Once in a Blue Moon (46 page)

He saw McCady move out the corner of his eye, and he turned his head.

The pistol came up until it was pointing between Clarence's eyes. The muzzle seemed enormous, the maw of hell. And McCady's words seemed to come shooting out of the bore, killing him. "She is
mine,
Tiltwell. Learn to live with it."

McCady's finger tightened on the trigger.

To Clarence's bitter shame he felt himself begin to tremble like an old man with the ague. Hot tears filled his eyes and started splattering onto his cheeks. He squeezed his lids shut and waited, waited... and made a spastic little jerk when he heard the click of the falling door latch. He opened his eyes; McCady had gone. He looked down. The gun sat on the blotter in front of him. Loaded and ready to fire.

McCady paused at the top of the stairs, his hand resting lightly on the newel-post. He waited a few moments, waited for the sound of a shot, but it didn't come. And that, he thought, answered one question at least.

It took him awhile to find her, and in those moments an irrational panic squeezed his chest that he might never find her again.

He had seen Clarey's face when the man had at last comprehended that Jessalyn was lost to him forever. McCady understood well that kind of hell. He had to find her now and reassure himself that she was still his.

He came upon her standing on top of a small rise a few hundred yards down the road, past the navvies' turf huts and flickering campfires. He could barely see her in the deepening twilight. She stood with her feet spread apart, her hands loose at her sides, and she was looking down into the cutting below, where the iron rails lay like a great seam across the freshly scarred earth. His boot disturbed a stone. She turned, and her face broke into a dazzling smile that stopped his heart.

He wanted her.

He wanted her with a fierce hunger that made him tremble, as if he had not had a woman in years. But it was
she
he wanted. Not just any woman, not the most beautiful woman in the world. He wanted her, with her raucous, lusty laugh and her sunbeam smile, with her long legs and bony knees. He wanted to hear the little breath-catching sighs she made when he entered her and feel her hair sliding across his naked belly. He wanted Jessalyn, his Jessa. And what made his happiness complete, what made him want to whoop and shout and laugh aloud, was that he knew, he
knew
she wanted him in just the same way.

He thought that he should say all these things to her, that it was important she understand, but he couldn't find the words. They piled up in his throat and got stuck there, so instead he crushed her against him and spoke with his kiss. A kiss that quickly turned so raw and hot that he had to break away.

"McCady!" she gasped, straightening her straw hat, which he had knocked askew. Her bosom trembled with her panting breaths, and she licked her lips. He wanted to kiss her again, but there was something he had to tell her first.

"Jessa—"

"I'm glad you've come, for I've been thinking," she said, her voice bright with excitement and happiness. She slipped her hand into his and turned so that they looked together down the rock and gorse-tufted hillside. "What do you see?"

He shook his head. He had eyes only for her. "I don't know; it's rather dark. Rocks and grass, some trees." She emitted a soft snort of exasperation, and he laughed. "All right, I see a railway. My railway."

Her grip tightened on his hand, and she brought it up to cradle against her breasts. He looked at her face, at the sharp curve of a cheekbone, at the full swell of her lips. Awe filled his heart at the thought that she was his, awe and a sweet ache.

"Don't you understand?" she said, her face vivid. "Even if they had managed to stop you, they could not have stopped
it,
the idea of it. You had gone too far, taken the idea too far. This"—her hand flashed in the darkness— "this is going to change the world. It is the future."

She turned her face, and her gaze captured his, pure and deep, like a hidden spring. "And this is our future." Slowly she moved his hand down her body until it was pressing low against her belly. She gave a sudden, gurgling laugh and leaned into him to rub her cheek against his chest, still clutching his hand. "We're going to have a baby, McCady."

The breath eased out of him in a great sigh, and tears of piercing joy stung his eyes. "God."

Her laughter, rusty and squeaking like a old pump handle, filled the night. "Well, yes, He did have something to do with it. But so did you, my love."

My love.

She had never called him that before. A warmth, a sweet and gentle warmth, enveloped him. He wanted her to know something, he had to tell her that... He tried for the words, but his tongue felt stiff as old leather. "Jessa, I..."

She looked up at him, smiling, expectant, and dammit, he couldn't get his throat to work. She cupped his cheek with her soft hand. "Silly goose. Are those flowers that you're crushing in your fist for me?"

He had spotted them growing along the top of a hedge while he'd been searching for her and on impulse he'd picked them. They were primroses of the pale yellow color that always made him think of her and of that long-ago summer. He handed them to her now, feeling slightly foolish.

And then he felt inordinately pleased with himself when her mouth broke into a wide smile of pure delight. She buried her face in the starred yellow blossoms, breathing in their scent. She lifted her head, and he thought she would smile again when her face quickened with excitement and she pointed toward the village behind him. "Oh, look, McCady! Look at the moon."

It rose over the tops of the distant trees, a great golden ball in the deep velvet purple of late twilight. Like a ripe, juicy peach ready to be plucked out of the sky.

She breathed a soft sigh and leaned into him, her head falling on his shoulder. "Is it a blue moon, do you think?"

"I don't know," he said, his throat full. To him it didn't matter. Since that night he'd made her his wife, all his moons had been blue. Rare and special and filled with...

"Jessalyn, I..." God, why were the words so hard to say? He lived for her. She was his hope of paradise and in a way his glimpse of hell. The hell that he would suffer should he ever lose her. And this he understood at last was...

"Love. I love you, Jessalyn."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

McCady Trelawny is, alas, only a figment of my imagination, although it is certainly within the realm of historical possibility that he
could
have lived to invent his steam-powered locomotive and to build his railway.

In 1804 a Cornishman by the name of Richard Trevithick made the first steam locomotive to run on rails, and as early as 1801 Parliament had already passed an act establishing the principle of a public railway. But as with any radical innovation, there was considerable skepticism that a steam-powered engine could ever replace the stagecoach and horse, and investors were hard to come by. The first public railway in England, which ran from Manchester to Liverpool, did not in fact exist until 1830. In the fall of 1829 the Raintree Trials were held on a portion of that line to determine who would win the right to supply the locomotives for the railway. A steam locomotive called
The Rocket
won the trials. It was designed by George Stephenson and his son Robert Stephenson, who became instant millionaires from the profits of their invention. Within only ten years after the Raintree Trials, railways were crisscrossing the island of Britain and steam-powered locomotives had indeed changed the world.