Once in a Blue Moon

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 26

Becka Poole didn't know what to think. Her mind was in a whirligig over all these comings and goings, her body near death's door with exhaustion and spasms of the nerves.

First, Miss Jessalyn had been all set to wed Mr. Tiltwell, and Becka was that pleased. Because what with milady's sad passing, poor Miss Jessalyn had been left alone and broken-hearted.

But then, on what was to have been the happy day, she'd been abducted by the devil earl, stolen right out of the church she'd been, heaven preserve her. Carried off to barbarous Scotland and ravished she had been, and Becka got all shivery just thinking about it. Then he'd up and brought her back with him to Cornwall, had the mad earl, and Becka had been sent for from London Town, where she'd been left alone with all the crocodiles and sphinxes, a prey to hillas and God knew what else. By ship she'd gone, and her belly hadn't been the same since. So bilious had she been that she'd had to feed off biscuits and soda water for days after, leaving her so weak she could barely lift a spoon to her mouth.

Yet no sooner had Becka been safe in Cornwall—or as safe as a body could be, what with that Mr. Duncan astaring at her all the time with lustful eyes—than off they'd gone again, back to London Town. Becka supposed she couldn't blame Miss Jessalyn for running away, what with the way the devil earl had been keeping her in his bedchamber day and night, ravishing her again and again. Becka got all shivery just thinking about it. And so back to London they had come, by mail coach this time, and her dairy-air still bore bruises black as tar pitch. But her bones were what had suffered the worse—rattled and battered, they felt, as if they'd been taken out her body and used for cricket bats.

Nor had she been allowed a moment's peace to recover a bit of her strength, because yesterday Miss Jessalyn had went and sold Blue Moon. Becka would have thought there was nothing ever going to part the young miss from that horse, she loved him so. It had fair broken her heart to do it, too. She'd cried all of last night, she had, keeping Becka awake, so's she'd had to drag herself from bed this morning with a gouty pain in her head.

Not Miss Jessalyn, though. Up bright and early she'd been, and off she'd gone again. And now this afternoon here she was back again, with a smile fair to splitting her face and clutching a piece of paper in her hand.

"I've done it, Becka!" Miss Jessalyn said, laughing and crying both at the same time and whirling around on her toes, fit to make a body dizzy just to look at her.

Becka touched her hagstone and prayed to St. Genny. She was beginning to fear that marriage to the mad devil earl was turning Miss Jessalyn mad along with him, the way a dollop of buttermilk in cream turns it sour. "Ee done what, miss?" she asked warily.

"He'll not go to prison now! Oh, he'll be furious with me when he hears about what I've done, and then he'll sulk for a bit, because he is a stubborn, arrogant Trelawny to his very bones. But he'll forgive me soon enough. All I'll have to do is..." She trailed off as a pretty blush suffused her cheeks. "Well, when you marry Duncan, you'll understand what I mean."

"I told ee, I bain't marryin' Mr. Duncan. Not never, and—"

A fearsome pounding rattled the front door, and Becka shrieked, clutching at her throat. Miss Jessalyn ran into the hall, and Becka followed, sure she was going to have a heart stroke, and wouldn't Mr. Duncan be sorry then, when she was dead and laid out in her coffin.

"Jessalyn! Open the bloody door or I will kick it in!"

Becka gripped the brass hat rack for support, certain that she would faint any minute now. "Oooh, God's me life."

Miss Jessalyn stared at the door as if it were about to leap off its hinges and bite her. "It's Caerhays," she said, as if this were a great surprise.

Becka looked at her mistress as if she'd gone daft, as indeed, she must have. She nodded her head slowly. "Ais, miss, tes his lordship a'right. He sounds multitudinous angry."

Miss Jessalyn lifted her chin high in the air. "I am not receiving him," she said loud enough to be heard on the other side of the polished black oak panels.

"You bloody well will receive me, wife," his lordship said, loud enough to be heard back again. "You'll receive every bloody inch of me."

Becka clutched at her pounding heart. "Ooh, me life an' body. He means to ravish ee. Again. He's a scavenger, he is. A ravenous scavenger."

Miss Jessalyn turned her back on the door. "Becka, you will wait until I have retired to my room, and then you will admit his lordship. You will escort him into the parlor and explain to him that I am not at home to him."

"Ooh, but I've come all over queer of a sudden, Miss Jessalyn. With collywobbles in me belly and dreadful heart pulpy-taties fit to perspire me..." Becka squeezed her eyes shut and tried to faint. But though she felt all weak and fluttery, blessed darkness wouldn't come. She opened her eyes. Miss Jessalyn had already disappeared up the stairs. "Oooh, St. Genny preserve me."

"Miss Poole, ye'll be opening this door now."

It wasn't the earl's voice this time, it was Mr. Duncan's, and Becka didn't like the tone of it. Where was he getting off giving her orders? She didn't work for him, nor was she his wife either, so he had no right, and she wasn't ever going to be his wife, so—

"Becka!" Duncan roared.

Becka's hands were shaking like a leaf in a gale as she unbolted the door. She curtsied to the earl, too frightened to look up into his devil's face. "Afternoon, milor'. Funny that you're thinking to come round callin' today, when Miss Jessalyn, she be out—"

The earl brushed past her without so much as a by-your-leave and went pounding up the stairs, off to do his ravishing. Mr. Duncan's broad shoulders filled the doorway, and there was an odd look in his eyes as if he, too, had ravishing on his mind.

Becka's chin shot up, though she was careful as always to keep her hair pulled across her scarred cheek. "Ee can just keep yer distance, Mr. Duncan."

"And ye can just get yer bonnet and gloves and a warm cloak to wrap up in. Because ye're coming with me."

"Ee be absconding me!" Becka cried, backing up and clutching at her bosom so tightly a button popped.

Duncan threw back his head and let loose a hearty whoop of laughter. "Aye, lass. I'm absconding ye. We're getting married."

"I've told ee and told ee, I bain't never goin' to marry ee."

"And I say you are. Willing or not, ye're going to be my wife, ye're going to sleep in my bed, and ye're going to bluidy well like it!"

Becka bit her lip and ducked her head. Then she flung it back up again and yanked the hair out of her face. "Will ee look at me?"

Duncan took a step toward her. "I'm seeing ye."

"Nay, ye're not. Look at me!"

He took another step, bringing himself right up against her, and God's life, he was so big. "I see the scar," he said, his voice a gentle purr. "And if the man as put it there were nae dead already, I'd kill him for ye." He cupped the pretty side of her face in his big hand and turned it so that the scar was bared to the merciless light coming in the open door. He bent his head and kissed it. "There, now. 'Tis gone."

"But..." Becka touched her cheek, feeling the rough, ugly welt.

"'Tis gone. When I look at ye, my love, I see the face of heaven, and she is beautiful."

McCady broke the flimsy lock with one blow of his booted foot. The door slammed against the wall, rattling a pair of Egyptian funeral urns on the mantel.

Jessalyn was sitting before a dressing table in a massive chair that had clawed feet and a roaring lion's head carved into the back of it. She was applying powder to her face with a hare's foot, and she looked back at him, cool and remote, from the mirror. He gripped the door and slammed it shut behind him, and the urns rocked.

"I do not recall hearing you knock," she said. "Nor do I recall giving you permission to enter."

"I don't need bloody permission." He advanced on her, and she jumped up so fast the heavy lion chair teetered. Whirling, she backed toward a wall papered with a tangle of vines and lotus flowers. Her hand fluttered to her throat, and her eyes were two enormous silver saucers taking up the whole of her face. She was afraid of his anger—good. She deserved to be afraid since he'd been frightened half out his mind ever since he'd come home and found her gone.

He bracketed her to the wall with his hands and pressed his pelvis against her stomach, grinding it against her. He was hot and hard for her, and he wanted her to know it.

He brought his face so close to hers he could see the black centers of her eyes widen to swallow nearly all of the gray. "Have you been to Tiltwell?" he said though his teeth.

Her breasts pushed up against his chest as she drew in a breath. Her throat worked, barely getting the word out. "Yes."

"Did he touch you?" He wrapped his hand around her throat. Her pulse beat wildly against his palm. Her skin was the softest thing he'd ever felt. Her mouth was wet and trembling and slightly parted, as if she'd just been kissed— or were about to be kissed. "Did you allow him to touch you, Jessa?"

"No!"

He didn't know if she told the truth, and he didn't care. He wanted only one thing from her right then, and he was going to begin with the taste of her mouth.

He spanned her jaw with his long, hard fingers. He forced her lips to open beneath his, and he filled her mouth with his tongue. She whimpered first in outrage and then in surrender. She wrapped one arm around his back and tangled her fingers in his hair. She sucked on his tongue, pulling it deeper.

He swept his thumbs back and forth over nipples that were budding against the soft stuff of her dress. Her hands gripped and bunched the taut muscles of his back. They made love with their mouths, sucking, tonguing, rubbing kiss upon kiss against each other's lips. Her roaming fingers found the top button of his buckskins, and she popped it free. He shuddered as the back of her hand brushed across his lower belly. He undid the rest of the buttons himself, pushing his throbbing sex into her hands.

She gripped him roughly, stroking him almost to the edge of pain, and if he didn't get inside her soon, it was going to be too bloody late.

He bunched her skirt up around her waist and grasped a handful of soft linen drawers.

She tore her mouth from his, panting. "McCady, please don't rip—"

The thin material made a satisfying tearing sound as it parted beneath his fist. He pushed a finger inside her, and she gasped, arching against him. She was very wet and very hot.

He stoked her with his finger until he had her humming and vibrating and building up steam like a fired locomotive. Cupping the silky underside of her bottom with both hands, he lifted her and slowly sheathed himself. She cried out, arching and throwing back her head so violently it banged against the wall. He pressed his open mouth against the wildly beating pulse in her throat and pushed himself deeper.

He gripped her hips to hold her still so that he could grind and thrust into her, and she was biting his shoulder and her nails were clawing at his back, and he let the pressure build and build and build to an explosion that was fierce and scalding...

And not enough.

Her head fell onto his shoulder, and she sagged against him, as the last shudders washed over them. But already he was kissing her again. Already he was quickening and stirring inside her again. His fingers grasped her head, spilling pins and hair down over his hand and wrist, and it felt like liquid silk.

He pulled her head up. "Were you lying about him?" She licked her lips; he licked them after her. "You didn't let him touch you?"

Her eyes were wet and glazed with passion, like glass. "He didn't touch me," she said into his open mouth.

He made a small movement to lodge himself deeper. "Never again will I come home to find you gone."

"I can explain—"

"Later. You'll explain later. Right now I want to get only one thing fixed firmly in your aggravating head. I shall never come home again to find you gone. Nor will you ever spend another night out of my bed without my permission. And since I intend to spend all of my nights in my bed," he said, punctuating the key words with little thrusts of his hips, "it is highly unlikely that permission will ever be forthcoming. Do we have an understanding, Lady Caerhays?"

"Yes, my lor—"

His mouth seized hers in a deep kiss that filled him with the taste of her, but it was not enough. It was never enough. He moved in slow, rhythmic strokes, and she was gripping him, squeezing him, pulling him to the edge, and it was still not enough. He pumped his hips, and her head thumped against the wall.

"McCady... the bed," she gasped out between panting moans. "Why... can't we... do this... on the bed?"

"Yes, yes. The bed." His hands spanned her waist, and she grasped his hips with her strong thighs. He tried to carry her in this fashion over to the bed.

The bed was a monstrosity of black curtains embroidered with gold hieroglyphics and a bedstead supported by enormous crocodile feet. He stumbled over a webbed claw, and they fell onto the bed in a tangle of legs and arms and laughter.

He rolled to his side, pushing himself up on his elbow to look at her. Her hair was a summer sunrise, all rust and burgundy red with a few vivid streaks of fiery orange. Her mouth looked pillaged and ravished, and as he watched, it fell open and curled up on the ends, and a rusty, squeaky noise spilled out of her throat. He caught her laughter with his mouth, and it filled him with fire.

His hands went looking for her breasts, and he pulled back from her, cursing. "Why does there always seem to be all these bloody clothes between us?" His impatient fingers slipped beneath the prim high neck of her dress.

"McCady, don't rip—"

"Then take it off."

Clothes went flying, hers and his both. When he gathered her back into his arms, she was wondrously and gloriously naked at last.

She had large nipples, rosy brown like hazel nuts. He laved each in turn, then drew one deep into his mouth. He loved the feel of it, hard and puckering against his tongue, and he loved the sounds she made—the little trembling sighs and incoherent pleas.

He traced an imaginary path with his lips and tongue across her rib cage and down her belly until he found the edge of her crinkly, curly hair. Her thighs were around his shoulders, gripping him, trembling. She was burning him alive.

He spread her legs wide and buried his face in the fire. She smelled of him, as if he had marked her with his scent like a wild animal. He plunged his tongue into her, sucking, licking. He scraped her tiny nub of pleasure with his teeth, pulling on it gently with his lips. Her thighs opened wider still, and she grasped the sides of his head with her hands, writhing and whimpering and coming hot and wet into his mouth.

He waited for her tremors to fade, savoring the hot taste of her; then he rose above her, to enter her. But she pressed her palm against his chest, stopping him. "Lie down on your back."

He rolled over, and she straddled him. She gathered up her hair, lowering her head, and then she let it slowly fall, over his chest. It slithered and coiled across his sweating skin, filling his senses with the smell of primroses, and he was sure that never before had he known such pure, piercing pleasure.

She took one of his nipples in her mouth, nipping it, and a ragged groan tore from his throat. Her lips went lower, tracing sex patterns over his shuddering belly, and lower still, her tongue licking at the edge of his dark, tightly coiled hair. And then he died as she grazed the length of his hard and trembling sex with her teeth, lightly, lightly, before she opened her mouth wide and took him into her.

She sucked in her cheeks, drawing her lips along his hard length, again and again, until he could bear no more. He tangled his fist in her hair and drew her up and then slowly lowered her down on top of him until he was buried so deep he was sure he must be touching her heart.

She rose and sank down, riding his length, harder and faster until she was plunging wildly, and he was chanting her name, "Jessa, Jessa, Jessa," and her head fell back and her mouth opened wide on a silent scream of pleasure as they climaxed together.

A long time later, when he could breathe again, he settled her down within the crook of his arm, and his eyes slowly focused on his surroundings. He took in the hieroglyphic bed-curtains, the jungle wallpaper, and what looked like a sphinx crouching next to the fireplace and serving no apparent purpose except to fix him with an enigmatic stare.

"How the devil can anyone sleep in this room?" he said.

Her laughter, wild and lusty, shimmered through the air, wrapping around them and drawing laughter from him in turn. She nuzzled his neck with her nose and chin, tugging at his gold earring with her teeth. "Did you really think I had left you for Clarence?"

His gave her a typically arrogant Trelawny look, although she didn't know he was doing it because she couldn't see. "Of course, I didn't think such an idiotic thing. I thought you had gotten a maggoty notion into your head to sell yourself to him for an afternoon of delight in exchange for those damn promissory notes. And don't look like that. You said you would do anything for me." He pulled her head up so that he could look into her face. "So what did you do?"

She pulled out of his embrace, got up, and went to the dressing table, where she retrieved a weighty-looking document from beneath a jar of face powder and a hare's foot, and he enjoyed the sight of her hair swaying back and forth, caressing her naked hips. She came back to him and gave him the document.

It was a statement in a clerk's trained hand, attesting that the yearly interest on all his promissory notes had been paid in full. The signature was Tiltwell's, although it looked a little shaky. A very official-looking seal had been affixed to the end of it.

He looked up into solemn gray eyes. "What did you do?"

A deep emotion pulled at her face, and she looked away. "I sold Blue Moon."

"Ah, hell, Jessalyn..." McCady's belly caved in with a feeling so wrenching tears burned his eyes. He wanted to weep the way a child weeps, loudly and harshly and beating his fists on the floor. He wanted to do everything over and do it right this time. He wanted to give her the world, but she had already given the world to him.

He stood up and cupped her face with his hands, using his thumbs to collect the tears she didn't know she was shedding. He drew in a deep breath, trying to find a way to speak around the clot of emotion in his throat. "That horse was the most important thing in the world to you."

Her lips trembled into a watery smile. "You are the most important thing in the world to me."

He gathered her into him and pressed her head into the curve of his neck. "I sold the others, too, along with Blue Moon," she said, the words muffled. He could feel her tears, warm and wet against his throat. He swallowed hard around the thick lump, but it still didn't go away. "Only it wasn't quite enough," she went on, her breath gentle on his skin. "What I got for them wasn't enough. S-so I had to s-sell Gram's snuffboxes, too."

"Ah, Jesus..."

He held her for a time in silence; then she snuffled a little sob into his throat. "You aren't angry with me?"

He squeezed her shoulders. "Only angry with myself." He pulled her head back so that she could look at him and see that he spoke the truth. "Someday, sweetling, I swear I shall find a way to make it up to you."

She looked up at him out of great, solemn eyes. "Such a thing can never be made up, McCady. But then it doesn't have to be, nor should it be. Not when it was done willingly, from the heart."

He stared at her, stunned by her wisdom and the purity of her soul. His chest tightened with that strange mixture of wonder, fear, and joy that came over him so often now whenever he looked at her or touched her. Or even thought of her.

She shivered, and he frowned at her. "For Christ's sake, Jessa, you're freezing," he said roughly. "Put something on.

She pushed her lips out in a parody of a pout that made him want to kiss her senseless. "I don't know why I should bother," she said. "You'll only rip it off."

Yet she went to the clothespress, and he watched her, savoring the sight of her naked body until she covered it with an Oriental-style silk wrapper. He pulled on his buckskins, not bothering to fasten them, and stretched out on the monstrosity of a bed. He waited for her to come back to him.

She sat beside him, a secret little smile playing about her mouth.

"I've always hated it when you do that," he said.

"Do what?"

"Smile at me as if you know something that I don't know."

Her smile widened, filling her face. "I was thinking that I love you very much McCady Trelawny."

He stroked the bare white flesh of her arm, unable to look at her. "Jessalyn, I..."

"Yes?"

"Nothing."

She withdrew from him, going to the window. He searched for words that would bring her back, but words had always been his downfall with her because they never came easily, and they were always the wrong ones. Freckles of rain pelted the panes, easting speckled shadows on her face, like a gull's egg. It had grown cool in the room.

A look of surprise crossed her face, and she pressed her nose to the glass. "McCady? Your Duncan is driving away with with my Becka in your phaeton."

"Nothing to concern yourself with, Lady Caerhays. They're only eloping. Some of the most respectable folk have been known to do it."

She spun around, and her laughter, rich and rusty, filled the room, until she caught it back with her hand. "That handsome devil—he said he would talk her around to it!"

"I'll wager it was more a case of seducing her into it," he said, smiling because she was laughing again. "That is the only method you women respond to with any degree of proven success."

"Oh, is it indeed?"

"Indeed." He patted the bed. "Come here and let me prove it you."

She came quickly and willingly. Slipping his hands beneath the silk wrapper, he began the slow, delicious process of bringing two satiated bodies back to arousal.

Her fingers tangled in the hair that spilled out the open flap in his buckskins, and he discovered that he was not so slow after all. "McCady? Duncan will never be able to make it back from Gretna Green in time for the trials."

"Not..." He lost his breath somewhere and had to start again. "Not unless he sprouts wings and flies."

"Then who will go along with you to drive your locomotive?"

And then he thought of one small gift that he could give her, and he smiled. "You will, Lady Caerhays."