glow cast by the fire, the old woman's face looked smeared with blood, and her gold-tasseled nightcap gave her a macabre look. Kneeling beside her, Jessalyn touched her cheek. "Are you all right, Gram?"
Lady Letty looked once at the blazing house, then turned her head aside. "Die..." She choked, her chest shuddering and jerking as she gasped for air. "Should have left me to die."
Fresh tears spilled from Jessalyn's burning eyes. She sat back on her heels, rocking, as the tears streamed down her cheeks. "Oh, Gram..."
Lady Letty's chest convulsed with another bout of racking coughs.
"The auld lady's swallowed a lot of smoke," Duncan said to Jessalyn, but she didn't seem to hear; she just kept rocking and weeping in a terrible silence. He straightened, and his big hands settled on Becka Poole's shoulders, pulling her around to face him. "Can ye run fast, lass?"
Becka swallowed hard and nodded.
"Run then and fetch the doctor."
Her eyes wide on his face, Becka nodded again. Duncan bent his head and planted a kiss that was hard and rough on her lips before he spun her around, giving her a little shove. "Off wi' ye then, my wee one."
Becka took off, running along the cliffs, just as a horse came galloping down the lane from the direction of Caerhays Hall. For a moment it seemed he would not stop, that the earl of Caerhays would send his horse plunging into the flames. Terrified by the fire, the animal reared so far back on his haunches his hind legs shot out from beneath him. The earl rolled off the horse's bare back and got to his feet, shouting. He threw back his head and bellowed like a man gone mad, "Jessalyn!"
Duncan reached him in time to stop him from dashing into the flaming house. He grasped Caerhays by the shoulders much as he had held Becka only moments ago. The earl wore only breeches and boots, and the manservant's fingers dug deep into hard flesh that was hot and slick with sweat.
"She's out, man. She's safe."
Dark eyes stared back at Duncan, crazed eyes that reflected the flames. The earl's head fell back, his lids squeezing shut, and his chest jerked once, hard, as if he were repressing a sob. Or a scream.
Something was screaming. Duncan flung his head back and looked up. A small orange cat paced the peak of the highest roof, yowling in fear and fury.
"Napoleon!"
Jessalyn Letty came flying out of the trees. By the time they understood what she was about, she was already halfway up the ladder. Duncan got to her first, hauling her back down. She flailed, sobbing hysterically. He wrapped his arms around her, trying to still her. The cat screeched.
Caerhays started up the ladder.
"Sir, no!" Duncan thrust Jessalyn away from him and grabbed the earl's boot. Caerhays kicked him in the chest and sent him staggering backward. "For mercy's sake, sir," Duncan shouted as the earl went over the top of the head step, "'tis only a cat."
Lord Caerhays swung around, and his mouth twisted into a crooked smile, a smile that was young and full of reckless bravado, and to Duncan's shock he felt himself smiling back. "What the hell, she loves the bloody thing," Caerhays said, and he ran up the slope of the flaming roof, the leather soles of his boots scrabbling for purchase on the burned and cracked shingles.
Bending at the knees, McCady swung his arms back and jumped up. He grabbed the edge of the cornice with his fingertips and hung there a moment, then jackknifed his legs and pulled himself onto the steep slope of the higher roof.
Flames and smoke swirled around him; it seemed impossible that he would not catch on fire. Something snapped inside Jessalyn then, and she came to herself. Horror widened her eyes as she understood the danger the man she loved had put himself into for her sake. "McCady, no!" she screamed. "Come back!"
It was unlikely he even heard her. He crawled up the burning roof, arms and legs splayed like a crab's. He hefted himself onto the peak, lying across the pointed edge. He stretched out a hand toward Napoleon, but the frightened cat scurried out of his reach. Balancing precariously, he stood up and walked along the peak, and his tall, broad-shouldered body was silhouetted against a sky that glowed orange like a sunrise. Napoleon crouched, gathering himself, preparing to leap onto the tall ornamented chimney stack. McCady lunged, seizing the cat by the scruff of its neck just as the ridgepole and rafters collapsed beneath him in a billow of fire.
"McCady!" Jessalyn screamed as he was swallowed by flames that shot into the sky like rockets. An arm wrapped around her waist, and she clawed at it. "McCady!" she screamed again, and it felt as if she were tearing her lungs out along with his name. She wanted to throw herself in the fire, to die with him. A pain gripped her, so intense she couldn't bear it. She turned her head, as if not seeing would make the pain go away, burying her face in the rough linen of Duncan's shirt.
It seemed an eternity of hell passed; then she felt Duncan shudder and heard the rumble of his voice echo within his chest. "Praise God."
She looked up. McCady Trelawny emerged out of the flames like a fallen angel passing through the gateway of hell, walking through what was left of her bedroom window, and struggling to hold on to a clawing, biting, yowling ball of singed orange fur.
She waited for him, laughing and crying, as he climbed down the ladder. He went to put the cat into her arms, like a trophy he had won in a joust, but Napoleon was having none of that. Scratching and hissing, he launched himself into the air and bolted for the trees.
Jessalyn ran her scorched palms over McCady's bare chest and arms, noting the bloody gouges left by Napoleon's claws and the raw blisters from the fire. "You silly pea goose, look at what you've done to yourself."
He gathered her to him, and they turned together to watch the fire consume what was left of End Cottage. The pretty yellow and red brick walls collapsed inward, sending a final flaming tower roaring into the sky. The faded purple settee where Gram always sat to take her afternoon tea, the beehive chair where Peaches once nursed her kittens before the kitchen hearth, a girl's straw bonnet decorated with a posy yellow primroses—all were gone now, reduced to ashes and memories.
She leaned against the hard wall of his chest and drew her strength from his. Later she would think this was wrong, to be in his arms, touching him. But in that moment there was no room for lust or passion, only for comfort.
This he gave her, while she stood within the circle made by his body and watched her childhood die.
Jessalyn's voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper. "Set? But who would want to set fire to End—"
A violent fit of coughing racked her chest, and she smothered her mouth with a wet handkerchief. Gentle fingers pushed the hair out of her face. "Here, drink this," McCady said.
Cupped in a strong, lean hand that was blistered as hers were from the fire, a glass of brandy appeared before her. She took the glass from him without meeting his eyes.
Their fingers touched. She drew back from his nearness, which was suddenly too overwhelming.
She took a huge swallow of the brandy and nearly choked again. The alcohol seared her raw throat but seemed to loosen some of the tightness in her chest. She took another swallow. "The Lettys have lived here for generations in peace with everyone," she croaked. "No one has a reason to burn down our house."
"Duncan believes he saw a man skulking about the kitchen wing at the time he noticed the fire. A big, shaggy-haired man dressed like a tinner."
Jessalyn repressed a shudder, hugging the wool blanket that she wore around her shoulders like a cloak. Beneath the blanket she had on only a tattered night rail, ripped and scorched. She had to remind herself that she was safe now, safe within the newly renovated library at Caerhays Hall. The room was chilly, but the grate remained empty; the earl had not called for a fire to be lit.
She could still smell smoke; it was in her hair, in her skin. Every inch of her body throbbed with pain, but her hands hurt the worst. She went to one of the tall French windows that looked north, toward End Cottage. Where End Cottage used to be. Columns of black smoke mushroomed against the bottom of clouds that were heavy and gray in the dawn sky. The wind sent water slashing against the panes, and the view before Jessalyn's eyes wavered. Too late it had started to rain.
She turned away from the window. She poured herself more brandy from the cut-glass decanter. As she returned the decanter to its place on a satinwood console table, the faceted crystal caught and reflected the candelabra flames, and she flinched. Her legs began to tremble, and she subsided into a nearby chair. Her hand shook as she brought the glass up to her lips, slopping brandy onto the blanket and just missing the chair's citron-striped chintz.
Dear life, I mustn't stain Emily's pretty new furniture,
Jessalyn thought wildly, barely suppressing a hysterical giggle.
The room had grown so silent she could hear the tick of the ormolu mantel clock and the rain beating against the windows. McCady Trelawny, wearing only his breeches and boots, had come riding like a demon out of the night to save her. He stood beside her now, half naked, and she could feel his seductive heat. He was like fire, she thought. Dangerous, destructive, beautiful. Tension thrummed through her like a high-pitched scream.
"Jessalyn." He touched her shoulder, and she flinched again.
Her singed hair fell back into her eyes, and she brushed it out of the way. She could not make her hands stop shaking. Her distracted gaze wandered around the room. "What was Duncan doing at End Cottage anyway?"
"He was visiting with your serving girl and—"
Her head snapped up. "Visiting Becka? At midnight? I will not allow this, my lord. Becka is a good girl, a decent girl, not some trollop to be taken advantage of by your valet, who is much too handsome to be allowed to run loose around the countryside—"
"Dammit, Jessalyn. Will you gather your scattered wits together and attend to what I'm saying?"
He turned abruptly away from her and threw himself into the leather chair that sat behind a heavy pedestal library table. He stretched his legs out, lacing his fingers behind his head, elbows spread wide, exposing the dark shadow of the hair beneath his arms, mysterious, erotic. Candlelight glinted off the sheen of sweat on his chest. Someone ought to tell him that earls do not have such chests, Jessalyn thought, muscled and brawny like a Billingsgate porter's. Her gaze jerked up to his dark angel's face, with its flaring cheekbones and arrogant mouth. His face that haunted her days and her nights.
Dizziness overwhelmed her, and she blinked. The brandy had gone straight to her head. She jerked her gaze away from his, as if appearing to be suddenly fascinated with the blue-patterned tobacco jar that sat at the far end of the tabletop. The room seemed too small.
"I hear what you are saying, my lord. The man who set the fire was Jacky Stout. It has to be he. He was caught poaching about two years back. He was going to be transported, but that prison hulk up in Plymouth is like a sieve. Ever since that day we found Little Jessie in the mine, he's blamed me for all his misfortunes. He is convinced I peached on him to the squire's gamekeepers."
Jessalyn thought of Jacky Stout running loose about the countryside, setting murderous fires. "She'll get hers!" he had bellowed as the gaolers led him away. "She'll get hers, that Letty bitch!" She hadn't paid much attention to the threat at the time. She still found it hard to believe the man had come back to Cornwall to wreak such destruction.
McCady got up and circled the table, coming toward her, and her whole body tensed. She could barely breathe from the pressure in her chest.
"You could be right about Stout," he said. "I'll look into it. In the meantime, you ought to be in bed. You've had a shock and—"
She thrust herself so hard out of the chair that it teetered, bringing herself up right next to him. So close their chests almost touched. "I cannot possibly stay here!" she cried, choking on the last word.
He breathed an impatient sigh, and she felt his chest move. "You heard what the doctor said. Your grandmother has congestion of the lungs from the smoke she inhaled. She is to remain in bed for at least a fortnight."
Jessalyn had heard, but she hadn't wanted to think about the consequences of the doctor's diagnosis. She tried to imagine herself here in this house, where she was liable to come upon him at any time. This house, an earl's great hall. She looked around the tastefully furnished room. Beneath the decay had been beautiful oak floors, covered now with a red and buff carpet. The broken windowpanes had been replaced and framed with curtains of rich cream silk paduasoy. The fireplace had been furnished with a modern steel grate. Emily was making a pleasant home for him, Jessalyn thought, and he had never really had a home. Emily was making him a good wife.
Jessalyn felt weighted with a deep, dark sadness. What she felt for him was never going to go away, but it was wrong now, immoral and wicked. She was wishing for, waiting for something she could never have, ought not to have, and she was making herself miserable with the wanting.
He saw the fear in her eyes, but he misunderstood the reason for it. "Nothing more is going to happen to you, Jessalyn. I won't allow it." His arm started to come up, as if he were going to reach for her, to draw her close, but then he let it fall without touching her. "It will be easier for me to protect you if you are here at the hall."
She drew in a deep breath, trying to relieve some of the tightness in her chest. "I haven't any clothes," she said suddenly. The immensity of what she had lost struck her then, and a great sob welled up in her throat.
His hand settled on the small of her back to propel her forward. His touch was worse than fire. She couldn't bear it. "Come," he said. "Emily is having a bedchamber prepared for you and a bath drawn. And she'll find you some clothes. Later, after you are rested, we will make plans for what you are to do."
"I seem to have little choice, do I?" Jessalyn said, her voice brittle. At the door she stopped, moving out of his light embrace. "Order your manservant to stay away from Becka."
"Duncan isn't the sort to take advantage of an innocent girl's susceptibilities."
"If he allows her to fall in love with him when he does not really want her love, that is all it takes to break an innocent girl's heart."
She had the satisfaction of seeing his face tighten with a flash of pain before she turned away. But it did little to mend the pieces of her own broken heart.
She got as far as the stairs before she fainted. Although she didn't know it, he caught her before she hit the floor. And though she didn't feel it, he kissed her forehead, but not her lips.
One storm after another came in from the sea, and time dribbled more slowly than sand through the hourglass on the Reverend Troutbeck's pulpit.
Jessalyn paced before a dying fire, too restless to sleep. In the two days that she had been at Caerhays Hall, she had managed to avoid coming face-to-face again with its master. Pleading smoke-induced headaches, she had taken all her meals on trays and spent the afternoons sitting with Gram. But it did little good. His presence was everywhere: in the smell of his shaving soap, which lingered in the hall outside his bedroom door, in the soiled cravat left carelessly draped over the newel-post at the top of the stairs, in the deep timbre of his voice heard across the stableyard.
The wind lashed at the house. Candle flames fluttered in their glass globes, and the maroon curtains on the big four-poster rustled as if stirred by an unseen hand. Drafts of damp air swirled around the room in spite of the embroidered silk Chinese screens set before the door and windows.
Jessalyn shivered, pulling the quilted satin collar of her borrowed night robe tighter around her neck. She went to the velvet-draped window, drawn to look out at the storm-ravaged night. She could see little of the wild, overgrown gardens below; sea spume carried inland by the wind had left the panes crusted with salt like pickled herrings. Water splashed against the glass. At End Cottage, when it stormed like this, they'd had to lay rags along the windowsills to catch the leaks.
She supposed the same was probably true for much of the rest of Caerhays Hall. Only a portion of one wing had been renovated thus far. And even then Jessalyn imagined the cost must have been enough to make a rich man wince, for the great old house had been allowed to deteriorate for too long.
The changes were all Emily's doing. Her presence, too, was everywhere, and although Jessalyn tried hard to avoid the lord of the hall, she found herself seeking out the company of its lady.
That afternoon she had come across Emily in the drawing room, arranging daffodils and bluebells into a milk glass vase. She looked frail and delicate in her almond green merino morning dress, even though it was cut full beneath the bosom to allow for her pregnancy. Her short silver blond curls shimmered like a wind-stirred lake in the shaft of rare sunlight that came through the chintz-draped windows.
Jessalyn told herself she was being foolish, but she felt as dowdy as a brown hen in a puce fustian that had been borrowed from Squire Babbage's wife, who next to herself was the tallest woman in the county. The dress hung on her like a wet sail, and there was still a gap of three inches between the padded hem of the skirt and Jessalyn's slippers.
But Emily's smile was warm and friendly as Jessalyn paused in the doorway to the drawing room, unsure of her welcome.
"Jessalyn! I trust your headache is better." Emily returned to her arrangement, cupping a sun yellow bloom in her palm. "These spring storms play havoc with a flower garden. I should like to replant the conservatory someday. But that is for the future."
Jessalyn entered a room that was decorated in a soft color scheme of ocher and citron and a mismatch of styles that all somehow seemed to go together. "You have done wonders with the house already," she said.
Emily flushed as she set the vase of flowers on a pier table between a pair of silver candlesticks. "Much of this furniture came from my mother's attics."
It occurred to Jessalyn that she knew all about catching pilchards and training racehorses, yet she was sadly lacking in domestic talents. Emily might be a corn merchant's daughter, but she was better suited to be an earl's wife than Jessalyn would ever have been.
"We can afford very little at the moment," Emily said in a cheerful lilt, sounding as if she truly did not care that the whole world knew her husband to be on the precipice of ruin. Yet Jessalyn noticed that she nervously fingered the fringe of the tippet she wore around her shoulders. "Caerhays says Wheal Patience should start paying its way soon. He is hoping for a windfall of profits to settle the interest on those monstrous railway loans."
"There is the baby," Jessalyn couldn't keep herself from saying. "And the settlement that will come to you from your father once the child is born."
Emily pressed her palm to the swell of her stomach. "Oh, yes, there is that. The babe might come in time, and it might be a boy. But though I couldn't bear to see Caerhays flung into Fleet Prison, I cannot help wishing he didn't have to be saved in that way. He is so proud. I think that he would so much rather save himself." The blue eyes she lifted to Jessalyn's face were shadowed with worry and a kind of sick yearning. "He is not the sort of man to have married for money. Oh, I know he claims it is a Trelawny tradition, but he says it with such a bitterness in his voice—"
Emily froze at the rap of bootheels on the stone-flagged floor of the great hall. Color flooded her cheeks, and she seemed to hold her breath. Then they heard the deep rumble of Duncan's voice and an answering giggle from Becka.
"Oh!" Emily exclaimed with a soft little sigh. "I thought it might be... He's gone to Penzance to coddle his precious locomotive. Something arrived by the stage from a foundry in Birmingham yesterday. Copper tubes, I believe he said, although what on earth their purpose is I haven't the least notion."
Emily's face came alive as she spoke of the earl, and her gaze kept drifting to the door as if still she hoped he would pass through it, even though he was not expected.
Jessalyn pictured the two of them discussing his inventions over their coffee cups at breakfast. Or they could have walked along the beach at Crookneck Cove, chasing the gulls and the waves and laughing while he promised that she would be one of the first to ride on his new locomotive. Perhaps it was at night, when he held her in his arms, that he whispered of his dreams, asking her to share in them, while she touched his man's body, touched his man's soul.
And Jessalyn had had to look away from Emily's bright and lovely face because she could not bear such thoughts.
Yet now, in the dark and empty hours of the storm-ravaged night, they came to her again, unbidden, unwelcome, unbearable. Emily lying in McCady's arms, touching, touching...
She pushed herself away from the window. Suddenly she wanted to feel the violent fury of the rain beating against her face, to be swallowed by the black night, to be buffeted and plundered by the wind. She wanted to fling out her arms and embrace the storm, to be ravished by it.
She threw off her night clothes and struggled into Mrs. Babbage's rough fustian dress, not bothering with shift or stays. She had no cloak, but she knew there would be a set of oilskins and seaboots in the kitchen, for no Cornish house would be without them. Taking up a candlestick, she stepped into the hall.
Only a single glass taper lamp lit the dark walnut-paneled passage. She passed Emily's door and then his. They did not share a bedroom, but then no fashionable couple of the ton did. Somehow she found herself pausing in the middle of the hall, ears tensed for a sound, his voice, his footstep, beyond the old-fashioned iron-banded barrier to his chamber.
The door swung open, so startling her that she nearly dropped the candle. Hot wax splattered, missing the dish and burning her hand. She stared up at him, eyes wide, as she sucked the stinging web of skin between her finger and thumb.
The room was dark behind him, except for the flickering orange glow from the fire. Shadows lay like blades across his face. He was bare from the waist up. A light mat of dark hair limned the bulges and hollows of his chest. He stood with one arm braced, his hand pressing so hard against the jamb that the veins stood out against his skin. She could imagine the power of him, how he would feel beneath her hands.
"What are you doing still up?" he demanded in a voice as dark and shadowed as the rest of him. "I thought you had a headache."
Her breath came out in a soft whistle. "I—I thought to go for a walk along the cove."
"It's high tide. The sea is battering the cliffs, and there's no beach to walk on. It's too dangerous."
He took a step closer to her, into the hall. Water dripped from his long, windblown hair, and his wet buckskins lay plastered to his flesh, slick and shiny like the coat of a seal.
She wet her lips, swallowed. "Yet you braved the storm."
He said nothing.
"Well, perhaps I'll read then. If I might borrow a book?" He shrugged, and the naked muscles of his chest flexed. "Of course."
She turned and walked with stately dignity down the hall, although her insides were frothing and frizzing like a glass of effervescent lemon. Behind her the old wood creaked like dry bones.
She stopped and spun around so abruptly he nearly walked into her. His hand grasped her arm. He let it go immediately, but it was not soon enough. Jessalyn had to fight for the breath to speak.
"I can find my own way down."
He gave no answer, and when she turned and descended the stairs, he came after her.
He opened the door to the library for her. But he straddled the threshold, so that she had to walk by him, so close her sleeve brushed his bare chest. He smelled of the rain and wet leather and the cool night air. Her nipples, naked of a modest shift, tightened and scraped against the coarse fustian. Never before had she been so aware of her own body. She felt all tight and hot, as if her flesh were swelling and pressing against her skin.
He lit an ormolu patent lamp that sat on the massive pedestal desk. Papers were spread in disarray beneath it. Cost sheets, she noticed, for Wheal Patience. Covered in red ink.
He splashed brandy into a toddy glass, drank it down, and poured another. Carrying the freshened glass, he went to the hearth and tossed more coal onto the fire. Flames leaped up the chimney, brightening the room and bronzing his skin with a soft golden glow. Never had she been more aware of him as a man. The strong, slender sinews of his sun-browned hands. The way his naked chest expanded and subsided with his every breath. The way the damp leather breeches clung to his slender hips and long, lean thighs.
He spun around suddenly, and the firelight danced off the facets of the glass in his hand. He lifted it and one brow in a silent offer.
Her mouth was so dry she had to swallow before she could speak. "No. Thank you."
He took a step toward her, and she scooted around him as if he were a snake lying across her path. She put the desk between them and pretended to be fascinated with the contents of the podium bookcases, which were mostly empty.
His voice came from behind her. "We haven't much of a collection, I'm afraid. The Trelawnys have never been ones for scholarship, and books are easy to dispose of when one is sadly dipped and in need of the ready in a hurry."
She lifted her head and saw his reflection in the grilled glass doors. His face was dark and brooding. Their gazes met and held as if locked, and Jessalyn stopped breathing. Outside, the wind moaned and the rain beat violently against the tightly closed shutters.
She fumbled open the case and pulled out a slim red leather volume, not even bothering to check the title.
He set the toddy glass down with such force it chimed like a dinner bell. When she turned around, he was in front of her, blocking her escape. She backed up until her bottom struck the sharp corner of the desk. Her name, carried to her on the sudden wash of his hot breath, was drowned out by the howl of the wind.
Rivulets of water had trickled from his hair onto his shoulders and chest. It glistened on the bare flesh, matting the hair into swirls around his nipples, funneling down over ridges of muscle, following a dark arrow to the waistband of his tight, low-slung buckskins, where they gaped open, the top two buttons left negligently undone.
She jerked her startled gaze back up to his face.
He took a step toward her, and her breath left her chest in a low, keening moan. His mouth had taken on a ruthless slant, and the yellow sunbursts flared bright and hot in his eyes. He smelled of brandy now and a feral heat. A leashed violence seemed to shimmer in the air around him like heat waves off a smithy's forge. As if he were a wild animal that had been caged too long and had gone suddenly mad from his captivity.
He will take me, she thought, take me here on the floor of the library with his wife upstairs. He would take her, fiercely and hungrily, the way a man took a woman he wanted.
And she would let him.
Suddenly he spun away from her. His back shuddered, and the words sounded torn from him. "Get out of here, Jessalyn. Now."
Jessalyn fled the room and didn't stop until she was safe within her own bedchamber with the door shut and bolted behind her. She leaned against the wall, her chest jerking with the effort to get enough breath.
Nothing had happened. He hadn't touched her, barely spoken to her, only looked at her. Yet she felt ravished.