Once in a Blue Moon (33 page)

"McCady!" Jessalyn screamed as he was swallowed by flames that shot into the sky like rockets. An arm wrapped around her waist, and she clawed at it. "McCady!" she screamed again, and it felt as if she were tearing her lungs out along with his name. She wanted to throw herself in the fire, to die with him. A pain gripped her, so intense she couldn't bear it. She turned her head, as if not seeing would make the pain go away, burying her face in the rough linen of Duncan's shirt.

It seemed an eternity of hell passed; then she felt Duncan shudder and heard the rumble of his voice echo within his chest. "Praise God."

She looked up. McCady Trelawny emerged out of the flames like a fallen angel passing through the gateway of hell, walking through what was left of her bedroom window, and struggling to hold on to a clawing, biting, yowling ball of singed orange fur.

She waited for him, laughing and crying, as he climbed down the ladder. He went to put the cat into her arms, like a trophy he had won in a joust, but Napoleon was having none of that. Scratching and hissing, he launched himself into the air and bolted for the trees.

Jessalyn ran her scorched palms over McCady's bare chest and arms, noting the bloody gouges left by Napoleon's claws and the raw blisters from the fire. "You silly pea goose, look at what you've done to yourself."

He gathered her to him, and they turned together to watch the fire consume what was left of End Cottage. The pretty yellow and red brick walls collapsed inward, sending a final flaming tower roaring into the sky. The faded purple settee where Gram always sat to take her afternoon tea, the beehive chair where Peaches once nursed her kittens before the kitchen hearth, a girl's straw bonnet decorated with a posy yellow primroses—all were gone now, reduced to ashes and memories.

She leaned against the hard wall of his chest and drew her strength from his. Later she would think this was wrong, to be in his arms, touching him. But in that moment there was no room for lust or passion, only for comfort.

Jessalyn's voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper. "Set? But who would want to set fire to End—"

A violent fit of coughing racked her chest, and she smothered her mouth with a wet handkerchief. Gentle fingers pushed the hair out of her face. "Here, drink this," McCady said.

Cupped in a strong, lean hand that was blistered as hers were from the fire, a glass of brandy appeared before her. She took the glass from him without meeting his eyes.

Their fingers touched. She drew back from his nearness, which was suddenly too overwhelming.

She took a huge swallow of the brandy and nearly choked again. The alcohol seared her raw throat but seemed to loosen some of the tightness in her chest. She took another swallow. "The Lettys have lived here for generations in peace with everyone," she croaked. "No one has a reason to burn down our house."

"Duncan believes he saw a man skulking about the kitchen wing at the time he noticed the fire. A big, shaggy-haired man dressed like a tinner."

Jessalyn repressed a shudder, hugging the wool blanket that she wore around her shoulders like a cloak. Beneath the blanket she had on only a tattered night rail, ripped and scorched. She had to remind herself that she was safe now, safe within the newly renovated library at Caerhays Hall. The room was chilly, but the grate remained empty; the earl had not called for a fire to be lit.

She could still smell smoke; it was in her hair, in her skin. Every inch of her body throbbed with pain, but her hands hurt the worst. She went to one of the tall French windows that looked north, toward End Cottage. Where End Cottage used to be. Columns of black smoke mushroomed against the bottom of clouds that were heavy and gray in the dawn sky. The wind sent water slashing against the panes, and the view before Jessalyn's eyes wavered. Too late it had started to rain.

She turned away from the window. She poured herself more brandy from the cut-glass decanter. As she returned the decanter to its place on a satinwood console table, the faceted crystal caught and reflected the candelabra flames, and she flinched. Her legs began to tremble, and she subsided into a nearby chair. Her hand shook as she brought the glass up to her lips, slopping brandy onto the blanket and just missing the chair's citron-striped chintz.

Dear life, I mustn't stain Emily's pretty new furniture,

Jessalyn thought wildly, barely suppressing a hysterical giggle.

The room had grown so silent she could hear the tick of the ormolu mantel clock and the rain beating against the windows. McCady Trelawny, wearing only his breeches and boots, had come riding like a demon out of the night to save her. He stood beside her now, half naked, and she could feel his seductive heat. He was like fire, she thought. Dangerous, destructive, beautiful. Tension thrummed through her like a high-pitched scream.

"Jessalyn." He touched her shoulder, and she flinched again.

Her singed hair fell back into her eyes, and she brushed it out of the way. She could not make her hands stop shaking. Her distracted gaze wandered around the room. "What was Duncan doing at End Cottage anyway?"

"He was visiting with your serving girl and—"

Her head snapped up. "Visiting Becka? At midnight? I will not allow this, my lord. Becka is a good girl, a decent girl, not some trollop to be taken advantage of by your valet, who is much too handsome to be allowed to run loose around the countryside—"

"Dammit, Jessalyn. Will you gather your scattered wits together and attend to what I'm saying?"

He turned abruptly away from her and threw himself into the leather chair that sat behind a heavy pedestal library table. He stretched his legs out, lacing his fingers behind his head, elbows spread wide, exposing the dark shadow of the hair beneath his arms, mysterious, erotic. Candlelight glinted off the sheen of sweat on his chest.
Someone ought to tell him that earls do not have such chests,
Jessalyn thought,
muscled and brawny like a Billingsgate porter's.
Her gaze jerked up to his dark angel's face, with its flaring cheekbones and arrogant mouth. His face that haunted her days and her nights.

Dizziness overwhelmed her, and she blinked. The brandy had gone straight to her head. She jerked her gaze away from his, as if appearing to be suddenly fascinated with the blue-patterned tobacco jar that sat at the far end of the tabletop. The room seemed too small.

"I hear what you are saying, my lord. The man who set the fire was Jacky Stout. It has to be he. He was caught poaching about two years back. He was going to be transported, but that prison hulk up in Plymouth is like a sieve. Ever since that day we found Little Jessie in the mine, he's blamed me for all his misfortunes. He is convinced I peached on him to the squire's gamekeepers."

Jessalyn thought of Jacky Stout running loose about the countryside, setting murderous fires. "She'll get hers!" he had bellowed as the gaolers led him away. "She'll get hers, that Letty bitch!" She hadn't paid much attention to the threat at the time. She still found it hard to believe the man had come back to Cornwall to wreak such destruction.

McCady got up and circled the table, coming toward her, and her whole body tensed. She could barely breathe from the pressure in her chest.

"You could be right about Stout," he said. "I'll look into it. In the meantime, you ought to be in bed. You've had a shock and—"

She thrust herself so hard out of the chair that it teetered, bringing herself up right next to him. So close their chests almost touched. "I cannot possibly stay here!" she cried, choking on the last word.

He breathed an impatient sigh, and she felt his chest move. "You heard what the doctor said. Your grandmother has congestion of the lungs from the smoke she inhaled. She is to remain in bed for at least a fortnight."

Jessalyn had heard, but she hadn't wanted to think about the consequences of the doctor's diagnosis. She tried to imagine herself here in this house, where she was liable to come upon him at any time. This house, an earl's great hall. She looked around the tastefully furnished room. Beneath the decay had been beautiful oak floors, covered now with
a
red and buff carpet. The broken windowpanes had been replaced and framed with curtains of rich cream silk paduasoy. The fireplace had been furnished with a modern steel grate. Emily was making a pleasant home for him, Jessalyn thought, and he had never really had a home. Emily was making him a good wife.

Jessalyn felt weighted with a deep, dark sadness. What she felt for him was never going to go away, but it was wrong now, immoral and wicked. She was wishing for, waiting for something she could never have, ought not to have, and she was making herself miserable with the wanting.

He saw the fear in her eyes, but he misunderstood the reason for it. "Nothing more is going to happen to you, Jessalyn. I won't allow it." His arm started to come up, as if he were going to reach for her, to draw her close, but then he let it fall without touching her. "It will be easier for me to protect you if you are here at the hall."

She drew in a deep breath, trying to relieve some of the tightness in her chest. "I haven't any clothes," she said suddenly. The immensity of what she had lost struck her then, and a great sob welled up in her throat.

His hand settled on the small of her back to propel her forward. His touch was worse than fire. She couldn't bear it. "Come," he said. "Emily is having a bedchamber prepared for you and a bath drawn. And she'll find you some clothes. Later, after you are rested, we will make plans for what you are to do."

"I seem to have little choice, do I?" Jessalyn said, her voice brittle. At the door she stopped, moving out of his light embrace. "Order your manservant to stay away from Becka."

"Duncan isn't the sort to take advantage of an innocent girl's susceptibilities."

"If he allows her to fall in love with him when he does not really want her love, that is all it takes to break an innocent girl's heart."

She had the satisfaction of seeing his face tighten with a flash of pain before she turned away. But it did little to mend the pieces of her own broken heart.

One storm after another came in from the sea, and time dribbled more slowly than sand through the hourglass on the Reverend Troutbeck's pulpit.

Jessalyn paced before a dying fire, too restless to sleep. In the two days that she had been at Caerhays Hall, she had managed to avoid coming face-to-face again with its master. Pleading smoke-induced headaches, she had taken all her meals on trays and spent the afternoons sitting with Gram. But it did little good. His presence was everywhere: in the smell of his shaving soap, which lingered in the hall outside his bedroom door, in the soiled cravat left carelessly draped over the newel-post at the top of the stairs, in the deep timbre of his voice heard across the stableyard.

The wind lashed at the house. Candle flames fluttered in their glass globes, and the maroon curtains on the big four-poster rustled as if stirred by an unseen hand. Drafts of damp air swirled around the room in spite of the embroidered silk Chinese screens set before the door and windows.

Jessalyn shivered, pulling the quilted satin collar of her borrowed night robe tighter around her neck. She went to the velvet-draped window, drawn to look out at the storm-ravaged night. She could see little of the wild, overgrown gardens below; sea spume carried inland by the wind had left the panes crusted with salt like pickled herrings. Water splashed against the glass. At End Cottage, when it stormed like this, they'd had to lay rags along the windowsills to catch the leaks.

She supposed the same was probably true for much of the rest of Caerhays Hall. Only a portion of one wing had been renovated thus far. And even then Jessalyn imagined the cost must have been enough to make a rich man wince, for the great old house had been allowed to deteriorate for too long.

The changes were all Emily's doing. Her presence, too, was everywhere, and although Jessalyn tried hard to avoid the lord of the hall, she found herself seeking out the company of its lady.

That afternoon she had come across Emily in the drawing room, arranging daffodils and bluebells into a milk glass vase. She looked frail and delicate in her almond green merino morning dress, even though it was cut full beneath the bosom to allow for her pregnancy. Her short silver blond curls shimmered like a wind-stirred lake in the shaft of rare sunlight that came through the chintz-draped windows.

Jessalyn told herself she was being foolish, but she felt as dowdy as a brown hen in a puce fustian that had been borrowed from Squire Babbage's wife, who next to herself was the tallest woman in the county. The dress hung on her like a wet sail, and there was still a gap of three inches between the padded hem of the skirt and Jessalyn's slippers.

But Emily's smile was warm and friendly as Jessalyn paused in the doorway to the drawing room, unsure of her welcome.

"Jessalyn! I trust your headache is better." Emily returned to her arrangement, cupping a sun yellow bloom in her palm. "These spring storms play havoc with a flower garden. I should like to replant the conservatory someday. But that is for the future."