Once in a Blue Moon (39 page)

"When else was I supposed t' do it 'cept at night?" came a whining answer. It was Jacky Stout, the bullyboy the guv'nor used to collect his tenement rents and do other dirty jobs. "A man can't go around puttin' a torch to a house in the bright light o' day."

Topper hesitated. He didn't want to walk through that door with Stout in there. Topper had never understood how a man like the guv'nor, so posh and educated, had connected up with a bullyboy like Jacky Stout. But then Stout claimed he and the guv'nor went back a long way together. Back to Cornwall, when the guv'nor was but a lad and had once paid him to peach on a smuggling pitch, only to turn chicken at the last minute.

Topper mopped his suddenly sweating face with his sleeve and lifted the door latch.

The guv'nor, who was sitting behind his desk, looked up, and his handsome face broke into a bright smile. "Ah, Topper, here you are.... You may congratulate me, my boy. Miss Letty has again promised to become my wife."

Topper tried to smile. "So the wedding's to be after all." He cast a swift glance at Stout. The pock-faced man was tossing a spalling hammer—his favorite weapon for rent collection—back and forth in his beefy hands. Stout grinned, showing teeth that put Topper in mind of a sewer rat.

Topper jerked his gaze back to the guv'nor. He forced himself not to think of Miss Jessalyn and what her fate would be married to such a man as made his fortune off boozing kens and tenement rents. "I'm to be getting me blunt then. Me five hundred quid."

"I'm afraid you haven't finished earning it yet," the guv'nor said.

"But ye was t' pay it to me on the day she gave up racing and promised t' be yer wife."

Jacky Stout laid the spalling hammer in his lap and cracked the knuckles of his big hands. Topper's spine roached up at the grating sound, but he didn't look in the bullyboy's direction. He wouldn't give the man the satisfaction.

He kept his face straight ahead, his eyes on the guv'nor. The man was leaning his chin on his folded hands, biting his thumb in thought. A fancy silver candle branch sat on the desk, and the flames guttered in a sudden draft. A thick silence smothered the room; Topper thought he could hear his heart beat.

"For one thing, she's still racing," the guv'nor finally said. "Which is why you are to nobble Blue Moon before the Epsom Derby. And make it permanent this time. If that bloody nag ever gets so much as a whisker across a finishing post again, I'll have your balls."

"But if she's agreed to marry ye, why should ye be wantin' to wish her any more 'arm? I thought 'twas the point of all this." Topper waved a hand, encompassing all the nobbled horses and crimped races of the last two years. "Making her life a misery so's that she'd turn to you."

The guv'nor's mouth lifted in a gentle smile, a smile that Topper didn't believe for a minute. "It is what's known as insurance, my boy."

Topper's head jerked back and forth. "I ain't doin' it. Not no more. There ain't enough blunt in all the world to make me do it." It made him feel good to say it and sick because he knew he didn't mean it.

The guv'nor leaned back. He reached into his pocket and took out two gold guineas. He began to turn them over and over in his pale, slender fingers. "You ever seen a spalling hammer crush rock, Topper my boy." Jacky Stout began to toss the hammer back and forth in his hands. Thump-thump... thump-thump... and the breath expelled from Topper in a whine through the hole in his front teeth. "Think what it could do to a jockey's hands," the guv'nor went on in his soft voice. "They say a jockey's talent is all in his hands—"

The hammer slammed so hard into the floor that the building shuddered.

Vomit rose in Topper's throat, and he lurched over, spewing mutton pie all over his fancy plate-buckled shoes. He remained bent over, gasping, as runnels of sweat ran down his sides. He wiped off his mouth with the sleeve of his bright yellow coat. "I'll go to the coppers," he rasped.

The guv'nor laughed. "Come now, boy. Do you think they would put any credence in your story, that they would take the word of a jockey over an MP? No, they are more liable to put you in prison. In a cell. In the dark."

Topper couldn't control his shudder, and Jacky Stout snorted, sounding like a pig feeding in a trough. The guv'nor snapped his head around. "Stubble it, Jacky. I've another job for you."

The laughter slid off Stout's jowly face like melting tallow. "Eh? But I took care of everything, sur. Her house is burnt to cinders, an' his bloody lordship's mine is shut fer good. It'll cost more as he's ever got t' get it going again."

"Do you know what a locomotive is, Jacky?"

"Eh?"

The guv'nor heaved a put-upon sigh. "Never mind, I'll work out all the details and explain them to you later."

"What'd ye want me to be doin' to this loco-whatsit?"

"The same thing you did to his tin mine," the guv'nor said, a faint, wintry smile on his mouth. "Blow it up."

Against a smoky red sky they were but dark shadows, like the ghost riders of legend coming to steal his soul. They galloped across the hilltop, then made a broad, sweeping turn, coming toward him across the misty downs, and it seemed that he could feel the thrum of their hooves, melding with the fierce beat of his heart. His mouth tightened when he picked out the blood bay. His hands curled, as if he were already wrapping them around her throat.

The horses thundered past a copse of old beeches, and sunlight glinted off the spyglasses in the trees, shimmering like silver raindrops. The touts were out in full force that morning, picking up dps for their legs from this last training gallop before the big race.

The blood bay peeled off from the others, joining a one-armed man who sat on a hack, watching. The rider on the bay reined up. After a moment the one-armed man turned around in his saddle and pointed.

McCady Trelawny's mouth stretched into a hard smile. She was coming.

She pulled up and dismounted, to approach him on foot. Plumes of steam flew out the bay's nostrils, wreathing her head. She was muffled up to the eyebrows against the dawn chill in a man's woolen coat and cap. Her face was luminescent in the misty light; her eyes were enormous.

She pulled off her cap and tossed hack her head. Her hair fell over her shoulders, a waterfall of molten copper. He thought that he had never known anything so beautiful. He felt a sudden and terrible need to gather her into his arms and bury his face in that hair.

He yanked the folded-up
Morning Post
out his coat pocket and thrust it in her face. "Is this true?"

"Yes." Her eyes turned dark as storm-bellied clouds as they filled with some emotion he couldn't name.

He flung the paper away and seized her by the shoulders. He brought his face so close to hers he could see his breath flutter the wisps of her hair. "Goddamn you, Jessa. You are mine."

She wrenched away from him, backing up. "I belong to no one but myself! It is my
life,
to do with as I want. If I want to marry for money—"

"Money!"

Her chest hitched with a little sucked-in breath. "Yes, money. What is so terrible about that? You did it. Perhaps I'm tired of being poor."

He searched her pale, beautiful face. "You're lying."

"McCady, please..." She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, then pushed it back out again, and to his bitter fury he was filled with such a fierce need to kiss her that he had to clench his teeth against a moan. "Please," she said again. "Don't make this any more difficult for me than it already is."

"It bloody well
should
be difficult."

Her words didn't match the haunted look in her eyes. She was lying. He
knew
her. In some ways he knew her better than he knew himself. She would never marry Tiltwell for his fortune. She would never marry any man unless she fancied herself in love with him.

Love with him...

Pain and savage fury clawed at his chest. It was the worst pain he'd ever known, so intolerable he wondered how he stood it. He wanted to kill her. He wanted to crush her to him and smother her mouth with his. He wanted to thrust himself inside her, hard and deep, until she admitted thai she was his, and only his.

His hands closed around her arms, and with a vicious jerk he brought her crashing against his chest. He slammed his open mouth down hard on hers in a kiss that was rough and desperate. Her hands curled around the lapels of his coat, and she melted against him, meeting his thrusting tongue with her own and, ah, God, but he had never tasted anything so sweet. She smelled of horse and wet grass and Pears primrose soap, and for that heartbeat out of time she filled his universe.

Until she tore her mouth from his and pushed against him so hard he almost stumbled. She backed away from him, slowly shaking her head, pressing trembling fingers to her wet and swollen lips. Her eyes were like great liquid moons in her pale face.

He filled his lungs and expelled the ache in his chest into the air. "Jessalyn, for the love of God, don't..." The words spilled out of him, unbidden, lacerating his pride. "Are you going to marry Clarence Tiltwell?"

"Yes."

"To hell with you then," he snarled, and spun on his heel, his hitching stride cutting a swath through the thick grass. "McCady!"

The devil's heart,
Topper thought. The night was
as
black as the devil's heart.

He sagged against the lean-to wall, his chest heaving in panic, sucking in great whistling breaths that smelled of horse sweat and fresh dung. It was so bloody dark. He yearned for a candle, but he daren't risk one, not with the Sarn't Major asleep and snoring like a hedgehog in the tiny hayloft between the rafters and the thatch.

Straw rustled as he approached Blue Moon's box, and Topper started, barely swallowing the scream that rose in his throat. He rubbed a shaking hand over his face. It was slimed with sweat, though the night was cool. Gawblimey, he was jumpy as a flea on a hot bakestone.

The big bay greeted him with a soft snort and a nudge of his velvet nose. Tears stung Topper's eyes.
I can't do it,
he thought,
I ain't doin it
—even as he uncorked a jug and poured the contents into the bay's water bucket.

Poured a dram of canary wine laced with enough rat bane to kill every horse in England.

"Look what I've got fer ye, me bonny lad," he crooned into Blue Moon's pricked ear, and the words tasted of straw. The bay bumped his head against the wooden bucket, but Topper held it just out of reach. Blue Moon loved the wine; it was a special treat they gave him after every race or hard gallop.

I can't do it...

The spalling hammer had slammed into the floor with such force it had left a round dent the size of a tea plate in the wood. It was what Topper kept seeing over and over in his mind's eye, the hammer going up and coming down, again and again. On his hands.

A strangled whimper escaped out his tight throat. He clenched the water bucket so hard it slopped over into the straw. Blue Moon nickered and bumped his arm.

"I'm sorry, m'love, but I got to do it. Sorry, so sorry..."

He held out the bucket, and Blue Moon lowered his head.

With a harsh, strangled sob, Topper whirled and flung the bucket against the wall. It landed short, hitting a hay bale with a muffled thud and splash. But Topper didn't know it, for he'd already disappeared into the dark night.

"Topper's gone missing," the Sarn't Major said. He was looking at his boots, not at her, but Jessalyn had seen the sheen of wetness in his eyes.

She leaned her elbows on the stall door. Blue Moon stared blankly back at her, but then it was race day, and he always looked bored on race day. "All those accidents..."A sigh caught in her throat; she felt weighted with such an immense sadness. Clarence and now Topper —it seemed as if all the people in her world were not as she had thought them. She felt betrayed, her heart violated. "I thought it was just our dismal Letty luck. But it was Topper all along."

The Sarn't Major grunted as he pried open the bay's mouth and peered at his tongue, then sniffed at the horse's breath. "If he's nobbled him, I can't tell it. But it makes no never mind. With Topper gone missing, we ain't got no knight."

Jessalyn entered the box. She rubbed her hand over the sleek blood bay coat, down over his haunches, to the hock that had been injured last fall. It felt sound. "I shall ride in his place," she said.

The Sarn't Major spit into the straw. "Can't. Ye're a female."

"So? They can't disqualify us for breaking a rule that doesn't exist. Wearing jockey's togs, and as tall and thin as I am, no one will know. Just say I'm your new lad." Her mouth trembled into a forlorn little smile. "I don't expect we would have won anyway."

The Sarn't Major frowned at her over the bay's broad back. He pursed his thick lips, hunched his head into his shoulders, and spit into the straw again. "Me an' Blue Moon'll meet ye at the weigh-in then. But mind ye keep yer head about ye and yer mouth shut. Ye start to blatherin', and they'll spot ye fer a female quicker'n a cat can pounce."

Topper's black and scarlet taffeta shirt and moleskin breeches hung on a peg on the wall. The Sarn't Major had lovingly cleaned them himself; he'd even pressed out the wrinkles with a hot smoothing iron. The taffeta made a whispering sound as she lifted it off the peg. Jessalyn felt tears well in her eyes, and left alone now, she allowed them to fall.

At the scuffling sound of leather on gravel, she whirled, expecting the boy.

McCady Trelawny filled the lean-to's open doorway. He lounged with one shoulder propped against the wooden brace, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. With the rising sun at his back, his face was nothing but shadows. Except for his eyes, which seemed to glow like a cat's, wild and feral. Her heart swelled with such love it hurt to look at him, yet she could not look away.

He drew in a deep breath. "Jessalyn..."

A long shadow fell between them. "Here you are, my dear," Clarence Tiltwell said. He sauntered into the lean-to, cool and elegant in a snuff-colored riding coat and tight buff breeches. He glanced around, a frown marring his smooth high brow.
"I
just saw your training groom leading Blue Moon off toward the weighing house.
I
am disappointed in you, Jessalyn. That in spite of all my admonitions to the contrary, you are still determined to compete in this race."

"Go rain on somebody else's picnic, Tiltwell," McCady said in his most irritating drawl. "She doesn't belong to you yet." The earl hadn't abandoned his negligent pose, yet the tension in the air had suddenly grown so palpable Jessalyn could have reached out and plucked it like the strings on a harpsichord.

Humming a little ditty, Clarence peered into the empty box. "Where's your jockey?
I
wanted to give him a guinea for luck."

Jessalyn crushed the black and scarlet taffeta shirt to her breast as if it were a shield. "I—I can give it to him, if you like. He's waiting for me at the scales."

Clarence flashed his cousin a bright smile that revealed the gap in his teeth. "So, Caerhays. You've heard that Jessalyn and I are getting married next Friday? Are you here to wish her happy?"

McCady cocked a mocking brow. "Do you think she can be happy in hell?"

Clarence's laugh sounded brittle in the misty morning air. "Come now, coz. All's fair in love and war, isn't that what they say? What's this, Jessalyn—have you been crying?" he said, acting as if he'd only just now noticed. He brushed her cheek with the backs of his knuckles. McCady stiffened, making a sound deep in his throat like a strangled growl.

For the sake of the man she loved, Jessalyn forced herself to endure Clarence's touch. She even managed a smile. "It was only an attack of racing day nerves. My dear," she added, though the words tasted like bile in her mouth.

Clarence clicked his tongue. "Poor sweetheart. But then a woman's sensibilities ought to be of a delicate nature," he said. "Which is why, I trust, that once we are married, you will take up gentler pursuits more suited to the wife of an MP."

He patted her cheek as if she had been an obedient pet and turned to leave. He paused in the doorway and looked his cousin over, from the toes of the earl's polished top boots to the silk crown of his top hat. "Do you know what the trouble is with you, Trelawny? You don't know when to concede that you are fairly beaten."

"And the trouble with you,
Tiltwell,"
the earl of Caerhays said in a bored, insulting voice, "is that you aren't a Trelawny and you never will be."

The color drained from Clarence's face, and his fists clenched. The two men glared at each other, bristling like a pair of alley dogs fighting over the same bone. Clarence pulled his lips back from his teeth in a rictus of a smile. "Will we see you at the wedding, coz? At least do come for the breakfast afterward. Who knows? Perhaps you'll be the one to find the bean in the bride's cake and take the plunge again."

Clarence Tiltwell left a silence in his wake. Jessalyn's hands shook as she gathered the rest of Topper's things. A hawker strolled by, selling eel pies; the smell of burned grease and hay came in with the breeze. She would not meet McCady's gaze, though she could feel him watching her. It was a tactile thing, like a breath against naked skin.

She had to walk past him to leave the lean-to. His hand fell on her arm, stopping her. "Don't marry him, Jessalyn," he said. "You see what he is like. He'll wind up doing your breathing for you."

She stared at his long, hard fingers, dark against the pale pink sleeve of her kerseymere spencer. Heat spread through her from his touch, melting her. Like holding a burning candle to thin silk. "I must go," she said on a sharply expelled breath.

His fingers tightened their grip. "Don't marry him, Jessa," he said again, and she couldn't miss the anguish in his voice.