Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  "I believe that is an eyebrow, Gram."

  "All the more reason to tell her, eh? If she's losing her eyebrows." Lady Letty raised her cane, and Jessalyn had the horrible thought that her grandmother was going to hail the woman with the wayward brow, but what she did do was even worse. "You there, Trelawny! Quit skulking about and come over here, you rakeshame."

  He pushed himself off the pillar and sauntered toward them. Even with his limp he moved, Jessalyn thought, like a lazy cat on a hot day.

  He bowed over her grandmother's hand. "Upon my soul, it's Lady Letty. I thought at first that my eyes had alighted on a figure of royalty, at the very least a duchess, so regal did you seem, sitting over here and holding court. All you lack is a tiara and a bit of something trimmed in ermine."

  Lady Letty directed a fierce scowl up at him. "Don't talk such fustian with me, boy. I don't like it." She raised her quizzing glass to her eye and looked him slowly up and down as if she were judging the horseflesh at an auction. "The last time I saw you, you were but a sapling. You've grown up. But I tell myself it is a rotted pea that comes from a rotted pod. Are you rotten, boy?"

  A tight smile thinned his lips. "All the way through to my black heart."

  To Jessalyn's astonishment this answer seemed to please Lady Letty, for she snorted a laugh. "Nevertheless," she said, "in spite of your wicked reputation, I shall permit you to dance with my granddaughter."

  After the briefest hesitation he turned slightly and bowed in Jessalyn's direction. As he straightened, his eyes fastened on to her face, and something stirred within their dark depths, like a dragon dwelling deep in a cave just coming awake. Her legs trembled, wanting to flee, but her heart and mind were drawn into that cave to discover for herself the nature of the sleeping beast.

  His arm settled around her waist, and Jessalyn's every muscle tensed as she fought off a shudder. She spoke to the brass buttons on his coat. "My grandmother doesn't mean half of what she says. She likes to shock people."

  "So do I," he said. His palm pressed into her back, guiding her in a dipping, sweeping circle, and that shivery, hollow feeling gripped her stomach again. "And so, I think, do you. Perhaps we ought to form a club and take subscriptions. We can call ourselves the Dishonorable Society to Alleviate Boredom and Complacency."

  She had no hope of matching words with him, so she didn't even try. She was excited just to be dancing. She wondered if Lady Letty had realized the band was playing one of those scandalous waltzes. Jessalyn had often practiced the steps by dancing with a broom. But a broom didn't have legs and feet, and his kept getting in her way.

  She stumbled over his boot, causing them to miss a step. "Blast it," she exclaimed beneath her breath.

  "They behave better when you aren't watching them."

  She couldn't imagine what he meant; then she realized he was talking about her feet. She tried not to look down. But the only other place to look, besides at him, was up. A three-tiered crystal chandelier fringed in gold hung above their heads from a ceiling rose decorated with grapevines and plump, pink-bottomed cherubs. The ceiling was festooned with so many scrolls and rosettes it reminded her of a cheese and raspberry torte. Just looking at it made her dizzy.

  Her gaze fell to his face, and she blinked as the room spun around her, momentarily out of control. His expression was politely blank, but his gaze was fastened on to her face again, on her mouth, and it seemed as if he stroked her lips with the heat of his eyes. She looked away.

  He was nearly half a head taller than she. Even Clarence, whom she'd always thought of as tall, did not match his height. Although he tried to hide it, she could tell his leg pained him with every step. "That is a terrible wound you bear," she said, and then felt her face grow hot as she remembered the circumstances under which she had seen it.

  His arm tightened around her waist, gathering her closer. For a moment his thigh pressed between her legs and she actually felt its hardness and its heat, and then he took another step and they parted. She stumbled again. "How—how did it happen?" she asked.

  "I was careless."

  "Oh. But I thought it must have happened at Waterloo."

  "How perceptive of you."

  Another flush spread over her face. His hand burned into her back, and the room was much too hot. Her chest felt tight, as if she couldn't draw a deep enough breath. "I did not mean to pry," she finally managed. "I am sure it is an honorable wound you bear. Your cousin told me last night of how you rallied your men when they were breaking and led them on a renewed charge of the enemy. It was an excessively brave thing to do."

  "It was an excessively stupid thing to do. I got them all killed and nearly killed myself while I was about it. Do let us change the subject, Miss Letty."

  That wasn't what Clarence had said. Clarence had told her that his cousin's heroic stand had saved the day for his regiment at Waterloo. The king and Parliament had cited him for his bravery.

  Her gaze went back to his face. The lace at his throat emphasized the masculine harshness of his features. Shadows stirred again behind the flatness of his dark eyes. She searched for a new topic of conversation. She longed to be able to dazzle him with some witty remark about the weather or the company. What she said was: "Will you be in Cornwall long, Captain Trelawny?"

  "I am grateful for the promotion. However, as it is a capital crime to impersonate a superior officer, I am obliged to confess to being a mere lieutenant. Are you disappointed?"

  "Devastated. But doubtless you shall be made a captain soon."

  "Not unless you have sixteen hundred pounds to lend me so that I might purchase the commission."

  She started to laugh, then smothered it with her lips, so that it came out more of a snort. "Don't be a silly goose," she said.

  "Do I take it from that profound remark that you are refusing me a loan? Then I fear that I am doomed to remain the oldest lieutenant in His Majesty's army."

  "Are you poor?"

  His face broke into a dazzling smile. "Wretchedly so."

  She floated, lost in the music and the feel of his arm around her waist, lost in his smile. "So am I. Poor, that is."

  "What a pity. For I do believe that were you an heiress, silly goose that I am, I just might be inclined to marry you."

  He was not being serious. Of course, he wasn't being serious. But even to jest about such a thing sent her heart diving and soaring like the gulls at Crookneck Cove.

  He did not ask her to dance again. She stood up only twice more, both times with Clarence Tiltwell. She watched him while she danced and while she drank a glass of effervescent lemon with her grandmother afterward. He spent most of the time talking with the same petite gilt-haired girl. Once he threw back his head and laughed, and Jessalyn felt an odd hollowness in her stomach, as if she'd just been told a sad story. Selina Alcott was the girl's name, and she had curves and she had money. He was not such a silly goose after all.

  Lady Letty followed the direction of her granddaughter's gaze. "Good looks, an earldom in his future, and a witty tongue in his head—a thoroughly dangerous combination. I'm thinking I ought to lock you up for the summer."

  "He doesn't like me. He teases."

  "M'dear, when a man like him teases a gel, 'tis long before time that she should think about running in the other direction." Lady Letty reached for her cane, pushing herself to her feet. "There's got to be a faro bank going somewhere around here. I feel like taking a plunge."

  The green baize card tables had been set up in a nearby room. Jessalyn stood beside her grandmother's chair and watched her lose what was left of the saddle horse money, playing a wild game of faro for ruinous stakes. She kept one eye on the open door to the drawing room, where the dancers whirled by to the muted scraping of the band. She did not see Lieutenant Trelawny again.

  After a light refreshment of heart cakes and syllabubs, Jessalyn joined several of the other guests who had strolled out into the terraced gardens to watch the sun set. Chinese lanterns lit up graveled path
s that meandered through clipped shrubberies and flowers arranged geometrically in beds. Weeping willows shivered in the breeze, and the larks, from which the house got its name, lightened the evening with their song. It all seemed so tidy, so perfect that Jessalyn felt a rebellious desire to sneak over one dark night and plant a gorse bush among the daffodils.

  Some sort of commotion was happening on top of the hill before Wheal Charlotte, and Jessalyn walked up to see what it was. What she saw made her laugh aloud with delight.

  A locomotive sat huffing and wheezing on the tramway outside the mine house. The cone-shaped boiler, bolted to a frame in the shape of a wagon bed, looked like a big yellow sugar loaf. Its wheels, too, had been gaily painted: a poppy red for the rims, a Prussian blue for the spokes. A tall black funnel, with a lid fluted like a piecrust, burped steam. There was nothing neat and tidy about it. It belched smoke and made rude noises; it had no respect for the proper conventions. Jessalyn thought it the most marvelous thing she'd ever seen.

  Henry Tiltwell did not share her enthusiasm. He climbed the hill, huffing worse than the locomotive. He spotted his son standing beside the engine, and he advanced on him, his face mottled with rage. "Clarence! What nonsense is this?"

  Clarence paled slightly before his father's anger. "We thought... that is, Mack and I thought..."

  "To do a small demonstration, if you will." Lieutenant Trelawny emerged from behind the locomotive. He was in his shirtsleeves, and he carried an oil can in his hand. His dark, piercing gaze met everyone's eyes in turn, and when he spoke, it was not only to Henry Tiltwell but to all the men there with the power and influence and money to make a reality out of an inventor's dream. Or to kill it through skepticism and ridicule.

  "To get your tin ore from the pitheads to the nearest blowing house for smelting," he said, "you mineowners are constantly transporting heavy loads. But pit ponies and mules wear out, and fodder is expensive. What you see here before you is a cheaper and more efficient method. Steam locomotion—an engine capable of generating mechanical power from thermal energy. A single locomotive like this could pull five cartloads of tin from here to Penzance in less than an hour." He had lost the sneering drawl he normally affected. Excitement and a vision shone in his voice and on his face.

  Mr. Tiltwell hawked a scornful laugh. "An iron horse, eh? An iron horse!" He looked around at his guests, inviting them to share in his joke. "Didn't I hear of just such a thing up in Wales a few years back? It blew itself to pieces, so they said. Killed four men, it did. They said 'twas like soldering the lid onto a pot of boiling water. It blew so high they heard it nigh up in Chester." Again he laughed.

  A muscle ticked once in Lieutenant Trelawny's jaw, but his voice remained steady. "That was an earlier version. The design has been improved since then, including the fitting of two safety valves instead of one." He paused, drawing in a deep breath, and suddenly to Jessalyn's eyes he looked young and vulnerable. He was laying himself open to ridicule and hurt, and he knew, even as he was doing so, that he was likely to get it.

  Clarence cleared his throat. "Why can't you at least let him show us, Father?"

  Mr. Tiltwell turned on his son. "You shut your clack! I hold you responsible for his being here in the first place." He flung a stiff finger at the locomotive. "And as for this— this belching monster, the only thing it is capable of demonstrating is a singular ability to ruin my crops and scare the livestock. You mark if there will be a cow within miles giving milk in the morning."

  He aimed a venomous look at his son that promised trouble later. Clarence flushed and looked away.

  As if indifferent to the storm raging around him, Lieutenant Trelawny had jumped onto the steam engine to shovel more coal into the firebox. Henry Tiltwell started forward. Then, as if remembering his own dire predictions, he took a hasty step back. "This is my land, my tramway. I forbid this spectacle. Do you hear me? I forbid it!"

  He was shouted down by several of the guests. Having heard about the iron horse that had blown up in Wales, they now hoped to be witness to a similar gruesome exhibition.

  Jessalyn was the only one to step up for a closer look at the invention. The frame for the boiler was made of wood strengthened by iron plates. It rested on two large wheels in front and two much smaller wheels in back. To her eyes, the engine seemed a tangled coil of metal tubes and pipes. Hitched to the locomotive, like a cart to a pony, was a tender loaded with wicker baskets of coal and a big water barrel.

  The boiler began to sing as it raised more steam. It hissed and breathed as if it were alive, and steam issued from every joint like sweat. It swayed and shuddered on the tramway tracks like a great beast gathering itself to spring. Jessalyn stared at the man who had created the beast, fascinated by the way the sweat stood out on his face and the muscles of his arms and back bunched and flexed beneath his thin lawn shirt as he heaved coal into the glowing red mouth of the firebox. She could not imagine an earl's son engaging in such rough manual labor. Her grandmother, she knew, would be scandalized, yet for some reason the sight excited her.

  She called up to him. "I should like to come along with you, Lieutenant Trelawny."

  He turned and looked down, and their gazes met. A passionate heat blazed in his eyes, brighter than the fire he stoked. She knew his own excitement had nothing to do with her, but Jessalyn felt weightless suddenly, as if she had just stepped off a cliff and discovered that she could fly.

  He slammed the damper shut with a clang and jumped down in front of her. "This is not a merry-go-round."

  He had rolled up his sleeves above his elbow, and sweat glistened on the skin of his forearms. The wind pressed his shirt against his chest and ruffled the lace at his throat. She wanted to touch him, though she wasn't sure in what way. Just touch him.

  "You claim that it's safe," she said. "What better way to prove it?"

  "Miss Letty, young ladies do not ride on locomotives."

  "Why not? Who says so? We ride on horses and drive in carriages. I drove a jingle this afternoon, even though Gram said it wasn't quite the done thing. Please, Lieutenant Trelawny. I would consider it an honor to ride on your splendid machine."

  He stared down at her, his mouth hard. He drew in a sudden, sharp breath. "I ought to be kicked from here to London for doing this. You won't thank me for it later, you know." His hands fell around her waist, and he lifted her onto the footplate, coming up after her. "Don't touch the back of the firebox," he warned. "It's hot."

  "Jessalyn!" Clarence came striding toward them. "What are you doing? Mack, you can't possibly allow her to—"

  Henry Tiltwell slammed a heavy palm into his son's chest. "Let her go with him if she wants. This nonsense was your idea, boy. And it's her neck."

  "Jessalyn, come down from there this instant," Clarence commanded, although he had stopped behind the barrier of his father's hand.

  Jessalyn pretended not to hear him. The engine vibrated beneath her feet, making her belly tingle. There was life within this monster that breathed and shuddered and trembled, a life that had sprung directly from the heart and mind of the man beside her.

  He was studying a pair of dials on the boiler. She leaned over his shoulder, and the wind blew his hair against her neck. "This one is not likely to explode, is it?" she asked, only half teasing.

  He glanced sideways at her, bringing their faces closer together. His lips twisted into a wry smile, and she felt her mouth break into a wide grin, heard herself giggle. It was as if she were two Jessalyns: the girl who stood before this strange man, breathless, her heart fluttering with fear and excitement, and the wiser girl, watching from a distance and seeing what a fool she was making of herself, what a child he must think her to be.

  "Are you getting cold feet?" he asked.

  Actually her feet were becoming quite warm. The metal footplate absorbed heat from the firebox, so that it was like standing on top of a sizzling frypan.

  "What you saw that day was an experiment for a steam-powered road carriage," he
said. "This is different. This time I know what I'm doing."

  "I am relieved to hear it. I wouldn't want to meet my end as little bits and pieces strewn along Mr. Tiltwell's tramway."

  He laughed, and she felt the heat of his breath against her cheek. There was not much room on the tiny footplate. Every time one of them moved, their bodies would touch: Hip would rub against hip; her shoulder would brush his arm; his thigh would press against her bottom. She was so very aware of him. Of his smell: grease and soot and male sweat. Of the hard strength of his man's body where it touched hers. Of the fire burning in his dark eyes, revealing the brain behind the power that throbbed and pulsed around them.

  She stared up into his face. She couldn't understand why, but the sight of him made her chest hurt. "How does it work?"

  "Well, to put it simply—"

  "Very simply, please," she said, laughing.

  "Very simply then. The water in the boiler is heated until it produces steam. The steam from the boiler is admitted into the cylinders." He pointed to one of a matching pair of fat tubes bolted to the boiler. "When the steam enters the cylinder, it expands, pushing the piston—a thick bar, sort of like a hammer—which moves the rod, there"—he pointed at an iron arm that ran from the cylinder to one of the big front wheels—"which turns the driving wheel."

  She lifted her smiling mouth and bright eyes up to his. "It's wonderful!"

  A dark flush stained his cheekbones. She thought it odd that he would be embarrassed, but perhaps he had received little praise in his life. "The spent steam escapes through the chimney stack into the air," he finished, his gaze averted now from hers.

  He reached for a metal lever, and his bare arm pressed against her breast. The monster sucked and breathed around them while Jessalyn stood motionless, unable to breathe at all.

  He jerked back as if he'd just brushed against the hot metal of the firebox, and Jessalyn's own flesh burned where he had touched her.

  "Perhaps it would be better if you rode in the tender," he said, his voice rough.