Once in a Blue Moon (11 page)

She pushed her streaming wet hair out of her face and spit the taste of the pond from her mouth, which was bitter and metallic, like biting down on a tin cup. She trod water and looked up. He sat on a rock, his forearms resting on his drawn-up knees, totally at his ease and not the least bit concerned that she could momentarily drown or die of frostbite. She thought that if he laughed, she would never forgive him.

He didn't laugh. But then he didn't have the sense to keep his mouth shut either. "You have won your wager handily, Miss Letty," he said. "I could not duplicate that feat should I live to be as old as Methuselah." He plucked a reed and stuck it between his teeth. "You look wet, Miss Letty. And cold."

"Oh, no, I assure you, Lieutenant, it is most invigorating." She floated on her back, making a lazy circle. The water was so blasted cold it burned. She forced herself to make one turn around the pool, although she had to set her jaws to keep her teeth from chattering.

She swam over to him. The pond was deep, even up to the very edge of the bank. It would be difficult for anyone to make it up the steep escarpment without help. He grinned down at her—one of those superior smirks that only men seemed able to manage. "Are you having a pleasant bath, Miss Letty?"

She produced a helpless little smile. "Give me a hand up, please."

He stood and bent over, stretching out his arm. She deliberately kept back so that he would have to lean way forward as he reached out to her. His hand closed around hers; she felt his strength in his grip. But she had a strength, too, in her arms and wrists made wiry by years of riding. He tensed to pull her out of the water, and she gave a hard tug.

He hit the pond with a grunt and a giant, fanlike splash that wet the topmost leaves of the elm trees.

She tried to scramble up the steep slope of the bank, but her heavy, soaked clothes dragged her back like an anchor. Behind her, she heard his head break the surface and his mouth swearing worse than any drunk tinner outside a kiddley on a Saturday night. At last she got a foothold, and then she was on her hands and knees on the slippery grass. She stayed that way a moment, hunched over and breathing hard.

Water splashed and lapped against the bank. His voice changed, became soft and rather nasty. "My dear, sweet, gentle Miss Letty... you are going to repent the day you were ever born."

She dared a glance over her shoulder—and screamed. He slammed into her, rolled her onto her back, covered her with his body. She went quiet beneath him, breathing quickly like a cornered animal that knows it has been caught.

The water ran in rivulets from his hair down over the sharp bones of his face. He lowered his head until they were nose to nose. His eyes were blacker than the devil's sea. His lids drifted closed; his mouth softened. He was going to kiss her....

Jessalyn's breath caught, and her heartbeat skittered. His lips lowered another inch, and her mouth parted on an expulsion of breath that was more of a sigh.

"How old are you?" he said against her open mouth.

She could barely push the word out her tight throat. "Eighteen."

"Not only a cheat but a liar as well." He wrapped his hands around her neck, pressing his thumbs into the hollows of her throat, pushing her head back. Her blood quickened, drumming against his fingers. "How old are you, Miss Letty? And don't you
ever
lie to me again."

Her pulse plunged and dipped. She swallowed, hard. "Sixteen."

"Good Christ!"

He shoved off her, sitting up. She lay on her back a moment, watching the procession of clouds across the sky. She turned her head; he sat next to her, his wrist resting on one bent knee. It was a relaxed pose, but she could feel the tenseness in him as if he were giving off heat. She sighed, at the mystery of him, of what she felt for him, that strange mixture of fear and longing. He was the handsomest man she had ever seen, even with his mouth set the way it was now—hard and just a little cruel. Being with him was like drinking wine that came from a cold cellar. Tangy, exhilarating. Intoxicating.

She pushed herself up to lean back on her elbows. "Sixteen is not so young," she said.

His mouth tightened even more. "Oh yes it is."

"Many girls are married at sixteen."

His head swung around, and he pinned her with his hot gaze. "Many girls are whores at sixteen. Just because you have an itch does not mean you have to scratch it." In a movement so quick she didn't see it until too late, he seized her wrist and hauled her up with such force her neck snapped. His voice, harsh with fury, lashed at her. "I have no reason to guard your virtue,
little girl,
and every reason to take it. So use the wit beneath all that red hair and stay the bloody hell away from me." His fingers tightened around her wrist, and he jerked her hand up to her face. "And the next time a man tries to kiss you, use your claws on his eyes."

She stared into dark eyes that were wild and dangerous. She felt helpless with fear and a strange sort of excitement. He acknowledged no rules, did McCady Trelawny. He was capable of doing anything at any time, and a part of her understood that it was his very unpredictability that made him so attractive.

A cloud smothered the sun, and the wind kicked up, flattening the sward and sending ripples scurrying across the pond. A shudder racked her.

He dropped her wrist and leaned back. Unconsciously she rubbed her arms. His gaze followed the movement of her hands, then came up, settling on her mouth. The dangerous glint in his eyes flared like a fire fanned by a draft.

"We—we had better go back," she said, suddenly frightened by what she saw in his face.

She kept up a stream of constant chatter on the way to End Cottage. He contributed little, but she no longer minded his silences. For when he did talk, it was to use words like hedges. Cornish-type hedges, made of rough, hard stone and covered with prickly bracken, that he threw up to force others to keep their distance. She suspected that if he ever felt deeply about something, he would not speak of it at all, not even to himself.

He left her at the gate to End Cottage without even telling her good-bye.

Jessalyn rubbed Prudence down and gave her some oats, but once this chore was done, she felt too restless to go inside. Instead she walked out to the cliffs. She looked around her as if she'd never seen it all before, never seen the sea lashing the black rocks or the white flash of a gull's wings riding the wind. Surely the surf boomed louder than it ever had before, and the air, thick with salty sea spume, had never felt so soft. She thought that after today nothing in her world would ever be the same again.

That night she took the journal out from beneath her mattress and wrote:
Today he kissed me....

She waited for three days, and then she went to him.

She had taken pains with her appearance. She wore the hat he'd given her and a fancy pair of green leather gauntlet gloves. Her riding habit was old and outdated, but the only one she owned. It had black frog buttons and bugle trimming and was fashioned of a dusty rose kerseymere that Gram assured her was flattering to her complexion.

She approached Caerhays Hall from the coast road. Its gray chimneys and gables could barely be seen through a thick curtain of elm and sycamore and wild nut trees, yet the castellated manor house was massive, built of gray stonework discolored by salt and wind. No panes were left in any of the salt-encrusted windows, and many of the shutters were missing or dangling by one hinge. The wind stirred the dead leaves and grass piled in drifts on the front steps. It was as if no one living had set foot here in years.

A door slammed shut behind her, and she twisted around in the saddle. A tall, lean figure emerged from the gatehouse, and the bottom seemed to drop out of her stomach at the sight of him.

"Good afternoon, Lieutenant," she called, smiling.

His head snapped up. He paused a moment, then strode toward her. "What the devil are you doing here?" he said, practically snarling the words.

Her smile faltered. "I was wondering... if you wanted to go for a ride."

"My horse is lame, and I'm busy."

He was dressed rough, in a miner's blue wool coat and old drill trousers. He carried a haversack slung over his shoulder and a small pick stuck through his belt. He swung away from her and walked down the lane, using long, limping strides.

She brought Prudence into a trot to catch up, then eased her down into a walk beside him. He hadn't shaved this morning. The lines were drawn white around his mouth, and his eyes were bloodshot. He held his head as if it hurt even to breathe. She knew what was wrong with him. He looked like the Sarn't Major after he'd spent all night in
a
kiddley getting good and pickled on blue ruin.

She decided to behave with him just as she did with the Sarn't Major—which was to ignore his surly temper. "Where are you going?" she asked brightly.

She thought he wasn't going to answer, but then he said, "Wheal Patience."

Wheal Patience was an exhausted copper mine on the south coast, at the very edge of the Caerhays estate. "That's a bit of a ways to walk—"

His head swiveled around, and he impaled her with his dark gaze. "For a crookshank."

"For anyone. Really, Lieutenant. I can't imagine why you are throwing your unfortunate injury up in my face, unless it is an attempt to give me cause to pity you. In which case you are far off the mark, sir, for I'm much more likely to think ill of your sulky ways."

"My
what?"
He had stopped and was staring at her as if he couldn't believe her temerity.

"You are sulking. Like a little boy who has been whipped and then sent to bed without his supper. Who's the wicked ogre who has been mean to you and made you so unhappy?"

"It just so happens that I'm as happy as a weevil in a biscuit. As happy as a flea on a mule. As happy, dammit, as a randy tom in a cathouse. Now, if you will grant me leave, I have business to attend to." He started down the lane again, walking stiffly in a poor effort to disguise his limp.

Jessalyn sent Prudence ahead of him, then wheeled the mare around, blocking his path. Smiling broadly to take the sourness out of his temper, she slipped her foot from the stirrup so that he could use it. She leaned over and held out her hand. "Come, Lieutenant. Prudence doesn't mind carrying double."

"I told you to stay away from me."

The blunt cruelty of his words so stunned her she simply sat there saying nothing, doing nothing. Tears pressed behind her eyes. She blinked hard to hold them back.

She fumbled with the reins to turn Prudence's head, but he grabbed the shank of the bit, stilling the mare. "You think that simply because you are gently bred and so bloody young that I will have a care for you, that I will suddenly develop a conscience where I've never had one before. You couldn't be more wrong. I am fire, and if you play with me, little girl, you are going to get burned."

She looked down into his upturned face, a face as impenetrable as the cliffs at their backs. She couldn't make herself believe that he would ever really hurt her. She didn't want to believe it.

She held out her hand again. "I trust you."

His mouth twisted into a mean smile. "Don't. Oh, don't, Miss Letty. Don't ever trust me." Yet he reached up and put his hand into hers.

They rode in silence, his chest pressed against her back, his hands resting lightly on her waist. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, feel it fluttering and brushing all over her skin like the wings of a thousand butterflies.

The land around Wheal Patience was wild and bare, falling sharply to the sea. No coves and beaches marked the coastline. Only stark cliffs, seamed by the wind and weather like a fisherman's face, and an occasional narrow neck of pebbly sand strung with garlands of seaweed.

The enginehouse stood on a promontory of rock with the sea frothing at its base. The tall brick tower rose like a mined cathedral against the cloud-shredded sky. No smoke curled from the chimney stack. The wind blew through empty windows, carrying ghostly echoes from when the mine was alive: the clang of the core bell; the throbbing beat of the pump engine; the shouts and laughter of men coming up to the bright sunlight after ten hours in the dark belly of the earth.

Wheal Patience was unusual in that much of its subterraneous workings extended below the seabed several fathoms deep. The enginehouse was accessible only by foot at the end of a narrow, dangerous path. Even Jessalyn, who was used to the Cornish cliffs, found the way rough going. She imagined how it must have been for the men coming up from the night core in pitch-darkness and with a winter gale blowing.

The pump engine had long ago been dismantled and sold for scrap; the house was empty now except for a rust-pitted shovel and an old barrow leaning drunkenly on one wheel. Lieutenant Trelawny went immediately to work, prying loose the rotting boards that covered the main shaft. They came free with a squeal of rage and a flying of splinters. Cold, stale air wafted up from the open bal at her feet, and Jessalyn repressed a shudder. The thought of going down deep into the earth had always frightened her.

"What do you hope to find here?" she asked, the first words spoken since they had left Caerhays Hall.

He took his time answering. The veins and sinews on the backs of his hands stood out as he pressed down on the iron crowbar. She stared at his hands, mesmerized by the power of them, hands that could both caress... and hurt.

"Wheal Patience was mined only for copper in her day," he finally said. "I've been talking to some of the old tributers who worked her. They all claim to have seen evidence of tin-bearing lodes."

There was a tightness in her chest. She realized that for some strange reason she'd been holding her breath. "And if you find tin, will you and your brother the earl reopen her?"

"Not bloody likely. Starting up a venture takes a hell of a lot of capital."

She wanted to ask him why they were here then. Perhaps mining was simply in his Cornish blood, for this was a land whose fortunes ebbed and flowed by what was brought out of the earth and the sea. A bal could bring untold riches for years and then suddenly run dry. Or the price of ore could drop beyond the cost of bringing it up from the ground. That was why the shareholders of a mine were called adventurers.

"My grandmother held some shares in this mine," she said. She remembered when the mine had closed down, the winter she was ten. It had been a bad winter that year, days full of bitter frost and snow unusual for Cornwall. "So many men lost their livelihood when she shut down, and there was famine that year," she said, reminiscing aloud. "Many families wound up on the parish. A few even had to go into the workhouse...."

He had gone still beside her. He stared down into the gaping black maw of the pit, and a strange light, the same passionate heat that she had seen on the day they had ridden the locomotive, shone in his eyes. She knew suddenly that he had been lying. He was a gaming man; if he found tin, he wouldn't rest until he'd also found the means to start up the new venture.

She touched his cheek, rough with beard stubble. She had wanted to do it a hundred times before; this time she did it without thinking. "You care, don't you? You would open the mine if you could, for Cornwall, so that the men here would have work...."

His hand closed over hers. He raised his gaze to hers
_T
and something flashed in his eyes. She had seen it before, when she had told him his locomotive could change the world: that look of bewildered hurt mixed with hope.

She felt his jaw clench before he jerked her hand away. "I don't care about a bloody damn thing," he said.

He bent over and removed an Instantaneous Light Box from his pack. He dipped the chlorate match into the bottle of vitriol, and it burst into flame. He lit a hempen candle, then fixed it to the front of a hard-brimmed hat with a lump of china clay.

"You shouldn't go down alone," she said. "It isn't safe."

"One of the tributers drew me a map."

"But..." It was a cardinal rule, given to Cornishmen along with their mothers' milk: Never go down into a mine alone. Jessalyn chewed her lower lip. She knew she should offer to go with him, but just the thought of all those tons of rock and water bearing down on her head made her hands shake and cold sweat start out on her scalp. "I should come along with you," she said.

He was bent over, taking more candles from the pack and stuffing them into his coat pocket. "No," he said, not even bothering to glance up at her.

"But it isn't safe."

He straightened and swung around to glare at her. "You are playing nursemaid again, Miss Letty, and frankly I am beginning to find it tedious."

She glared back. "Fine then. But if you get lost, or a pit prop collapses and cracks open your stubborn head, don't expect me to come along and rescue you."

His mouth curled into that expression that was meant to be a smile and wasn't at all. "I never expect anything from anyone. That way I am never disappointed."

He bent over again to stuff more excavating tools into his belt: a heavy iron jumper and a rock drill. She stared down at his broad back, hating him. He had none of the qualities she had been taught to admire in a gentleman, no gallantry, no compassion, no kindness. There was no softness in him, none at all.

The last thing he picked up was a coil of rope, and in spite of her anger Jessalyn had a sudden thought that she wanted to take that rope and bind him to her. Not just to stop him from going down into the mine but to keep him with her always.

He swung onto the pit ladder. "I should be back up in an hour or so," he said, and the next thing she knew he was gone, swallowed up by the black hole in the ground.

Jessalyn sat on the cliff path, her feet dangling over the side. Below her the sea lay drab and sullen. High, flat clouds made the air seem hard and metallic, and the wind sighed mournfully among the rocks and bracken.

It had to have been at least an hour since he had gone down into the mine. But he had said an hour
or so.
She cursed him for not being more specific and for being a stubborn, know-it-all cabbagehead to go alone in the first place. Then cursed herself for being such a pudding heart that she hadn't made him take her with him.

She thought of all the evils that could have befallen him. It was an old mine. The pit props were doubtless rotted. Perhaps one had given way, letting loose tons of rock and sea and burying him alive. One of the tributers had drawn him a map of the workings, but what if it was inaccurate? Mines were a spider web of shafts and tunnels. It was easy to become lost and disoriented in the smooth, thick blackness of the earth.

Waves thumped heavily against the cliff; the tide was coming in. Without a pump, the mine's lower levels would fill with water at flood tide, and when they filled, they filled fast. More miners had been drowned than had ever died from cave-ins. She saw him helpless, pinned beneath a collapsed pit prop, the cold black water rising up around him filling his mouth, smothering his cries, drowning him....

She went back inside the enginehouse. She removed her primrose bonnet, set it out of the way on a windowsill where it would not get soiled, then peered down into the gaping shaft. Black and empty, like the dead part of the night. She couldn't do it. She just couldn't do it.

She had to.

He had taken the Instantaneous Light Box with him, but she found a tinderbox in the pack and plenty of extra candles. She didn't allow herself time to think. She slung the haversack over her shoulder and, clutching a burning candle tightly in one hand, descended the rickety wooden ladder that was nailed to the side of the vertical shaft. Her legs felt as soggy and mushy as day-old pudding.