Once in a Blue Moon (30 page)

He couldn't keep the desire at bay, not always, not forever. No man had that much will. He allowed himself to feel, just for a moment, what it would be like to go to her and take her into his arms, to bear her down on the sand and make her his in a way that was as wild and enduring as the raging sea.

He allowed himself to feel, and it was a mistake. His hunger for her, his need, drove him limping toward her across the sand. A solitary gull echoed a warning cry. She whipped around. His intent must have shown on his face, for he saw the fear dawn in her eyes. Fear and a horror that drove like a fist into his gut.

She ran, passing by him so closely her hair whipped across his face.

"Jessalyn!" he cried. But although he could have, he didn't try to stop her. She tore up the cliff path as if all the demons of hell chased after her.

He stayed at the beach a long time, watching wave after wave tighten, curl, and break. The gull cried again, but it was drowned out by the scream of the wind.

Lady Letty snorted and thumped the ground with her cane. "Who'd have thought we'd ever see the day? Cheeky devil. The Trelawnys have always been cheeky devils."

"I should think you'd be pleased to see the mine reopened, Gram." Jessalyn looked across the bluff at the enginehouse of Wheal Patience. It was decorated with red and white flags that snapped in the breeze, sounding like a hundred clapping hands. The enginehouse looked good as new, with whole bricks replacing the broken ones and the window frames painted a bright daffodil yellow. Smoke from the chimney stack spiraled into a sky so blue it hurt the eyes. "Think what it will mean to the men of Mousehole," she said, "to have work all the year round."

Lady Letty snorted again, although she looked pleased. "All well and good, but he's been spending money as if 'twere cuckoo spit. And they say the marriage settlement won't come due till the heir is born. He's been borrowing on future expectations, mind you. Riding for a fall, he is— typical Trelawny. What if it's a girl, eh? What if it's born dead? You can tell she ain't a breeder. Too delicate by half."

Emily indeed appeared too delicate and fragile to bear a child. She looked like a child herself, standing beside her tall, broad-shouldered husband on the bob plat, the unrailed wooden platform high above the crowd. New mining ventures were launched just like ships, and everyone breathing within miles was on hand to witness the event.

The earl and his lady had climbed to the bob plat on the top floor of the house to christen the great beam. The chimney stack and enginehouse were built on a promontory between the sheer bluff and the sea, reached only by a narrow cliff path. Jessalyn was surprised Lord Caerhays had allowed his pregnant wife to make the dangerous climb. Perhaps Emily had insisted, wanting to share in his moment. In her place Jessalyn would have done the same.

In her place...
Memories assailed Jessalyn, pulling at her heart. Memories of the day they had come here together to explore the mine. They had quarreled, and he'd left her behind, but she had gone after him and fallen, like a clumsy fool, down a shaft. They had found Salome's baby; in the excitement she'd never thought to ask afterward if he'd found tin. She had known even then that one day he would start up a new venture. But in her dreams, in her silly schoolgirl dreams, she had been the one standing beside him on the bob plat.

The church choir silenced the crowd by singing "God Save the King." The Reverend Troutbeck stepped to the front of the platform and called upon the Lord to bless the endeavor with lodes of high-grade ore. Beneath him the engine moaned as it began to raise steam. Lord Caerhays then took the reverend's place, framed by the daffodil yellow window behind him. He shouted a speech into the sun-dappled air that soon had the tinners and tutworkers laughing and slapping one another's backs.

Since everyone else was staring openly, Jessalyn was able to fill her heart with the sight of him. He looked magnificent in a well-cut coat of blue superfine, pale yellow pantaloons, and a white waistcoat with pearl buttons. The breeze plucked at his hair where it curled beneath his top hat, the sun glinting off the gold ring in his ear.

Cheers erupted into the air as the earl finished his short speech. He turned, drawing his wife to his side. Emily's gilt hair shone like a saint's halo in the sun. For a moment the crowd went utterly still, awed by her beauty. She looked up at her husband, smiling tentatively, her face filled with love and a bewildered yearning.

Jessalyn looked away.

Emily kept her gaze fastened on to her husband as she raised a bottle of smuggled French brandy and broke it over the great beam. Shattered glass and drops of brandy shimmered in the sun, as if it were raining diamonds. The villagers cheered, the core bell clanged, and Lady Letty thumped the ground with her cane. Only Jessalyn stood stiff and silent.

McCady lifted his head, and his gaze searched her out, crossing the distance between them, shutting out the world. She had always been able to feel his gaze on her, like a touch, as if he were caressing her with his mind. Unconsciously her body swayed, and a soft sigh escaped her slightly parted lips as if he were running his hands over her body. His face turned stark with an emotion so deep it remained nameless, a yawning need that wrenched at her heart. But in the next moment his mouth hardened, and he turned away, and Jessalyn wondered if she had imagined it all.

The earl himself opened the exhaust regulator on the new engine that he had built, and steam escaped with a sigh, rising white and misty into the air. The pump rods fell, and up swung the great balance bob, then down fell the bob and up came the rods, again and again, thrust, thump, thrust, thump, thrust thump, and the boiler moaned and sighed.

Becka Poole waited until the others had already helped themselves before she approached the trestle tables piled with food and drink. People she knew, people who were used to her face, she didn't mind so much. But there were many strangers here this day, men from as far away as Truro who were hoping to be taken on at the new mine. Miss Jessalyn said they didn't mean to be cruel when they stared. And in truth, it was pity she mostly saw in their eyes. But she hated the pity. Nasty taunts—well, she could give back as good as she got. But pity, that she could hardly bear.

Even though she went last, there was plenty of food left over: good Cornish fare, not like what they'd had to make do with in London. Whelks and jellied eels, ginger beer and bee wine, curlew and muggety pie. Lord Caerhays was a generous man when it came to putting out the victuals. But Becka wasn't sure she liked the earl. He frightened her with his harsh face and those fierce dark eyes. Devil's eyes they were, and she touched the hagstone around her neck to ward off the evil thought. Dear life an' body, the way he was looking at Miss Jessalyn today, 'twas a wonder the air didn't catch afire. Becka wished a man would look at
her
that way, so hot and hungrylike. It would never happen, though. Not with her scar an' all.

She had just bitten into a nice big slice of the muggety pie when a shadow fell across the ground in front of her. She first saw his boots, polished to such a shine her face was reflected back at her. She pulled her hair over her cheek, hiding the scar, and slowly lifted her eyes, following the long, slender length of him up to a pair of brandy-colored eyes, fringed with long lashes tipped golden by the sun. Dear life an' body, it was
him
—Mr. Duncan.

She swallowed the bit of muggety pie in her mouth. It tasted like a wool ball and stuck in her throat going down, and she choked.

He patted her back; she choked harder. "Have a care now, Miss Poole," he said in his soft Scottish brogue. "'Tis drinking something ye ought to be doing." He pressed a leather jack brimming with ginger beer into her hands.

He'd called her Miss Poole. Nobody had ever called her Miss Poole. She'd always been just Becka. But he'd called her Miss Poole as if she were
somebody.

She gulped the beer down so fast she nearly started choking again. "Cor, I be thirsty as a cat with nine kits," she said when she could breathe. She wiped the foamy mustache off her upper lip with the back of her hand. She watched him out the corner of her eye, careful to keep her ruined cheek turned away from him. It hurt to look at him, he was so beautiful. "A proper slap-up to-do this is," she said, for lack of anything better.

'"Tis a fine day for a celebration, it is," he agreed. He had a nice voice, gentle, like his eyes.

"Oh, aye, aye, 'tis a proper day for a celibate."

A startled look came over his face. "I beg yer pairdon?" he said.

She blushed furiously. "Mr. Duncan. Sir," she added, cursing herself for her lack of manners in not addressing him respectfully. She gripped her blue linsey-wool skirt, trying to still her shaking hands.

A silence came between them. He was looking at her, but there wasn't pity in his eyes. That time in London, when she'd opened the door to him, she hadn't seen pity then either. Yet he must notice the scar. He was too just well bred to let on. He was a gentleman's gentleman after all.

And, oh, so handsome. She stared up at him in awe through the curtain of her hair. 'Twas a wonder no woman had snapped him up long afore now. But then perhaps he was married after all, or perhaps he had himself a guinea hen stashed away in London Town. It suddenly occurred to her that she knew nothing about him, except that he worked for Lord Caerhays. And she didn't see any pity in his eyes.

He glanced toward the bonfire, where almost everyone was now gathered, drinking noggins of gin and treacle and waiting to get at the roasting potatoes. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

"Ye ought t' try a bite of the star-gazy pie," she said quickly, to keep him from leaving.

He looked down at the table where she pointed, and his eyes widened. She hadn't thought how star-gazy pie could be a sight if you weren't used to it. What with the pilchards' heads sticking out of the crust like that, their little beady white eyes staring blankly up at you.

Indeed, his gloriously handsome face had turned the shade of the green snakes that lived in the gorse. "Uh... nae, thank ye," he said. "Truth to tell, I havena much of an appetite at the moment."

"The sea air makes ee bilious, do it? It often affects a body in that way," she said, pleased to find herself on firm conversational ground at last. Beyond discussing her own delicate health, Becka loved nothing better than to sympathize with the ills and tribulations of other unfortunates. "For indignity of the innards, I do recommend polycrest and rhubarb."

"Indignity of the innards?" His voice sounded strained. The poor man must truly be feeling unwell.

She nodded vigorously. "Rhubarb and polycrest an' ye'll be brave in no time. I've been prostitute with a bad rheum meself. Been up nights with it for a week, I tell ee. First, I gets the sweats, when the flesh runs off me like a fat goose. Then I gets the chills, and the next thing I knows me chest starts to rattlin' like a pot lid. I wake up absolutely expired."

"Expired?" An odd expression had come over his face, a sort of pained look. She hoped he hadn't suddenly suffered a rupture.

"Ais. Tired and so weaklike I couldn't wrestle me own shadow. Expired."

He cleared his throat. "Aye, of course. It sounds a dangerous state of affairs, yer rheum. Ye'd better be having a care, or it could turn into the morbid sore throat, ye know."

"Don't I just! I've tried dosin' meself with tar-water and cobweb pills and rubbin' me chest with adder fat. But them cures bain't workin'."

His blond brows drew together over his straight nose in thought. "My maether has a surefire cure for the rheum. An ointment, it is, though I don't know all of what goes into it. But she claims 'tis even been known to cure the hooting cough. I have some with me now, back in my room at the hall." She watched, mesmerized, as his sensuously shaped lips curved into a sweet smile. "I could bring it over to End

Cottage later, and ye'll feel grand again in nae time. Though I shouldna be coming much before midnight."

A gull screamed and dived at the star-gazy pie, making off with one of the pilchards, but Becka didn't even notice. Her stomach had gone all fluttery, as if she'd just swallowed a thousand butterflies. "Tedn't proper for we to be meetin' after dark," she said, giving him an arch look.

Three more gulls wheeled overhead, eyeing the food. "I do assure ye, Miss Poole," he said, shouting a bit to be heard above the screams of the birds, "my intentions are strictly honorable. Tis yer health that is concerning me, lass, nae yer virtue."

The steady throb-throb of the engine vibrated the ground beneath McCady Trelawny's feet, as if the earth had a heartbeat. He stood within the mining house and shut his eyes, listening to a sound that was as familiar to him as the rush of his own pulse.

He felt himself dissolve, become one with the hard, driving power of the engine. The pounding thrust of the pistons, the hiss and suck of the valves, the throbbing sigh of the spent steam. He felt the heat of the firebox like a breath against his face. He breathed in deeply the hot, wet smell of steam....