Once in a Blue Moon

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14

A rocket shot across the sky, exploding overhead like a shattered star. Glittering blue fire rained down, silhouetting the trees, transforming branches into witches' claws and shadows in capering demons. Although the night was mild, Jessalyn shivered, huddling deep within the folds of her cloak.

"Are ye cold, miss?"

She shook her head, then heaved an enormous sigh. "Oh, Topper. I don't think I can go through with this. Dear life... if Gram were to hear of it, she would never forgive me."

"And who's to tell her, eh?" The young jockey was leaning against the trunk of an elm, his arms folded across his chest. Red globe lamps hung from the branches above, casting a ruddy glow over his face. "No one can see who ye are in them togs. Ye could be the bleedin' queen of Sheba. We need the blunt," he reminded her.

Jessalyn flinched as a Roman candle ignited with a boom and a hail of fire clusters. The Vauxhall pleasure gardens were suddenly as bright as a meadow at high noon, and she touched the spangled, lacquered mask she wore as if to reassure herself that it was still in place. Nervous fear sat on her stomach like sour wine.

The colored globe lamps in the elm trees winked red and blue and yellow eyes. The whistle and bang of the fireworks drowned out the lilting strains of a waltz. Arcaded colonnades surrounded a leafy bower where beggars mixed with bankers and dukes rubbed elbows with cobblers, and prostitutes and pickpockets fleeced them all. Within small discreet booths, gentlemen and ladies partook of flirtatious conversation and expensive suppers of muslin-thin slices of ham, tiny chickens, cheesecakes, and syllabubs.

And soon now, as soon as the fireworks show was over, many in the crowd would drift into the nearby wooden rotunda for the night's entertainment, and Jessalyn would...

Her stomach clenched again. She would do what she had to do. The money she was about to make would go a long way toward feeding them all in the coming months, not to mention the four racehorses that were even now consuming a fortune in oats in their rented stable at Newmarket.

A serpentine exploded above, spitting flames. A hand touched her shoulder, and Jessalyn whirled, her heart leaping into her throat. Topper, his gap-toothed grin splitting his face, held out a glass of the famous Vauxhall punch. "I bought ye a drink, Miss Jessalyn. Wet yer gullet with enough of this, and ye could waltz with the devil and not turn a hair."

Jessalyn's hand shook as she reached for the glass, but she managed a smile of thanks for the boy. She started to drink and nearly choked as pungent fumes swirled up her nose. The punch burned like liquid fire going down, but when it hit bottom, she felt all warm and tingly inside.

It gave her the courage to go around to the back of the rotunda and join the other sequined, spangled, and plumed performers awaiting their cue at the stage entrance. A pudding-paunched man waddled up to her. His hair was oiled and brushed behind his ears in stiff wings, and his collar points were starched so high Jessalyn feared he would cut off his head if he had to turn it suddenly. He was Mr.

O'Hare, who that afternoon had hired her to be the opening act in his Equestrian Spectacle.

"Miss Brown?" he said. His lips, thin and tight as a buttonhole, twisted into a knowing smirk. She had not been very original with her alias. "You're late."

Jessalyn said nothing; her mouth was too dry for speech.

"Take off the cloak."

Her hands tightened in the thick material at her neck. Then she loosened the barrel snaps and let the cloak slip off her shoulders. Mr. O'Hare had provided her with the costume, and Jessalyn suspected it had once belonged to a boy. It consisted of tight-fitting sequined white hose and a scarlet doublet shot with gold thread, like the court clothes of a cavalier from a long-ago era. Her mask was in the shape of a bird's head, with what looked like real parrot feathers beneath the lacquer. It had a great curved beak that was coming loose and wiggled when she touched it.

Mr. O'Hare's bold gaze roamed down the length of he exposed legs, then up again. Jessalyn's cheeks flushed hot behind the mask. His mouth parted in a smile, revealing a gold tooth that flashed in the lantern light. "You'll do. Oh, aye, lassie. You'll do."

He motioned to a stable lad, who brought over the horse she would perform on tonight. It was a circus horse, a rosinback—a mare with a broad level back and a coat as white as frothed milk. She had a wide leather strap called a surcingle cinched around her belly and ostrich plumes fastened to her head.

Jessalyn murmured sweet nothings in the mare's ears, checked the tightness of the surcingle a dozen times, and did a lot of fussing and fidgeting, while a wire walker, a juggler, and a sword swallower warmed up the audience. Too soon she heard the revel master's voice echoing out of the rotunda's doors... death-defying equestrian feats. Jessalyn checked the surcingle again and thought she might get sick.

Suddenly Mr. O'Hare was flapping his arm at her. She sent the mare forward with a soft click of her tongue. Grasping the surcingle, she vaulted onto the horse's back and pulled herself into the kneeling position. She extended her right leg behind her, pointed her toe, and lifted her head high just as the mare burst through a paper hoop and into the rotunda's ring. A loud crack of sound smacked into her, and she nearly fell off from the shock of it. She thought someone had set off a rocket within the building. Then she realized it was the noise of hundreds of hands clapping.

The people in the boxes and gallery and the smoking, fluttering torches blended into a dizzying swirl of light and colors as she cantered around the small ring. Thumping canes and snapping snuffboxes, talk and laughter all blended into a frantic buzz, like a busy hive. Fear and excitement tightened her muscles. Her palms went wet with sweat. She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, centering herself to the movement of the horse. Soon the noise receded until it became nothing more than a whisper, like the distant wash of the sea across sand. Her senses became focused on specific things: the dusty smell of the sawdust that covered the floor of the pit; the smooth, oily feel of the leather surcingle; the dry, chalky taste in her mouth that came from nerves.

She performed her tricks flawlessly—the Flag, the Mill, the Scissors, and the "death-defying" Cossack Hang. It was while performing this feat, hanging sideways and upside down over the left side of the horse, with her left leg pointed skyward and her arms dangling over her head toward the ground, that she saw him.

It was only a fleeting glimpse, when her gaze had wandered from the rotating cherubs on the domed ceiling to the spinning tier of the upper boxes. But she could have picked out his face from among multitudes, even upside down. She took a better look when she righted herself and cantered around the ring again to the accompaniment of thunderous applause and cries of "Huzza!" He was in a front box with a party of two other men and three women. She wondered which of the women was his.

His expression looked reckless and dangerous, and his dark gaze speared her as if he knew, knew that it was she beneath the bird mask. Her whole body went hot, and she was possessed with a violent longing to gallop out of the ring and keep going until she rode off the end of the earth.

Once more she cantered around the ring, and as if pulled by invisible reins, her head lifted and her eyes were drawn up to his. He'd always seen her as a silly, bumbling, beetle-witted child, and his opinion was unlikely ever to change. But her heart was safe from him now; she would make sure that this was so. If she didn't allow herself to care what he thought of her, he could no longer hurt her.

She had one last death-defying feat left to perform and she knew which one it would be—the Standing Somersault, the trick she had shown off for him the day that he had first kissed her. The day that she had fallen into Claret Pond, and fallen so deeply in love that she had become lost and never found her way back.

But this time there were no rabbit holes to spoil the ending. She did it perfectly. She landed upright on the mare's back, standing tall, her arms lifted above her head as the mare leaped back through the ring and out of the rotunda, and wave after wave of applause washed over them.

Jessalyn jumped from the horse onto legs that suddenly felt as loose and quivery as jellied eels. She hugged the mare, planting a kiss on her pink nose. "Scrape off the sweat, and rub her down good," she said to the boy who came running up. The night breeze chilled her own sweating body. She wrapped up in her cloak as she searched for Topper in the crowd milling outside the arena door.

A hand clamped down on her wrist, jerking her around so violently she was flung onto his chest and had to grasp the lapels of his coat to keep from falling. Her head fell back, and her gaze clashed with hard, shadowed eyes.

"You're coming with me," he said.

She struggled to pull free of him. "How dare you presume to order me about. You are not my brother or my guardian. You are nothing to me." She liked the sound of that so much she said it again. "You are nothing."

"You are coming with me now," he said again.

"I am not. I have another performance—"

The rest of her protest caught in her throat as, slowly, he lowered his head, bringing his face so close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath and see the yellow sunbursts in his eyes. "The hell you do," he said, and Jessalyn thought the devil's voice would probably sound like that.

He strode down the broad treelined walk, pulling her after him. Stones bruised the soles of her thinly slippered feet. She clawed at the hand that was clamped like a vise around her wrist. "Let me go or I'll scream," she protested, but as soon as the words were out her mouth, she felt like a fool. They had sounded so silly, like something the heroine of a blue book would wail just before the villain ravished her.

"Go ahead, indulge yourself," her particular villain retorted in a mocking drawl that had her clenching her teeth. "Young ladies scream in Vauxhall Gardens all the time. It is practically a mating call."

He was right. The gardens were latticed with dark walks bounded by high hedges and hidden ornamental ruins that were havens for seduction. The night air was filled with the tinkle and gurgle of fountains, the rustle of wind-stirred leaves, and the squealing and shrieking of ladies losing their virtue.

The smell of lilac lay heavy on the breeze. Lamps winked like fairy lights in the trees, and the moon rolled across the sky, round and shiny as a new penny. It was a beautiful night, a night made for love. McCady's fingers crushed her wrist as he dragged her down the walk. She jerked hard against him, trying to pull free, and succeeded only in nearly wrenching her arm off.

He hauled her out of the front gate, then down to the riverfront, walking fast and jerking her along hard behind him, so that if he hadn't had such a death grip on her wrist, she would have fallen headfirst down the rickety wooden steps to the quay. "Oars!" he bellowed, and a moment later a small wherry bumped up to the dock, splashing stinking, oily water onto the warped boards.

His hands closed around her waist to lift her into the boat, and she lashed out with her foot, catching him high on the thigh, missing her aim.

"Bloody hell, Jessalyn." He grunted as she landed a good one on his shin, but it didn't stop him from tossing her like a sack of turnips into the wherry. She landed hard on the poorly cushioned thwart, rattling her teeth.

The ferry landing was marked by a red-and-blue-striped pole and a flaming link torch. The torch flared in a sudden gust of wind, filling the air with the reek of tow and pitch and highlighting the harsh bones of his face. For a moment fear overwhelmed Jessalyn's anger. He was capable of anything, was McCady Trelawny. He acknowledged no rules, answered to no one. Then her anger, like the torch, flared again.

She struggled to stand up in the rocking boat, but McCady held her down with a bruising grip on her shoulder while he paid the ferryman his sixpence. "Are you blind?" she shouted. "Can't you see that this man is abducting me?"

"Aye." The ferryman hawked and spit into the water. "They all say that at first. And they all comes to likin' it in the end." He pushed the wherry away from the dock, and it was gripped by the river current.

"Where are you taking me?" Jessalyn demanded. Her voice caught on a slight tremor, and she tried to swallow it back down into her chest, where the fear resided.

For answer she got the slap of oars in the water. Lights from the gilded barges of the livery companies and the spanning arc of Westminster Bridge twinkled and sparkled, so that it seemed as if all the sky's stars had fallen into the river. There were people on the bridge, in those barges. Yet she knew she could scream herself hoarse and no one would come to help her.

They landed near a stand of hackney chariots, and he hailed one. His hand gripped her elbow, pushing her up the steps into the carriage. She fell onto the cracked leather seat, thrusting her cold feet into the straw on the floor, shivering, rubbing the bruises he had put on her wrist. He spoke to the driver, then climbed in beside her. She sat unmoving, stiff as a pit prop. The carriage started forward, clattering over the cobbles.

"Take that ridiculous thing off your face."

Her hands flew up to the bird mask. She fumbled with it, knocking the loose beak askew. She untied the strings and let it fall into her lap. A night breeze, smelling of London soot and river sludge, blew under the hackney's hood, cooling her burning cheeks. The flaring gas jets in the street spilled intermittent light into the carriage, casting his features into sharp bones and dangerous shadows.

The hackney slowed to turn a corner, and a boy ran up alongside, tossing a handbill into the earl's lap. He crumpled the paper in his fist and tossed it out again, swinging his head toward her, his earring winking like a golden eye.

His hand lashed out to fling open her cloak. He stared at her forever, and she felt the strangest awareness of her own body within the exotic clothes. Her breasts, taut and aching, pressing against the stiff satin of the doublet. Her legs, covered only by the thin silk hose and quivering as if they were naked.

He spoke through tight lips. "You have always had a propensity for trouble, but even at sixteen I doubt you were capable of hatching such a half-baked, bird-witted scheme that could so ruin you in the eyes of the world."

She jerked the cloak from his grasp, hugging it close to her chest. She hadn't wanted to ruin herself; she only wanted to earn some money to see her family through the next couple of months, until her marriage next June.

"Say something, damnation."

Her head snapped around. "Why should I? You're making enough clack for both of us. My lord."

A muscle jumped along his jaw, and his fists clenched. "Tomorrow I shall have a word with the man who operates that—that circus. I assure you that he will no longer be requiring your services."

"Thank you very much. My lord. And while you're about it, perhaps you will tell me how we're all supposed to eat without the twenty shillings a night Mr. O'Hare was going to pay me."

"I should have thought you had plenty of blunt. After your big winnings at Newmarket the other day."

"I told you that we did not crimp that race." She looked into his eyes, alternately shadowed and then starred in the flickering light. "It could have been you. Indeed, it is just the sort of cheating, dishonorable behavior you Trelawnys are known for."

If she had meant to wound him, she hadn't succeeded. His face was more of a mask than the one in her lap. She had never been able to tell what he was thinking when it mattered.

"If you are really so desperate, why didn't you apply to your betrothed?" he said. "Cousin Clarey has enough tin to feed half of London and not feel the pinch."

So Clarence had mentioned their betrothal to his cousin; he had known it all along. And though she was loath to admit it, especially to herself, it hurt to realize that the earl of Caerhays didn't seem to care.

She lifted her chin. "We Lettys do not borrow from our friends. Or lovers," she added. She cast a sideways glance to see what he would make of that.

He seemed to make nothing of it at all, merely shrugging. "I might be badly dipped myself but I can still spare a pound or two. Enough to keep you and your grandmother from starving."

"I wouldn't take the world's last crust of bread if it came from you." It was another silly remark, and she knew as soon as the words left her mouth that he would pounce on them.

He didn't disappoint her. "Instead of joining the circus," he drawled, "you should have gone on the stage. You have such a flair for the melodramatic delivery."

"It was not a circus. It was an Equestrian Spectacle."

"It was indeed a spectacle."

"And you are a vile... an odious... a despicable..." Words failed her. "An utter cad," she finished lamely, thinking that once again she was sounding like the beleaguered heroine of the worst sort of blue book.

He leaned into her, and something menacing flickered in his eyes. She felt the power of him that was a heat in the night, and she was drawn to that heat the way one would hold out cold hands to a flame. She could understand what had so attracted her at sixteen—the dark side of him that was wicked and lawless, exciting in its very danger. It attracted her still. She wanted to taste that danger, to see if she could tame it. She wanted him. It was primal in its power, this wanting. Seductive in its inevitability.

Her head told her there was no future with him. Yet in the charged silence she licked her lips, tasting fear and excitement... wanting him.

His gaze fastened on to her mouth, and she knew from the taut look on his face and the lazy-lidded heat in his eyes that he wanted her as well. Her head told her a man could desire where he did not love. Yet deliberately she wet her lips again.

He lowered his head, and his hand stole up to frame her face. His thumb stroked the line of her jaw. Mesmerized, she watched the creases alongside his mouth deepen as his lips moved. His breathy words caressed her cheek. "If you want me to kiss you, Miss Letty, why don't you just ask? It is no great distance after all from the circus ring to the brothel—"

She swung a fist at his head. His hand shot up, grabbing her wrist. His lips parted in a hard smile. "I wouldn't do that were I you. I just might be the sort of vile, odious, despicable, and utter cad who would hit you back."

She tugged against his grip. "Let go of me, you bloody bastard."

He clicked his tongue, shaking his head in mock dismay. "Such naughty language, though hardly original. Have you been keeping bad company again?"

Their rough breathing filled the carriage as they glared at each other in aroused hostility. Muttering an oath, he swung his head away from her. He called to the driver on the box to pull up, and the carriage jolted to a stop. As if awakening from a trance, Jessalyn looked around to see where they were. They appeared to be in the middle of the market piazza of Covent Garden.

The driver let down the steps, and McCady descended first. He held up his hand to her. "Get out," he said in a voice of silk and steel.

Jessalyn deliberately ignored his hand. She climbed down, stepping onto paving stones that were slick with walnut husks and rotting cabbage leaves. Her left foot shot out from under her, and she grabbed him to regain her balance, her arm sliding around his waist beneath his coat. She felt the sinewy muscle that encased his ribs, felt it tauten as he sucked in a sharp breath, and she thrust herself hard away from him.

She saw his chest jerk, heard the rasp in his breathing. Her heart seemed to be wedged up in her throat, choking her. Whatever had been between them five years ago was still there, stronger than ever.

A roasted chestnut man rolled his cart toward them, shaking his pan, and the air was filled with the smell of burned nuts. The theaters were just letting out, and the streets were crowded with playgoers. Fruit sellers shoved among them, offering their wares with a cry: "Chase some oranges! Chase my nonpareils!"

An untidy collection of lean-tos and tumbledown sheds covered the piazza. It smelled of overripe melons and rotting onions, for Covent Garden was the site of London's vegetable market. In a few hours the square would be crowded with carts and wagons heaped with fresh country produce, costermongers in their gaudy waistcoats and greengrocers in their blue aprons. But at night the place was given over to revelry and sin. The once noble mansions that surrounded the square had long ago been converted into penny gaffs and chophouses, bagnios and brothels. Sex in all its permutations could be bought within sight of the fat columns of St. Paul's Cathedral.

The lamplights looked like big, shiny flat sequins in the hazy darkness, casting a golden pall over the scene. A Fashionable Impure wearing a magnificent plumed headdress strolled slowly across the church portico. Her soft white arms and rounded breasts were displayed to the cool night air, and the material of her gown was so diaphanous it was more suggestion than substance.

A young blood dressed to the nines joined the woman on the portico. He said something to her and squeezed her exposed breast as if testing for its ripeness. Then the two of them descended the steps and rounded the corner, disappearing into the night.

McCady's boots crunched on the shells and husks as he came up behind her. "Flying around Vauxhall's rotunda in spangles and hose makes you little better than her," he said, his breath rustling her hair, but his voice was edged with a raw anger. "Is that what you want, Jessalyn?"

She stiffened. "I fail to see the correlation, my lord. Indeed, I find your insinuation insulting."

"Dammit, Jessalyn. If your behavior tonight ever gets out, you will be utterly and completely ruined, and you know it."

"Only you know that it was I behind the mask. A gentleman would vow to keep a lady's secret."

"A lady would never indulge in such scandalous behavior in the first place. A lady would never have taken the risk. If your Mr. Clarence Tiltwell, MP, ever got wind of it, he would be forced to repudiate you publicly—"

"Clarence would never do such a thing. He loves me."

"Clarence loves himself. And in his position he cannot afford even a breath of scandal. He would cry to the skies how you had deceived him, and by the time he was through, there would be men piled up outside your door nose-high like pilchards in August offering you proposals. And they wouldn't be marriage proposals."

She caught a note of something in his voice, something she didn't dare to trust. But it was almost as if he cared what happened to her, cared about her reputation and her future happiness. She wanted to push him, to see how far his caring would go. But this path led to heartache, and she had been down it before. She thought of one of Gram's favorite sayings: that only an addlepated fool bit into the same rotten apple twice.

Still, she had to know....

She turned to face him, arching her brows and arranging her lips into a soft moue. "In truth, I had not considered entertaining those sorts of proposals," she said. "But now that you put me in mind of it, my lord, I can see where becoming some wealthy man's—how do you young bloods put it?—some man's ladybird is indeed an alternative."

He did not react as she had hoped. Instead he lifted one brow in turn and looked her over slowly as if judging just how viable an alternative. "Look around you then, Miss Letty. You'll find quite an aviary of ladybirds here at Covent Garden, from plump white doves to the scrawniest crows. You should understand the value of what you're selling and price yourself accordingly. For instance, if you were a virgin under thirteen, you could fetch upward of two hundred pounds. But a virgin at twenty-one—you are still a virgin?"

"I might be. It is no concern of yours."

"It will be the concern of the man who buys you. He should know what he's getting. A dried-up old maid..."

He paused, but she did not rise to the bait. "On the scale of virgins a dried-up old maid is worth a lot less than a nubile ingenue fresh out of the schoolroom."

"Why should I care what scale the man uses, since I shall be the one to do the choosing, not he? He will have to be well breeched, of course." She flicked a finger at the gold band in his ear. "Not one up to his pretty earring in debt. And he must be handsome as well, with no fat around his belly and no bald spots on his head." She gave these portions of his anatomy a scathing look as if he were already going to seed.

"A woman past her prime with red hair and freckles cannot be too particular."

"I am hardly in my dotage and—"

"Positively antiquated, I would say."

"—and I no longer have freckles."

He caught her jaw with two fingers and twisted her head around, so that the flambeau from a nearby cigar-divan shone full on her face. He rubbed his thumb across her cheekbone. "Liar. I see a good two dozen right here."

His gaze moved over her face as intimately as a caress, and the constant noise in the crowded piazza seemed suddenly to still. The wind snatched the hem of her cloak and wrapped it around his leg. His head dipped, and her lips parted, waiting, no longer breathing, waiting until even her heart seemed to pause in anticipation of what was to come.

He let her go, and she squeezed her eyes shut against a sudden plunge of disappointment. "I—I shall insist he give me jewels," she forced out through her tight throat. "And a house with the deed in my name."

"Very wise. Because your attractions, dubious as they are, will probably only last another three years. Perhaps four."

"Gram says I have enduring bones."

"Enduring bones or not, he'll soon grow tired of you. You'll be older then, and used. You will not be able to be so choosy the second time. In another year or two, another man or two, you'll become like that little dolly-mop over there."

She followed the direction of his gaze. A woman in low-cut, gaudy satin and a fringed shawl clung drunkenly to the arm of an old man in a greasy greatcoat. Her face was caked with yellow powder, her cheeks rouged orange like marmalade stains.

"Her jack will take her into a dive behind the colonnade there. He will consummate the arranged transaction— which, if she is fortunate, will be a normal consummation and not the nasty sort of play that can only be described in Latin phrases. Then he will pay her five shillings, four of which will go to her abbess, or her pimp. She has already started on the downward slide, you see. Into the gutter with her."

He nodded toward a brick wall covered with faded, peeling posters. At first all Jessalyn saw were shadows. Then the shadows stirred and became a woman in a ragged duffel cloak and rusty black poke bonnet.

"She has to ply her trade in parks and alleys because she is so diseased that no house or pimp will have her. She gets two pennies, and if I told you what she is willing to do for them, you wouldn't believe me."

The prostitute, sensing their interest, pushed off the wall and sauntered out into the piazza. She stepped into the circle of light cast by the flambeau, and Jessalyn sucked in a shocked breath. For the woman was not a woman at all, but a girl no older than fifteen. Her mouth was covered with weeping sores, and someone had recently beaten her, for liver-colored bruises ringed both eyes. "Buy yer pleasure, yer honor?" she whined, plucking at McCady's clothes with scabby fingers. "Anything ye wants, yer honor. Any ways ye wants it."

He put a coin into the girl's hand and waved her away, and Jessalyn could tell from his face that he felt no shock or horror. In truth, he felt nothing at all. He had been exposed to the stews of London too young, had partaken of their dark pleasures too often, ever to be shocked or horrified by anything again. He turned, and his gaze—fierce and arrogant, and perhaps a little wary—pierced her. She had thought it all a game, but he had been deadly serious. He had set out to teach her a lesson again, and this time he had succeeded. Succeeded better than he knew.

"Well, Miss Letty? Have you seen enough?" he said in a mocking, cutting voice, and in that moment she hated him.

She hated him for showing her that some sins had consequences too terrible to bear and that even innocence had a price. She hated him for showing her that love could be ugly. She whirled to run, but he seized her from behind, wrapping one powerful arm around her and flinging her around. She fought him, going for his face with her nails, and he encircled her wrists in a bruising grip, twisting her arms behind her back. She opened her mouth, and he covered it with his own.

Beneath his kiss she tasted bitter, smoldering anger, yet her mouth opened wide to his. His lips softened, gentled. He let go of her wrists to tangle his fingers in her hair, bending her head back so that he could probe her mouth with his tongue. She seized his mouth like someone starving, tasting him, drinking of him. She kissed him back with all the passion of a girl's lost love and all the hunger of a woman yearning, needing, to rediscover love again. And the pain of it was too much, too much.

She tore free of him, backing away, her head shaking wildly back and forth. "Not again... not again."

She took off running, turning into an alley, not knowing where she was going, not caring. A dandy in purple-and-green-striped pantaloons spilled out the door of a smoke-filled coffeehouse, and she slammed into him.

He clasped her arms to steady her. "Well, well," he said. His breath, reeking of brandy and tobacco, wafted over her face. "What have we here?"

"Let her go," McCady said in a voice she had never heard before. The dandy's gaze shot past her, and his fingers opened, releasing her. He held his gloved hands palms out in front him as he backed up. Then he spun around and walked rapidly away out the back end of the alley.

Jessalyn stood unmoving now, panting, fighting back tears. She kept her back to McCady as he came up to her. But when he planted himself in front of her, she slowly lifted her eyes to his. The face of the devil in a rage would look like that, she thought. Not hot but searing cold and utterly merciless. His hand clamped around her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh and heating the blood in her veins until she burned inside. He was being deliberately cruel, and all she could feel was a sweet, piercing pleasure at his touch.

She stared down at the fingers that gripped her so cruelly, those scarred and burned inventor's fingers, and the thought hit her with a violent jolt that she had never stopped loving this man. Even while hating him, still she had loved him. This man with his shadowed eyes and dark soul, and his stirring visions of iron horses and horseless carriages. This man who owned her heart in a way that no other man ever would.

Who owned her heart and didn't want it.

"Take your hand off me," she said.

His mouth tightened into a hard smile. "I am done assaulting your bloody virtue for tonight. But neither am I going to let you indulge in a childish tantrum and run alone through the streets."

He led her back out into the piazza. The fingers that had clasped her arm so cruelly now rubbed gentle circles on her bruised skin.

"I won't run. Just, please... don't touch me," she said, her voice choking.

He cast her a sharp look, but he let her go, whistling for the hackney. She heard him give the driver her direction, and she didn't even think to wonder how he came to know where she lived. They rode the short distance in a silence that crackled with tension. In the silvery flashes of light that penetrated beneath the carriage's hood, his expression seemed sharpened, more dangerous than ever.

The hackney was still rolling to a stop when she jumped out, not waiting for the steps to be lowered. She hit the pavement hard, stumbling a bit, then regained her balance, racing down the Adelphi Terrace that fronted the river. "Jessalyn, wait," he called after her. She fumbled with the front door of her town house, praying that Becka had remembered to leave it unbolted. His footsteps pounded on the stone behind her. The latch lifted, but one of the hinges was stiff; it had needed oiling for months now. Swearing like a drunken tinner, she pushed with panting desperation against the door, and at last, at last, it swung open. "Jessalyn!" His shadow, cast by the flaring streetlamp, fell over her, consuming her. "Jessalyn, goddammit..." She slipped inside.

He closed his hand around the jamb to keep her from shutting the door.

She shut it anyway, slamming it as hard as she could.

He snatched his hand back, cursing. She shot the bolt and sagged, gasping for breath, pressing her flushed cheek against the smoothly painted wood.

She thought she heard his receding footsteps, and she straightened to peek through the judas-hole. He stood across the terrace, leaning against the grilled railing that overlooked the river, his hair falling over his forehead. He was sucking on his knuckles and looking like a hurt and lonesome little boy. She wanted to go back out to him and hold his head to her breast and comfort him. She turned around and, pressing her back against the door, slid slowly to the floor. She hugged her legs, rubbing her face across the hard bones of her knees. A wetness seeped through her spangled hose. She touched her cheeks, shocked to discover they were wet and sticky with tears.

Napoleon came out from his bed beneath the stairs. He entwined himself around her legs, his loud purr grating like a watchman's rattle. But when she went to pet him, he bit her hand and streaked off, orange and white tail flying high. Even her cat didn't love her. The ridiculous thought brought out a soggy laugh and got her on her feet.

Becka had left a candle burning on the newel-post. On her way to her bedroom Jessalyn paused to open her grandmother's door. The old woman lay flat on her back on the bed, her hands outside the covers, straight at her sides, lying so still that Jessalyn went into the room and held her fingers to her grandmother's lips. She was not aware of the depth of her fear until she felt the knee-quivering wash of relief that came with the warm caress of her grandmother's breath. Lady Letty had to take so much laudanum now for her rheumatism that she slept like the dead through the night. Like the dead. Fear clutched again at Jessalyn's chest, the same fear she had felt that afternoon at Newmarket. It was a dread of loneliness, she knew. She couldn't bear the thought of life without Gram, of spending the years alone.

Once in her own room, she did not undress for bed. On the top shelf of her walnut wardrobe, shoved way in the back, was a bandbox. She had to stand on a chair to fetch it down. Inside was a little cottage bonnet made of chip straw and decorated with a posy of yellow silk primroses. The straw was cracked and unraveling at the brim, the silk flowers drooping and faded.

She put the hat on and studied herself in the round looking glass that was inset into the wardrobe's door.

It was a pretty little hat, but it was meant for a much younger girl, a girl just emerging from the schoolroom, awkward and giggly and apt to take herself much too seriously. A tightness squeezed Jessalyn's chest as she thought of the girl who had worn this hat that long-ago summer. For the first time she understood just how incredibly young she must have seemed to him.

Turning away from the mirror, she pulled off the hat with a savage gesture. It was an old, useless thing, meant for the rubbish heap; she shouldn't have kept it.

Yet with care now, and gentleness, she put the hat back in the box, and as she did so, she noticed, beneath the tissue that lined the bottom, the corner of a green leather book. She took the book and went with it to the window seat. As she ran her palm over the embossed leather, the smell of mildew wafted up at her. She saw where splotches of black fur marred the gold gilt. The sight of the decay filled her with such a deep sadness her chest ached.

A primrose lay pressed against the flyleaf inside. It was nearly transparent, so dry she feared that if she so much as breathed on it, it would crumble into dust. Taking extra pains not to disturb the flower, she turned to the first page. The ink had faded, but she could still read the words.

I met a man today...