Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  McCady Trelawny leaned back against the gatehouse door and watched his cousin go, his face blank except for an occasional twitch at the corner of his mouth. He stayed that way, propped up by the door, until the wind chilled the sweat on his forehead and the owl screamed again.

  He went inside the gatehouse, which had been his home for the last month. He had furnished it with bits and pieces of things that he had found in the hall, things not worth pawning or selling. A green-faced clock missing its minute hand, a wobbly table, a chair with only one slat. In a corner, a faded Chinese screen hid a cracked yellow tin bathtub. A kettle sat on a trivet beside a dead fire.

  It was hardly the lap of luxury, but then he'd lived much more roughly during the war. Along one wall stood a pair of nail-studded leather trunks, filled with books on engineering and science and his expensive clothes. At least no matter how poor he was at any given time, he always managed to dress like a gentleman, even if he probably wouldn't live long enough to pay off his rags and tatters bills. But then London tailors and bootmakers understood these things. His lips curled into a self-deprecating smile at the thought. Appearances should always be deceiving.

  He looked around the room with distaste. There was nothing to keep him here now. A week at the most to arrange for the sale of the brandy, and he would clear maybe a hundred pounds' profit on the deal. It would all have to go toward repaying the money that Clarey had lent him for the locomotion experiments. Then he could kick the mud of Cornwall off his boots and debauch the rest of his life away at the expense of His Majesty's army.

  He threw himself down onto a rope bed that squealed in protest. He kneaded his eyes with the heels of his hands. God, the look of horror and disgust on Clarey's face... McCady thought of what he himself had never had, of youth and innocence. Of a belief that somewhere in this corrupt and corruptible world there existed a tiny, shining scrap of decency and honor and— Damn her! She'd all but been begging for it, and he sure as bloody hell had wanted to give it to her. He should have borne her down onto the sand right then and taken her.

  And he would have ruined her life.

  He stretched his arms above his head, his fingers grasping the wooden slats of the bedstead. He stared at the roughhewn beams above and saw...

  Saw her eyes, dark gray and turbulent as the sea before a storm, and her hair, russet and loamy, the color of autumn leaves strewn in wild abandon on his pillow. Saw himself burying his face in that hair, drowning in her smell. She would have freckles on her breasts, and he saw himself tasting them with his tongue. Saw himself spreading those long, long legs wide, kissing that laughing mouth senseless... Her mouth. God, the things he could teach her to do with that mouth.

  He sat up abruptly, cutting off the thought with a ruthless effort of will. He could not as easily control his sex, which had stretched and grown hard, pressing painfully against his tight buckskin breeches.

  He stood and limped over to the table. He picked up an old trapping knife, cut three rashers off a slab of bacon and put them into a frypan. The fire had gone out. He took the tinderbox off the mantel and tried to light it, but his fingers shook so badly he couldn't get a spark.

  "Bloody hell!" He threw the tinderbox against the wall.

  He stared at the piece of tarred sacking that served as a rug beside his bed. It also served to cover the trapdoor that led into a cellar that just happened to be filled at the moment with a hundred tuns of tax-free brandy. It was a foolish smuggler who consumed his own profits, but the only way he was going to get through what was left of the night was to drink himself insensible.

  Yet he did not kick aside the sacking and lift the trapdoor. He crossed over to the bed and sat. His hands gripped his thighs so hard the tendons stood out like ropes. He felt as if every muscle in his body were straining against his skin.

  His head fell back, and he swallowed hard. "Jessalyn," he said into the cold and empty room.

  CHAPTER 10

  Three days later, on an evening of summer wind and lavender twilight, a lookout on the cliffs above Crookneck Cove spotted a dark red tinge far out to sea.

  He waited a few breathless moments to be sure it wasn't a trick of light on water, a part of the sunset. But the red tinge grew darker and spread like a pool of blood, and soon there was no doubt He shouted and did a fancy leap in the air. Throwing back his head, he blew a blast on his tin trumpet and followed it up with a cry, "Hevva, hevva!"

  Becka Poole burst into the dining room where Jessalyn and her grandmother were having supper. "The pilchards are in!" she cried, hopping up and down in her excitement. "The pilchards are in!"

  Jessalyn looked at her grandmother. Color bloomed on her cheeks that for three days had been as pale as old parchment. "Gram, may I? Please."

  Lady Letty's lips pursed. "Tisn't the done thing... oh, very well."

  Jessalyn dashed from the room before her grandmother could change her mind. She stopped only long enough to tie a man's blue kerchief over her hair, then burst from the house like a frisky colt let loose into a field of clover.

  Schools of pilchards had turned the sea red. Jessalyn ran hand in hand with Becka along the top of the cliffs. They were joined by others, all racing toward the village of Mousehole. Everyone took up the huer's cry, "Hevva, hevva!," the old Cornish word for shoal.

  Barrels of burning oil threw streams of light onto a harbor packed with fishing vessels. The huer who had first spotted the shoal now stood atop the cliff, signaling with a burning torch the direction the fish were heading. The men in the boats below dropped the seine net into the water, then attached a tucking net to the enormous sheet of mesh, forming a circle.

  The boats began to haul on the tucking net. Shouts cut off abruptly; laughter died away. All waited to see if the catch would be a good one, if the bellies of Mousehole would be full that coming winter, or empty. Oh, there were sounds—the screaming gulls, the lap and gurgle of water against the shale, the slap of oars, and the grunts of the men as they hauled on the net—yet it seemed to Jessalyn as if all the world had grown silent, watching, waiting.

  Suddenly the water erupted into a seething mass of leaping, writhing fish. People in boats and onshore, people knee-deep in water that boiled like a caldron of hot soup scooped up the pilchards in baskets and buckets, laughing and shouting, while overhead the sea gulls cried.

  Jessalyn pulled off shoes and stockings and kirtled her skirt above her knees like the other village women. She took up a wicker basket and waded into the bay. Pilchards flashed like silver coins in the water, tickling her bare legs, and she laughed aloud. Leaning over, she scooped up a basketful of fish and tossed the wriggling load into the well of a nearby boat. Suddenly a stream of pilchards sailed through the air into the boat, barely missing her head. Jumping back out of the way, she spun around, more laughter gurgling up in her throat... and dying.

  Lieutenant Trelawny stood before her, an empty basket in his hands, an empty look in his shadowed eyes.

  Their gazes clashed and locked, and the world went utterly still as if every living creature held its breath. Memories of that terrible night on the beach lashed through her mind, memories of how she had thrown herself at him, begging him to kiss her, and he had rejected her. Hot embarrassment washed over her, and her legs trembled, wanting to run away. Yet she stood unmoving while around them the water churned and the gulls screamed.

  The words poured out of her throat unbidden, welling up from within her heart. "Why can't you leave me alone?"

  He lifted his hand. She flinched, and so he let it fall without touching her. "I cannot," he said, or might have said. For she couldn't hear over the gulls and the shouts of the fishermen and the splashing water.

  He stared at her forever, and she actually felt his gaze— the way she could feel the sea breeze on her hot cheeks and the current wrapping like seducing hands around her bare legs. His gaze touched her, his lids growing heavy, something moving now behind the darkness in his eyes, like wafting smoke. A tightness squeezed her
chest, squeezing, squeezing until she wanted to scream. Just when she thought she could bear it no longer, he dropped his gaze, and she expelled her breath in a sharp sigh.

  He bent over, filling the basket. He wore only a shirt, unfastened at the neck. It gaped open at the throat, exposing the beginning swell of hair-covered muscle. His collarbone rose and fell with each breath. She stared at him, at that tawny brown skin, and the tightness began to build in her chest again, cutting off her breath and pushing her heart up into her throat.

  She was never sure afterward what led her to do it. She only knew she could no longer bear the tension that twanged between them like a taut wire. Perhaps she simply wanted to make herself laugh because in another moment she would have been crying. She did it without thought. She scooped a pilchard out of the water with her bare hand and tossed it down the front of his shirt.

  He straightened with a snap and a hiss of indrawn breath. He stared at her in shock while the pilchard thrashed like a trapped dove within the confines of the white cambric. Jessalyn laughed.

  He reached down his shirt and came up with the wriggling fish. He looked at it a moment, and a strange light came into his eyes. He advanced on her, evil intent writ on his face.

  She backed up, her arms flapping like a nestling trying to fly. "Lieutenant!" she shrieked, laughing still. "Don't!"

  "Where shall I put it? Down your back, in your ear?" He opened his eyes wide, pretending to be struck with sudden inspiration. "Your mouth. That big, gaping mouth of yours warrants stuffing."

  He made a grab for her, and the pilchard squirted out of his hand, diving back into the roiling water. He swore and then began to laugh, so that the sounds of their laughter— hers wild and squeaking like an unoiled hinge; his deep and husky—were carried out to sea, entwined together on the warm summer wind.

  His laughter died first. He was staring at her mouth, and a strange tautness had come over his face. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her. He kept insisting that to him she was just a child, but at times she caught a white heat in his eyes that said he lied.

  They didn't laugh again; they didn't even speak. But they worked side by side together well into the night, dumping basket after basket into boats that soon became loaded up to the gunwales with pilchards. At midnight Jessalyn waded out of the water without a word to him. She stopped to wring out her skirt, and when she looked up, he was beside her, staring at her bare legs. She felt nearly breathless with a growing excitement. For the first time she began to understand the power she held over him, that she could make him want to touch her, to kiss her, in spite of himself.

  They walked along the stone hedge that followed the cliffs, and soon the sounds of the pilchard catch faded until they were wrapped in the soft silence of the night.

  She pulled off the blue kerchief and threw back her head. She gathered her hair in her hands and lifted it off her neck, then slowly let it all tumble down her back. She felt the heat of his eyes on her, and she smiled.

  The sky was black, sprinkled with stars that were faint and withdrawn. But the moon was round and full and golden, like a fat orange heavy with juice. The wind, restless and warm and smelling strongly of the sea and the earth, stirred her hair. She felt so glad to be alive it was a song in her heart, in her blood. She wanted to shout with the wonder of it.

  She skipped a few steps ahead of him, then turned to walk backward. "I am happy tonight."

  He said nothing. But he smiled suddenly, and her heart tripped.

  She whirled, dancing away from him and laughing.

  He snagged her arm. "Hasn't anyone told you that young ladies should be submissive of temper and meek of spirit?"

  She wrinkled her nose at him. "That isn't me."

  "No." The smile left his face. "That isn't you."

  She bent over to pick a moonflower from out of the scrub. Laughing, she tucked it behind his ear. She regarded her handiwork with an impish grin. "You look silly."

  "And you're acting silly." He removed the flower and pushed it through her hair, his fingers trailing across her temple and down her neck. His eyes, above the flaring bones of his cheeks, glowed red, like banked fires. "It's a blue moon tonight," he said. "Do you know what that is?"

  She thought she might have known once. But her blood was running so thick, her heart beating so loudly, she couldn't think. "It's orange," she said. "The moon is orange tonight, not blue."

  His face had taken on a strange, heated look. "Have you never heard the story? How once upon a time there was a bal-maiden so beautiful she made all who saw her glad to be alive, especially the shepherd boy who was her lover. But one night she was captured by a witch who coveted the handsome shepherd boy for herself. A witch so ugly even toads turned their faces away in horror—-and don't laugh. This is a very serious story, and if you persist in giggling your way through it, you will spoil the whole effect."

  Jessalyn sucked on her bottom lip. "I'll be good. I promise."

  He stared at her mouth, and a silence stretched taut between them. Sea and wind sighed, like lovers' panting breath.

  "Where was I? Ah, yes... The evil witch turned the bal-maiden into a hare, casting the spell so that the only time the girl could assume human form again was when the moon rode the sky in its full glory for the second time in one month. She thought she was making it impossible for the girl ever to be human again, but she had forgotten about the nights of the blue moon—those rare months when there are two full moons. And so from time to time the bewitched hare became a girl again and she and her shepherd boy would meet and make love...." His hands closed over her arms, pulling her to him. He brought his face close to hers, and she waited, her heart in her throat, for his kiss. His voice had a husky break in it. "Once in a blue moon."

  His lips, hard and hot, crushed hers, and her blood caught lire like a field of dry gorse. Her mouth opened beneath his, taking his tongue, giving him her own. Their lips and tongues stroked and mated, mouths melding in a desperate effort to become one.

  "Jessalyn," he breathed into her open mouth. His fist tangled in her hair, pulling her head back. His lips slid down her jaw to the throbbing pulse in her throat, and Jessalyn thought she would die. "Oh, God, Jessa," he said, his voice raw. "Jessa, I want... I have to..."

  He shuddered and stiffened, thrusting her away from him so hard she nearly fell. "I'm taking you home," he said, almost snarling the words.

  She clung to his shirt. "Why? I don't understand."

  "You are too young, dammit! And I promised—" He cut himself off, drawing in a violent breath. "You are too young."

  I am not too young, she wanted to cry. I'm not, I'm not... And if he was what he claimed to be, what others said of him, her youth wouldn't matter.

  "You are such a fraud, Lieutenant Trelawny," she said, the words roughened by her breathing. "You pretend to be a rakehell. But underneath that thatch-gallows manner of yours, there beats the heart of a true gentleman." She flattened her palms against his chest. She could feel the beat of his heart, frantic, like a trapped bird. "A man of honor—"

  "Don't attempt to whitewash me, Miss Letty." His hands came up between them, closing around hers. He held her hands pressed hard to his chest a moment, then flung them off. "There are other names for men like me, names little girls like you can't even begin to guess the meaning of. Have you any idea how old I am?"

  She shook her head. She had often wondered. But she hadn't dared ask for fear of reminding him of how young she was.

  "I am twenty-five." He emitted a ragged laugh at the look on her face. He didn't know that it wasn't shock she felt, but relief. Nine years were not such a great difference at all. Her grandfather had been fifteen years older than Gram.

  "Twenty-five is not so awfully old," she said, smiling.

  He laughed again, shaking his head. "It feels it. It feels bloody old. As old as sin. I look at you, and I see..." He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, a touch so light and brief she barely felt it. "I was ten the year m
y father died and I went to live with my brothers. My father was not the best of parents, but my brothers..."

  His chest hitched, stopping the flow of words. He searched her face with eyes dark and desperate, as if he both dreaded and longed for her to see him exactly for what he was.

  "They ruined me," he rushed on, his voice harsh. "You don't know, you can't imagine, what they did.... They exposed me to every vice to be bought or taken in the stews of London. By the time I was your age I had broken every law, violated every decency of God and man except Thou shalt not kill,' and the army quickly rectified that little oversight." His mouth grew queer and tight. "I'm a Trelawny, little one. We're a sorry, degenerate group of bastards."

  She felt so sad, for him, for herself. For things once done that could never be undone, and because she could not change what he believed in his soul without changing what he was. And yet...

  "And the man who built the steam locomotive," she said in a voice choked with unshed tears. "Who is he?"

  The bitter tilt lingered on his mouth, and shadows had consumed all the light in his eyes. "He's a fool. A bloody fool."

  But he's you. He's the man you are meant to be, Jessalyn could have said but didn't. For those were words he couldn't bear to hear.

  He watched the girl skip along the beach, her rusty laughter clashing against the rhythmic rush of the sea. He called her name.

  She whirled, her laughter cracking like the squawk of a hungry bird. "Clarence!"

  Picking up her skirt, she ran toward him, and a warm glow suffused his chest, for she seemed glad to see him. Words tumbled out of her as she stopped, breathing hard, in front of him. "What are you doing here? I've barely seen you all summer."

  Clarence slapped his tan kid gloves against his leg. He stared out over a sea that was a pale opal green. The light breeze smelled of seaweed and fish. It flattened her skirt, outlining the slim contours of her legs.