Once in a Blue Moon

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

Jessalyn opened her eyes and nearly screamed.

Becka Poole's round muffin face stared at her from above a flickering candle flame and beneath a droopy red bed cap, so that her head seemed to be floating, disembodied, in the darkness. "Are ee awake, Miss Jessalyn?"

Jessalyn flopped onto her stomach and pulled a pillow Over her ears. "No, Becka. It is the middle of the night, and I am sound asleep."

"'Tes no time for jesting, miss. There be ghosts out on Crookneck Cove this night. Ghosts, I tell ee. I near died of heart stroke. 'Tes a wonder I ain't laid out cold in me coffer, the immoral scare I did have."

Jessalyn threw off the pillow, sitting up. "Are you sure you didn't just have a nightmare, a hilla?"

"That's what I, too, thinks at first, miss. That I be hillaridden 'cause of them dough cakes what I ate for supper last night, which sat like stones in me belly afterward and gave me indignity something fierce. I thought maybe I was only dreamin' that I got up to look out the window. But then I says to meself: Cor, Becka girl, yer eyes be open. 'Tesn't no hilla ye be havin'. 'Tes ghosts ye see. Real live ghosts!"

Jessalyn got up to see the ghosts. It was a foggy night—thick as lamb's wool in some places; in others, thin as a lace veil. Through the drifting curtains of white mist, she saw a light flicker on top of the cliffs that overlooked Crookneck Cove.

"See, miss. They be corpse lights, ee mark my words." Becka spit on her right index finger and drew a cross between her eyes. "Listen. Ee can hear their dead voices a hailing their own names."

"That's the wind you are hearing." Sometimes the bodies of dead sailors would be washed onto the beach by the tide, and they were often buried where they were found. But Jessalyn didn't believe in ghosts or corpse lights. "It's a wicked night," she said. "Perhaps a ship got caught on the Devil's Jawbone."

Her Cornish blood quickened at the thought that there might be a wreck. When times were bad, folk often prayed for treacherous weather, for a wreck was a gift of God, a spoil of the sea, as surely as a shoal of fish. The survivors would be seen to first, of course. But a vessel cast upon the shore was as good as a harvest, there for the gleaning.

Moving quickly, she thrust her feet into a pair of pattens and threw her red wool cloak over her night rail. All the while Becka bewailed the fate that was sure to be hers if she ventured out in the dark of a foggy night to tangle with ghosts.

To light her way, Jessalyn took a chill—a thin earthenware lamp that burned pilchard oil. At the door Becka stopped her to press a hagstone into her hand. It was a flint with a hole in it that had been threaded through with a leather thong and was supposed to be a safeguard against ghosts and witches. It was one of the girl's most prized possessions.

Smiling, Jessalyn slipped the hagstone over her head. "Thank you, Becka. I shall only be borrowing it, just in case. And please, while I'm gone, get out the extra blankets and heat up some hot water—and try not to wake Gram."

Becka flapped her hand and giggled. "Gis along wi' ee, miss. Ghosts ain't got no corpus bodies. For what would they be wantin' blankets and hot water?"

Jessalyn's rusty laughter floated off into the thick night. "Not for the ghosts, Becka. For the survivors, in case it's a wreck."

The Sarn't Major was not in his room above the stables, and Jessalyn hoped he wasn't spending the night in a kiddley again. All was quiet, too quiet. If there had been a wreck, she would have heard shouts by now and feet pounding down the cliff path. A bonfire would be blazing as a warning to other ships and to warm up those survivors dragged in from the sea. But even the small flickering light she'd seen earlier had vanished.

She wondered then if the mysterious light had something to do with Lieutenant Trelawny. She hadn't seen him for over a week, since that day they had found Salome Stout's baby. It hurt that he could so easily stay away from her, because she could hardly bear to be apart from him.

She couldn't understand this obsession she seemed to have developed for a man she was not sure she even liked. Yet she felt driven to be with him every waking moment, and when they were apart, she spent all her hours remembering the times they were together and planning the moments when they would be together again. Worse, she had allowed him to steal her pride. For when he did not come to call, she had haunted the beach and the moors in the hope that she would cross his path. One day she had even ventured as far as the gatehouse. She had tried to peer through the grimy windows, even tested the door latch, but it was locked. Her blood had been pumping hard and fast in her throat, with fear that he would discover her, with even more fear that he would not. A terrible sickness had squeezed her chest, an actual ache in her heart, that if she did not see him, see him that very day, that very next minute, she wouldn't be able to bear it, she would surely die from it.

But she hadn't seen him and she hadn't died, and she had thought perhaps this sickness, this obsession would pass. Yet now she found herself running toward the sea cliffs, her heart and breath once again suspended in that otherworld of joy and terror at the thought that he would be there, that she would see him again.

Tonight the fog was as thick as pease porridge along the beach. Foamy fingers of seawater clawed at the sand, then disappeared. The air was wet and heavy, smelling of decaying seaweed and something else, something suspiciously like...

A scream started to rise in her throat just as an arm encased in wool wrapped around her neck, a rough hand clamping down hard over her mouth. The chill fell from her fingers and rolled across the sand, but did not go out. It cast light in a small arc through the shrouding mist onto the bottom of her red cloak and the booted legs of her attacker. His other arm wrapped around her in a bear hug, squeezing all the air out her lungs. The palm that smothered her mouth reeked so strongly of brandy the fumes made her head reel. She rammed her elbow backward into his belly and heard such a satisfactory grunt that she did it again.

Hot breath blew against her ear. "Christ, have you got spikes for elbows? I'm not going to ravish you, except in your dreams."

Jessalyn's heart turned over, and she went still in his arms. He kicked sand over the chill, dousing the flame and plunging them into darkness. "Will you scream?" he growled in her ear. "Have a fit of the vapors? Lose your scattered nerves?" Jessalyn shook her head and gasped muffled words against his hand. "Peach on us to the gaugers, collect the reward, and dance beneath the gibbet when we hang?" She started choking on her laughter, and at last he let go of her mouth.

"Lieutenant!" she exclaimed on a deep intake of breath. She nearly threw herself into his arms, only stopping herself just in time. He bent over and picked up something from beside him in the sand. It was too dark to see his face.

"Why, if it isn't Miss Letty—regular as a cuckoo out of a clock," he said. "I might have known you'd make an appearance. A perilous occasion such as this, when the least little thing is apt to go wrong at any moment, would hardly be complete without your presence."

Metal scraped against metal, and suddenly a narrow beam of light shot through the fog from the bull's-eye lantern in his hands. He closed the shutter, then opened it again. For a moment there was a break in the white clouds, like a rip in a curtain, and Jessalyn thought she saw a flotilla of longboats and the four-cornered sails of a lugger rounding the point.

"You've been smuggling!"

"And here I thought we were merely having a midnight picnic on the beach." He laughed and took her arm, pulling her with him back toward the underside of the cliffs.

There was a wild excitement about him tonight that was infectious. Her heart tripped in a light, quick dance. "Why didn't you tell me you were going smuggling?"

"For the same reason that I didn't take out a notice in the Times. And I prefer to call it free trading. Smuggling has such nasty, illegal connotations that make one think of magistrates and gaol and penal colonies."

As they drew closer to the cliffs, Jessalyn heard the crunch of footsteps on stone and a low murmur of voices. Again the fog parted for a moment, and she was shocked to see a gaping hole in the ragged face of the rock where there had never been a hole before. A large boulder had been pushed to one side. All the days she had walked this beach and she hadn't known of the cave's existence.

He let go of her hand, and his voice floated out of the darkness. "Wait here, and please try, no matter what the temptation, not to make any trouble."

Jessalyn resented his remark and would have told him so, but his footsteps had already receded. She tilted her head, trying to peer upward through the fog. This part of the bluff was not sheer but rather tumbled down to the beach in rocky steps, like a child's blocks. He had told her to wait; he'd said nothing about not looking inside the cave.

Gathering up the trailing folds of her cloak, she climbed up the rocks until the entrance was at eye level. The cave was about the size of a small parlor and dimly lit by a tarred lantern. Two men carrying ankers of brandy beneath each arm disappeared down a narrow passage that no doubt led to the fish cellars of Mousehole or more likely the wine cellars of Caerhays Hall. Two other men hovered closer to the entrance. One turned toward her, and Jessalyn got a glimpse of the pitted face of Jacky Stout.

"Fetch the glim o'er here," he growled. "'Tes dark as a bloody sack."

The other man passed the lantern forward. Then he, too, turned, and his hair glinted like a gold sovereign in the dim light. "Jessalyn!" he exclaimed. "What the deuce are you doing here?"

Jessalyn stepped back, more shocked at finding Clarence Tiltwell here than at the chill of his welcome. It was understandable why Lieutenant Trelawny would engage in smuggling—for the money and love of the game. But Clarence always had to be prodded into taking risks, and the reward of such a venture would hardly be worth it to him. The share-out of a run to France couldn't be more than a month's or two's worth of the allowance he got from his father.

Clarence jumped down beside her. Seizing her arm, he jerked her away from the cave, practically dragging her down the rocks and back onto the beach. His lips were drawn tight against his teeth, and a tic pulsed beneath his right eye. It suddenly occurred to her that if she could see his face so well, the fog must be lifting.

His fingers clenched, digging into her flesh and hurting her. "You've got to get back to End Cottage this instant—"

"Gaugers, sur! Coming this way!"

A man pelted full speed down the cliff path, a tarred lantern swinging from one hand, an empty coat sleeve flapping where the other hand should be. Lieutenant Trelawny appeared from behind some dunes, intercepting him. Jessalyn was shocked to see that the man with the lantern was the Sarn't Major, her Sarn't Major, who had never wanted anything to do with anything before, except horses. She stared openmouthed as Lieutenant Trelawny had a quick, low-voiced conversation with the Welshman that consisted of an exchange of several long and convoluted sentences.

Clarence stirred beside her. His face was pale as a wraith's in the disintegrating mist. "What rotten luck that they would be patrolling this stretch of coast tonight of all nights," he said, his voice sounding queer and tight.

"Luck had nothing to do with it," Lieutenant Trelawny said, striding up to them. "Clarey, you see the last of our cargo through the tunnel and get it sealed up. I'll try to delay the preventive men long enough for you to get it all safely stowed."

He took Jessalyn's arm, hauling her after him down the beach. She was beginning to feel like a dog on a leash, tugged this way and that, and she would likely have a score of bruises come morning. "That was the Sarn't Major," she said, panting slightly, for he was walking fast, though limping badly. "You were talking to the Sarn't Major."

"The man's not deaf."

"I know, but you were talking with him." He stopped before a pile of driftwood, a fire that had been laid into the lee shelter of a heap of rocks and marram-covered dunes. He took a flask out the pocket of his greatcoat, which he wore carelessly unbuttoned to the cold, and splashed liquid onto the wood. Her nostrils pinched at the sudden pungent odor of spilled brandy. "What..." she began as he pushed her down onto a shelf of sand and grass. He yanked the hood of her cloak so far over her head it covered her eyes. She pushed it back a bit. "What are you doing?"

"Just sit there, and no matter what happens, keep your hood pulled close around your face."

Jessalyn heard the scrape of a flint, and the driftwood burst into blue flames. She shut her eyes against the sudden blaze of light. He dropped down onto a rock beside her. She leaned toward the fire, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. "Do you think there was an informer?" She would have put her money on Jacky Stout. "Hold your clack, girl."

"Who do you think it is—the informer, I mean?"

"If you don't shut your mouth, I will shut it for you."

She shut her mouth. The fire spit and hissed like a cat, and the sea whispered across the sand. She stole a glance at him. The flames glinted red in his damp hair and glazed the flaring bones of his cheeks, casting deep shadows in the hollows beneath. He looked like the devil come straight up from hell.

Shouts bounced against the rocks, and lantern lights bobbed like fireflies above their heads. Stones clattered and rolled down the cliff path.

"Here they come," he said, his voice low and breathy. "We are two lovers enjoying the night and each other. No matter what I do, keep your face hidden and your mouth shut."

The gaugers were getting closer. She could hear their boots crunching across the sand, and their lanterns threw shafts of light through the decaying fog. "Why can't you tell me your plan?" she whispered. "Surely it would help—"

He turned toward her. She caught the flare of twin fires reflected in his dark eyes before he rolled over on top of her and his mouth slammed down on hers.

He molded his mouth to hers, sucking and pulling on her lips, filling her with his breath and the taste of brandy. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, to hold on to him, hold on.... His tongue slid past her parted lips, filling her mouth. Dear life, his tongue was in her mouth, and the thought of it, the pure, piercing intimacy of it, ignited a hunger deep within her that exploded, blazing up hot and fast as if she, like the driftwood, had been doused with alcohol and set alight. Moaning, she arched into him, pressing, trying to fuse their two bodies and assuage this burning, burning place in her belly. His tongue moved, stroking the inside of her mouth as if he were tasting of her, and the burning place grew hotter, melting her from the inside out....

"Stand up there, and do it nice an' easylike."

His mouth released hers, but slowly, coming back to brush her lips with his, once, twice more. The color was high on his cheekbones, and she could see the pulse beating wildly in his neck before he rolled off her. He stood, pulling her up with him and thrusting her behind his back. Her muscles were heavy and aching, and her chest heaved so hard she unconsciously put her clasped hands up to her breast to keep her heart from bursting right out of her.

A group of men stood before them, bundled up against the fog in oilskins and seaboots. One disengaged himself from the rest and stepped forward. He had a brace of pistols tucked into his belt and a battered face with a nose like a grubbing hoe. He was one of the men Lieutenant Trelawny had been drinking with at the Midsummer's Eve fair.

"Lieutenant, sur!" the customs officer said, surprise in his voice. "What are ee doing out on a night such as this?"

"I'm spending an hour or two with my girl," he answered, but there was a rusty catch to the words, as if he were having a hard time finding his breath.

"Bain't the weather for it, if ee don't mind me sayin' so, sur. 'Tes weather for staying close at home by the fire."

"This fire does us well enough. Her father doesn't like me. And she has lots of brothers." He shuddered dramatically. "Big brutes, they are. With lots of muscles and fists."

The customs man tried to get a look at Jessalyn, but Lieutenant Trelawny shifted his weight, shielding her. She pulled the hood closer about her face.

"Ye wouldn't happened to have seen a lugger, would ee, sur?"

"Well, I've been a bit preoccupied, you understand." He flashed a just-between-us-men smile that the gauger answered with a leer. "But I doubt I could have missed seeing a ship come into the cove, even in this fog."

The gauger scrubbed a big paw across his chin. "Ais, no doubt, sur. No doubt. A score of longboats unloading tuns of brandy on this beach would have been hard to miss."

"The only brandy I've seen is this which I've brought along with me to keep the chill away." He produced the small flask from his coat pocket, flashing his sudden, charming smile. "Though I could not swear any tax was paid on it, coming as it did from my brother's cellar."

"You wouldn't mind us searching them cellars, would ee... sur."

He hesitated for the briefest moment. Then he lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug. "If you think it necessary. But I must see the lady home first. You may wait for me at the entrance to Caerhays Hall."

"Oh, we'll do that, sur. You can be sure we'll wait for ee, sur. Right there on the front steps o' Caerhays Hall."

"Dear life, what can you be thinking of?" Jesssalyn said in a loud whisper as soon as the preventive men had disappeared up the cliff path. "You can't let them search the hall. Won't they find—"

His fingers brushed her lips, still swollen and tender from his kiss. "Shhh. They won't find much. All the good stuff was drunk long ago."

"Then they'll search all the fish cellars in Mousehole and—"

"And they won't find anything but fish." He reached for her at the same time that she took a step toward him. The hem of her cloak caught on one of the rocks, gaping open. He had meant to take her arm, but his hand closed over her breast instead.

She wore only a night rail of loosely woven linen. The thin material, damp from the fog, clung to her skin. Her breast tightened and swelled, her nipple hardening and pushing up between his fingers.

He went utterly still.

The fire blazed hot at her back, and the wet sea air caressed her face. Her breast where he touched her burned, burned.... He stared at her breast, at her taut nipple pushing against his fingers, and his eyes were two black pools, reflecting nothing but the flames. He looked feverish, as if the skin had been pulled too tightly over the sharp bones of his face. His nostrils flared wide, the way a stallion's does when it is frightened. Or excited.

She leaned into him, to feel his heat, to fill her senses with the hot smell of him. His fingers moved, closing around her nipple. She gasped at a feeling so piercing it was on the edge between ecstasy and pain. The words came out of her without thought. "Kiss me again."

"No," he said, on a rough expulsion of breath. He jerked his hand back, as if he had just now felt the searing fire.

Her heart swelled, pushing against her chest, making it difficult to breathe. "Why not?"

"Because you are too young," he said, his chest expanding in a deep sigh.

"You kissed me a moment ago to fool the gaugers." Her lips trembled into a smile. "I am a whole five minutes older now."

"I don't want to kiss you, dammit!"

Something broke inside her in a terrible gush of pain. She whirled and took two stumbling steps through the deep sand.

"Oh, bloody hell!" He snagged her cloak with one hand, the other grabbing her waist, twisting her around and hauling her up against his chest. Seizing her hand by the wrist, he pressed it against the front of his buckskin breeches. "Feel that, damn you. Feel it! You might be a virgin, but you live on a stud farm, for the love of God. You've watched a stallion cover a mare. You know bloody well what it means when a man gets hard like this for a woman. If I kissed you, feeling the way I do now, I'd soon have you flat on your back on the sand with that bloody, useless thing you're wearing ripped right down the middle. And then, by God, there would be hell to pay. For the both of us."

He was stiff and hard beneath her hand. And alive— a swelling, pulsating heat. Her fingers closed around him.

"Jesus Christ!" He flung her off him so violently she nearly stumbled.

"If I wasn't a virgin, would you want to kiss me then?"

He thrust his fingers through his hair. His head fell back, and his eyes squeezed shut. Tremors racked his body as if he had a chill. "Don't ask such improper questions."

She didn't care. She needed to get close to him, to be held by him. It took only one step to bring her body up next to his again, and she took it. She laid her open palms on his collarbone, pushing aside the lapels of his coat. He was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling. "Please," she said. "Don't treat me like a child. I—"

"You are a child!" He thrust her off him. But then a harsh, racking sound burst from her, and he pulled her back against him, gathering her in his arms. "Ah, dammit, come here, baggage."

Tears clogged her throat, building and building, until it felt as if she were choking. Then they exploded out of her in shuddering heaves. "I only asked you to kiss me. I never meant, I never wanted, I didn't—"

"I know. It's all right." He held her while she cried, and though she didn't feel it, he buried his mouth in her hair. Finally she subsided into shudders and little hiccupping breaths. "Are you done blubbering all over my chest?" he said.

She nodded, her forehead rubbing against his shoulder. Her throat was sore, and her eyes burned. She couldn't lift her head and face him. The pain had drained out of her, leaving her sick with shame. Keeping her head down, she sniffled in a deep breath, rubbing her eyes with the tatted lace cuff of her night rail.

"Don't use your sleeve, for God's sake. Have you no idea at all of correct behavior?" He thrust a handkerchief of fine Indian cotton into her hands. "Here. Use this."

She pressed the bunched-up handkerchief to her mouth to hold back another welling sob. Her head fell against him, her forehead nuzzling into his neck. He was still holding her, one hand tangled in her hair, the other pressing into the small of her back, and, oh, the way it felt to be in his arms, to be surrounded by his wonderful heat and strength.... She nestled into him, breathed against the warm skin of his neck, smelling sea salt and woodsmoke and brandy. And that male smell that was uniquely his. She wanted to burrow deep into him and breathe in the smell of him through every pore of her body.

Her lips brushed against the pulse in his throat. It leaped and throbbed against her open mouth, pumping to the hard rush of her own blood. His fingers tightened in her hair, pulling her head up. His eyes flared like exploding suns as his gaze fastened on her mouth. She leaned into him, melted into him. His head dipped, and his breath trailed across her lips—

"Jessalyn!"

They separated slowly, as if drugged. Clarence Tiltwell stood at the very edge of the light cast by the fire, his eyes wide with shock. He jerked into movement, striding across the sand to grasp Jessalyn's arm, pulling her away from Lieutenant Trelawny's side. His gaze stabbed at his cousin, and his jaw muscles tightened. "You bastard."

One corner of Lieutenant Trelawny's mouth twisted with something that might have been regret. "I know. You think I ought to be buried at the crossroads with a stake through my heart."

"You bloody bastard," Clarence said.

Lieutenant Trelawny met Jessalyn's eyes, but his thoughts, his feelings were shuttered against her. She didn't know what he wanted, what to do to make him want her.

"I'm taking her home," Clarence said.

"Please do," Lieutenant Trelawny answered, and to Jessalyn's horror he sounded utterly bored with the whole tawdry scene. Fresh tears welled in her eyes as she turned away from him.

McCady Trelawny stood still, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, until Jessalyn and his cousin disappeared beyond the reach of the firelight, into the darkness and the mist. He groped behind him, felt rock and grass, and subsided onto the dune. His long fingers pressed hard against the bones of his face, stopping the ragged noise of his breathing.

But it was a long time before he stopped shaking.

"We thought ee had forgotten us, sur," the gauger said.

"On the contrary." McCady's voice was full of sophisticated ennui. "I had, however, unfinished business to attend to first, you understand. A gentleman should never leave a lady unfinished."

The gauger's thick lips twisted into a leer. "I told the others, sur." He looked to his cohorts for confirmation. "Didn't I tell ee the randy young buck would probably take his sweet time a-rogering the wench, whilst our own cocks and bobbles rotted in this frigging damp?"

McCady laughed, for even in his present mood he could appreciate the irony. The one time in his sorry, misbegotten life he'd actually done the honorable thing, and here he'd had to disguise it with a cloak of indecency. He couldn't understand anyway what it was about sweet, innocent Miss Letty that made him behave so outside his reprehensible character, that inspired strange protective feelings within him he didn't want and didn't know what to do with.

Young Miss Letty. Too bloody young, but not so young that she didn't know what she was offering. Yet when he was with her, when she looked at him with those gray eyes that saw everything and hid nothing... She almost had him believing that he could do anything, even change the man that he was. She had him feeling that he'd been put on this earth to protect her from the world. And God, what a bloody jest that was, because it wasn't the world she needed protecting from; it was himself.

His mouth twisted into a bitter smile as he led the gaugers up the steps and into Caerhays Hall. The front door was unlocked, for there was nothing inside to steal. His brothers had pawned or sold everything down to the wood paneling to feed their gambling and opium habits.

He had been inside the house only once since he'd returned to Cornwall, and now, while the gaugers searched the cellars, he roamed the rooms. He climbed rickety, worm-eaten stairs to bedchambers that were sour-smelling from the damp and full of mouse droppings. His footsteps rang on the stone-flagged floor of the great hall. He looked at the empty niches that had been cut into the walls for statues long gone, and he felt sad. No, sorrow was too strong an emotion. He felt regret. He wondered, in the same idle way one would wonder what it would be like to be the prince of Wales, how much it would cost to restore the house to its former glory, if it had ever had a former glory. As far as he knew, every Trelawny ever born had died in debt and disgrace, and he wasn't likely to break with the tradition.

The gaugers rejoined him with a rattle of lanterns and scuffling of boots. McCady Trelawny looked down his patrician nose at their leader and said in a voice underlaid by generations of inbred arrogance, "I trust you gentlemen are satisfied."

The customs man scraped his beard-stubbled chin. "Well, as to satisfied, that I couldn't say, sur. There be no contraband in these cellars, that much we do know. But as to what might be stashed elsewhere, well..."

McCady ushered them down the length of the great hall. "Nevertheless, I'm sure you'll forgive me if I do not share your enthusiasm for apprehending the malefactors at this very moment," he said, producing a huge, jaw-cracking yawn. "It has been a rather exhausting night. The lady was a bit of a stickler at the starting post—most of 'em are, don't you know—but Christ, once going, there was no stopping the wench. I rode her hard and fast down the stretch to a bang-up finish that has left me quite wrung out...." He had to yawn again to keep from laughing at the drooling looks on the gaugers' faces.

He saw them to the front gates, and they set off down the lane to search the cellars of Mousehole, where he hoped they really would find nothing but fish.

He had not lied to the gaugers about one thing: He was tired. Pain cut deep like a sword thrust into his thigh with every step.

A discordant scream startled him for a moment, until he realized it came from the night owl that lived in the wild nut trees growing next to the gatehouse. He set his lantern down on the mounting block and stepped up to the gatehouse door...

And into a swinging, balled-up fist.

Clarence Tiltwell stood over the man he had felled, his breath sawing in his throat, his fists clenched. "You bastard. You bloody bastard," he said. He knew he was repeating himself, but then he had never been clever with words. Not like his cousin. His clever, degenerate Trelawny cousin.

McCady got up slowly. He tossed the hair out of his eyes and backhanded a trickle of blood off his mouth. "I'm willing, out of a fondness for you, dear cousin, to allow you a few liberties. But not at the expense of my good looks."

It was the voice of a man who had stood on a knoll in Belgium and slashed and slashed with his sword until the bodies piled up waist deep around him. Clarence tasted fear.

Yet hatred was there, too, burning the back of his throat, and the hatred was stronger than the fear. He had to swallow several times, nearly choking, before he could speak "You were kissing her!"

McCady laughed, he actually laughed, and Clarence wanted to kill him. "I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that you might have misinterpreted what you saw," McCady said.

Clarence knew what he had seen. McCady had been about to kiss her, had already kissed her, and the look in those dark eyes... the raw sexual hunger blazing in those eyes. McCady Trelawny wanted Jessalyn, and he had been about to take her. "I saw your face."

McCady's head fell back against the door. "Ah," he said, almost as a sigh.

Hurt and an awful sense of betrayal squeezed Clarence's chest. To his utter horror he felt on the verge of tears. "Do you intend to marry her?"

"Don't be absurd. I couldn't support a wife, even presuming that I wanted one."

"Yet you've made her fall in love with you. Damn your rotten Trelawny soul to hell."

"You can't damn the already damned. And she isn't in love with me; she's in lust. If you were acting your age instead of hers, you would know that all you have to do is wait long enough, and she will eventually see me for what I am and share, I am sure, in your righteous disgust."

Fear, anger, and despair all raged through Clarence's head. He could barely hear what his cousin was saying. McCady started to turn aside, but Clarence seized his arm. "If you've ruined her, I'll kill you."

He peeled Clarence's fingers off his sleeve. "For Christ's sake, Clarey. If I wanted a child virgin, there's a house I know of in London where one can buy them at ten."

"My God, you are depraved!"

McCady's head fell back as he drew in a deep breath, his lids drifting closed. "I said I knew of it; I didn't say I frequented the place." He opened his eyes, his gaze fastening on to Clarence's face. For a moment Clarence thought he saw pain flash raw and deep within the dark wells of his cousin's eyes, but then they turned flat and empty again. "I have already given you my word," McCady said, his voice flat and empty as well. "I will not take Miss Letty to my bed—"

Clarence barked a harsh laugh. "Your word! What is that worth?"

For a moment a taut silence filled the night. Then McCady said, his voice rough, "It is worth everything to me since my word is all that I have."

Clarence stared at that handsome, worldly face. "Why should I believe you? I don't believe you."

McCady leaned forward and light from the lantern shone on the bitter slant of his mouth. "Then stick it up your arse, cousin."

Clarence felt a wetness on his cheeks and knew to his bitter shame that he was weeping. He wanted to smash his fist into his cousin's mouth again, but he didn't have the courage. His hands, hanging loosely at his sides, clenched and unclenched in helpless hurt and fury. "If you harm her in any way, I promise you this, Trelawny: I will make you pay."

He pivoted on his heel and walked off with jerky strides. Even then a part of him hoped that Mack would come after him, make it better between them, and he held his breath, straining to hear Mack's voice calling his name, long after it was too late.

McCady Trelawny leaned back against the gatehouse door and watched his cousin go, his face blank except for an occasional twitch at the corner of his mouth. He stayed that way, propped up by the door, until the wind chilled the sweat on his forehead and the owl screamed again.

He went inside the gatehouse, which had been his home for the last month. He had furnished it with bits and pieces of things that he had found in the hall, things not worth pawning or selling. A green-faced clock missing its minute hand, a wobbly table, a chair with only one slat. In a corner, a faded Chinese screen hid a cracked yellow tin bathtub. A kettle sat on a trivet beside a dead fire.

It was hardly the lap of luxury, but then he'd lived much more roughly during the war. Along one wall stood a pair of nail-studded leather trunks, filled with books on engineering and science and his expensive clothes. At least no matter how poor he was at any given time, he always managed to dress like a gentleman, even if he probably wouldn't live long enough to pay off his rags and tatters bills. But then London tailors and bootmakers understood these things. His lips curled into a self-deprecating smile at the thought. Appearances should always be deceiving.

He looked around the room with distaste. There was nothing to keep him here now. A week at the most to arrange for the sale of the brandy, and he would clear maybe a hundred pounds' profit on the deal. It would all have to go toward repaying the money that Clarey had lent him for the locomotion experiments. Then he could kick the mud of Cornwall off his boots and debauch the rest of his life away at the expense of His Majesty's army.

He threw himself down onto a rope bed that squealed in protest. He kneaded his eyes with the heels of his hands. God, the look of horror and disgust on Clarey's face... McCady thought of what he himself had never had, of youth and innocence. Of a belief that somewhere in this corrupt and corruptible world there existed a tiny, shining scrap of decency and honor and— Damn her! She'd all but been begging for it, and he sure as bloody hell had wanted to give it to her. He should have borne her down onto the sand right then and taken her.

And he would have ruined her life.

He stretched his arms above his head, his fingers grasping the wooden slats of the bedstead. He stared at the roughhewn beams above and saw...

Saw her eyes, dark gray and turbulent as the sea before a storm, and her hair, russet and loamy, the color of autumn leaves strewn in wild abandon on his pillow. Saw himself burying his face in that hair, drowning in her smell. She would have freckles on her breasts, and he saw himself tasting them with his tongue. Saw himself spreading those long, long legs wide, kissing that laughing mouth senseless... Her mouth. God, the things he could teach her to do with that mouth.

He sat up abruptly, cutting off the thought with a ruthless effort of will. He could not as easily control his sex, which had stretched and grown hard, pressing painfully against his tight buckskin breeches.

He stood and limped over to the table. He picked up an old trapping knife, cut three rashers off a slab of bacon and put them into a frypan. The fire had gone out. He took the tinderbox off the mantel and tried to light it, but his fingers shook so badly he couldn't get a spark.

"Bloody hell!" He threw the tinderbox against the wall.

He stared at the piece of tarred sacking that served as a rug beside his bed. It also served to cover the trapdoor that led into a cellar that just happened to be filled at the moment with a hundred tuns of tax-free brandy. It was a foolish smuggler who consumed his own profits, but the only way he was going to get through what was left of the night was to drink himself insensible.

Yet he did not kick aside the sacking and lift the trapdoor. He crossed over to the bed and sat. His hands gripped his thighs so hard the tendons stood out like ropes. He felt as if every muscle in his body were straining against his skin.

His head fell back, and he swallowed hard. "Jessalyn," he said into the cold and empty room.