Once in a Blue Moon (18 page)

She was looking at him as if he were the most marvelous man who'd ever lived. She had no idea what he was really like, the things he'd done.... And she had no earthly idea of what it was to follow the drum, moving from post to post, living in hovels and shacks, in tents, trying to stretch his meager pay from month to month as the babies started to come. If he took her with him, she'd only end up leaving him someday. The day the hunger died. He knew that as surely as he knew that night followed even the sunniest of days, and warm, sweet summers turned into bitter winters.

He drew in a deep, steadying breath. "You don't know—"

"I do! I know what you are going to say, and it doesn't matter." Tears started from her eyes. She dashed them away with the back of her hand. "You are the man I want to marry. I don't care what you are, or what you think you are, or how young I am, or how old you feel. I don't care if we're poor—"

"Well, I do! When I marry, it will be to a
woman,
not a scrawny, carrottop barely out of the schoolroom. She'll be a woman with breeding and money, not some provincial miss without even two beans to boil together to make soup."

She stood still, and there was no sound but the whisper of the water across sand and stone. Yet there was a scream on her face, as if he'd ripped out her heart.

"But I love you," she said at last, so low her voice might have been a part of the suck and curl of the sea. But he didn't need to hear the words to feel them.

"Too bloody bad, Miss Letty. Because I don't love you."

He spun around and left her, while he still had the courage. He was running away from her, away from all that she thought she could be for him. And all that he knew he could never be for her.

"McCady!" she cried after him. "You can't leave me, I love you!"

He lengthened his stride. It was better to hurt her once, cleanly, than to hurt her over the years a thousand times, in a thousand ways. That warm and shining light he'd seen in her eyes wouldn't last. It would die the day the hunger died. She would hate him then and hate herself for having been such a fool. And he didn't want to be around when that happened because he would not be able to bear it.

He stopped halfway up the cliff path and turned to look back. She stood with her shoulders hunched, her face buried in her hands, and he knew she was crying. He must have heard that wonderful rusty laugh of hers a thousand times this summer. He wished his last memory of her didn't have to be one of tears... tears over him. She was just so bloody young, too young to know better than to let herself care for a man like him. Young enough still that she would get over him.

He had meant to keep walking, but at the top of the bluff he paused. She stood straight and tall now, her slender figure a stark and lonely sentinel against the milky Cornish sky. The wind whipped the trailing ribbons of the hat that he had given her, the hat with its posy of yellow primroses. He supposed there would come a day when he could take a walk along a beach of white sand and blue water and not think of this moment.

But he knew that no matter how long he lived, he would never be able to bear the sight of yellow primroses.

Shawls of fine rain fell on Newmarket Heath.

It was a steady rain. The kind of sneaky, stubborn rain that penetrated the thickest of wool greatcoats until one's very bones felt soggy enough to be wrung out into a bucket. It had turned the clipped green turf of the racetrack into a muddy quagmire.

Lady Letty sat beneath the leaking leather hood of a ramshackle cabriolet and scowled at the dripping sky. She fastened a spyglass to one eye, focusing on the starting post. "'Twill be at least a half hour before they're off. Time enough for us to lay another pony on our nag."

"Oh, Gram..." Jessalyn drew in a deep breath, wrinkling her nose. The rented carriage reeked of mildew and stale tobacco smoke. "We cannot afford to risk another twenty-five pounds."

"What? Speak up, gel."

Jessalyn cupped her hand around her mouth and leaned into her grandmother to shout. "If you are growing deaf, Gram, I shall have to get myself a speaking trumpet!"

"Humph."

"And if we become much more in the suds, I shall have to borrow from Mr. Tiltwell."

"I forbid it," Lady Letty stated, proving, as Jessalyn well knew, that she'd been hearing every word. "A Letty never borrows from her lover." She rapped Jessalyn sharply on her knee with the spyglass. "One would think I hadn't raised you proper."

Jessalyn rubbed her stinging knee. "Clarence is not my—"

"I know what the boy is to you, blast it, and I don't like it. One does not marry the Clarence Tiltwells of this world, m'dear. It is understandable that you might want him— there's a certain appeal there if one likes 'em pale and fair, which I, personally, do not—but at least have the sense God gave you to wait until you are safely wed into your own class.
Then
you may take him to your bed—"

"I do not want Clarence in that way!" Jessalyn nearly shouted again. "I want him for my husband," she quickly added as a shrewd look shot into Lady Letty's eyes. It was no use. She'd had this argument with Gram before, and neither of them, being stubborn Lettys, was about to budge.

Ironically, it was for Gram's sake that she had accepted Clarence Tiltwell's proposal in the first place. By marrying him, she would ensure a life of luxury for her grandmother for all of her remaining days. No, she must be honest with herself. It was not only for Gram. Someday Gram would be lost to her, and Jessalyn did not want to spend her life alone. She wanted a home, a husband, children. Clarence could give her all those things, she told herself for the hundredth time, everything she could ever want or need. And she was fond of him, truly she was. Their friendship had roots that went back to their childhood. They would deal well together as husband and wife.

And he loved her. He told her often how much he loved her.

Yet Jessalyn was frowning as she peered through the drizzle at the prancing line of Thoroughbreds and jockeys in rainbow-colored taffetas. The twenty-five pounds her grandmother wanted to wager was the last of the household money that Jessalyn had set aside to see them through the winter until her marriage next spring. If they lost, they could well be reduced to selling watercress bunches in the grimy London streets.

But they wouldn't lose. Not this time.

Jessalyn descended from the carriage into mud that had the consistency of hasty pudding. She turned her face up to the gently weeping clouds, loving the feel of the soft rain bathing her cheeks like spray from an eau de cologne bottle. "Are you hungry, Gram? Shall I bring you back something to eat?"

Lady Letty sat lost in thought, massaging the blackthorn handle of her cane. In the dim light the skin of her face shone pale and translucent as an eggshell. In that moment she looked more than her eighty-three years.

"Gram?"

Lady Letty blinked and focused gray eyes that were as hard as tin ore on her granddaughter's face. But her voice held none of its usual tartness. "Nay, gel." She reached down and brushed Jessalyn's cheek, a touch that was tender and so uncharacteristic that Jessalyn had to swallow around a strange thickness in her throat.

Lady Letty's hand fell to her lap. It looked boneless against her heavy black skirt, a long and narrow hand with bent fingers, old and frail. Jessalyn was filled with a familiar fear. She felt alone and afraid, six years old again and about to be tossed aside like a suit of old clothes.

"Now quit your shilly-shallying, and get along with you, gel," Lady Letty said, grimacing a scowl, an expression that was oddly loving for all its fierceness.

Jessalyn squeezed her grandmother's hand. She felt its reassuring and familiar strength that was there, still, beneath the fragility of age. "This is our lucky day, Gram, I just know it. We'll risk it all, neck or nothing," she said, laughing, and at the squeaky, joyous sound of it people turned to look, and they, too, smiled.

Whirling around, she set off with a spring to her step to bet their last twenty-five pounds on the next race, neck or nothing.

"'Ware the sharpers and pickpockets!" Lady Letty called after her.

Jessalyn walked down a path littered with soggy race cards, past the hazard tables that were sheltered from the rain by a low-slung canopy. Water dripped from the red-striped canvas, bleeding into puddles. A boisterous group of young bucks, barely old enough to shave, pressed around the gaming tables. Any fool who frequented the Turf knew the dice were cogged, the games run by crooked sharpers. But there always seemed to be a fresh flock of pigeons to gull. As she plunged into the crowd of men on foot and horseback, Jessalyn gripped her reticule so tightly the linked steel rings bit through her kid gloves. At racing meets, pickpockets and cutpurses were as thick as crows in a cornfield.

Smells of jellied eels and ripe cheese and snatches of laughter wafted out the open doors of the many gin tents. A huckster strolled by, hawking penny tots of gin and meat pasties that steamed in the cool air. Jessalyn's stomach growled. She didn't stop, though, for she was intent to place her bet before the runners had all gathered at the starting post.

The first time Jessalyn attended a racing meet, Gram had accused her of behaving like a gapeseed, staring open-mouthed at every sight. Newmarket was a network of interlocking courses covering four miles over spacious, level meadows of thick, short grass. But it wasn't only a place for horse racing. In many ways it was like a fair, with horror plays and peep shows, dancing dogs and cockfights.

This afternoon's contest was called the Crombie Sweeps, after the Scottish lord who had organized it. It was a sweepstakes race for two-year-olds. Each owner who subscribed to the race had had to put up fifty sovereigns, and the winner would take the pot. But the Lettys, true members of the Turf, weren't content just to risk their stake money. For one thing, the expense of keeping even their small string of four horses, the cost of fodder, straw, and hay, and the stabling outlay, couldn't be covered alone by the stakes they won. They had to bet to live.

As Jessalyn strode toward the betting post, her stomach spasmed with a fear that left her feeling queasy, for their luck had been running so sour of late. A gelding they had planned to race in the Rowley Mile meet last month had been laid low with the colic the night before. Then Nancy Girl, their most profitable runner to date, had mysteriously broken a bone in her knee while turned out to grass and had to be put down. In another race their entry had been leading by three lengths when a handbill had blown across the track, startling him so that he reared, tossing his jockey headfirst into the turf. Two other times this season their horses had had disappointing outings, running sluggishly and finishing well back in the pack.

Indeed, the Letty luck had truly been abysmal, Jessalyn thought. But it was bound to turn today. Especially in this race, with this horse. From the day the blood bay colt had first put in his appearance in the world, she had
known
that he would be the one to win them the Derby someday. It wasn't that he had been born with the configuration of
a
racer. In truth, he still wasn't much to look at, for he had enormous feet and the short cannon bones that denoted more strength than speed. But every time Jessalyn looked into those bright, intelligent eyes she saw burning within the ruthless, driving will to win that made a champion.

She had named him Blue Moon.

The betting post, a thin white pole, could barely be seen through the crowd of gentlemen milling around it, most on horseback. They called out their wagers to the blacklegs who made the book, laying and taking bets at varying prices. The legs, sheltering today beneath a large sagging lean-to, shouted back, loudly naming their odds.

Black Charlie was the only female leg in England. An enormous woman, she overflowed around her stool like a bullfrog sitting on
a
stone. It was said she was worth ten thousand pounds a year, though she dressed and talked and looked like the Spitalfields washerwoman she had once been. Jessalyn was careful to stop downwind of her, for she smelled worse than a basket of rotten eggs. She had once told Jessalyn that she'd already had a lifetime of soap and water and never intended to get near the stuff again.

"Come to lay more blunt on yer pretty boy, have ye, Miss Letty?" Black Charlie said, smiling around the bit of a clay pipe she had stuck between tobacco brown teeth. '"Ow much this time?"

"A pony. To win."

Black Charlie noted the twenty-five-pound wager on the running tick she kept. Money would not change hands until later. "You and yer granny'll be living high as fighting cocks if yer lay pays off, eh? Pity it is that I can't be givin' ye better odds, but that Blue Moon of yers is a tiptop goer and no mistake. Ye watch if he don't make all them other 'orses look like donkeys."

Out of habit Jessalyn checked the list of runners and their odds, which was chalked on a large piece of slate posted above Black Charlie's head. Blue Moon was down as the favorite, for in the two contests he'd run in his young life he had defeated all comers. Her eyes scanned the rest. "Who's the late entry?"

"Eh? Oh, ye mean Rum Chaser. His owner has just now come up to scratch with the stake." Black Charlie jerked her three chins at the men who straddled stools alongside her. "Yon legs're laying five to two on 'im at starting." She heaved a derisive snort that set her chins to trembling. "Rum Chaser's of a showy turn, ye mind. But my tout says
'e
ain't fit. E ain't had a sweat for a fortnight." She paused to puff on her pipe and winked a great, fleshy eye. "And he weren't fed on no milk-soaked bread and fresh eggs last night like yer Blue Moon was."

Jessalyn waved away the malodorous smoke that billowed from Black Charlie's pipe. She was careful to keep her face blank, but inwardly she was torn between laughter and dismay. The Sarn't Major would be furious to know that Blue Moon's dietary secret was out. But then Black Charlie's touts were the best on the Heath at spying on the racehorses in training and picking up tips.

"Rum Chaser's training has been neglected, ye see, ever since the earl popped off," Black Charlie was saying. '"Tis said he put a barking iron in his mouth and blew 'is noddle off, the earl did."

"Rum Chaser's owner shot himself?" Jessalyn asked, only half listening. She was trying to see if she could spot Blue Moon at the starting post.

"Aye. 'Twas done in some gaming hell," Black Charlie went on. "Played deep and then got caught playin' dirty and took the 'onorable way out. 'Tis said the earl's heir were once a penniless soldier afore fortune smiled upon 'im. I'll tells ye this, he's as much the deep plunger as his brother ever was. 'E laid a thousand quid on his runner to place, did the new Lord Caerhays."

"Lord
who?"
Jessalyn's voice cracked as her heart thrust up into her throat. "Rum Chaser belongs to the earl of Caerhays?" Dear life... She sucked in a deep breath and felt her heart begin to beat again in loud, hard thumps like a Cornish tin stamp. "Is he here? Is Lieut—is Lord Caerhays here?"

"Standing right behind ye, he is." Black Charlie's cackle split the air. "'E looks a rum un. The sort of man ye'd trust to guard yer back, but not yer daughter's virtue, eh?"

Jessalyn whipped around so fast she nearly stumbled. Her gaze was filled with the wide back of a tall man with a caped greatcoat slung in a negligent fashion over his shoulders. Just then he turned half toward her, and Jessalyn felt a wrenching pain in her chest, a pain so sharp and thrusting so deep she nearly cried aloud.

The years had hardened his high-boned face, but he was still disdainfully handsome. A woman catching a glimpse of him from across a ballroom would look again. And then again.

But for Jessalyn just to see him once was more than she could bear. Yet she could not have looked away, not even if the whole world had ignited into a blazing conflagration behind her. His skin had been bronzed by the sun, and his hair hung in shaggy strands from beneath his glossy high-crowned beaver. He lifted his head slightly, looking toward the starting post, and something glinted like a bright coin beneath the curved brim of his hat. A thin gold loop that pierced the lobe of his left ear. He hadn't changed, oh, he hadn't changed... Still wicked and dashing and irreverent. A scapegrace Trelawny to his very bones, and to the devil with you if you didn't like it. She imagined how Society's matrons must swell up like frogs at mating time at the very idea of a peer of the realm sporting a pirate's earring.

And then the inevitable happened. He turned his head, and their gazes met. He stared at her a long time, his face dark and intent. He made a movement as if to leave, then changed his mind and came toward her.