Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  Becka had left a candle burning on the newel-post. On her way to her bedroom Jessalyn paused to open her grandmother's door. The old woman lay flat on her back on the bed, her hands outside the covers, straight at her sides, lying so still that Jessalyn went into the room and held her fingers to her grandmother's lips. She was not aware of the depth of her fear until she felt the knee-quivering wash of relief that came with the warm caress of her grandmother's breath. Lady Letty had to take so much laudanum now for her rheumatism that she slept like the dead through the night. Like the dead. Fear clutched again at Jessalyn's chest, the same fear she had felt that afternoon at Newmarket. It was a dread of loneliness, she knew. She couldn't bear the thought of life without Gram, of spending the years alone.

  Once in her own room, she did not undress for bed. On the top shelf of her walnut wardrobe, shoved way in the back, was a bandbox. She had to stand on a chair to fetch it down. Inside was a little cottage bonnet made of chip straw and decorated with a posy of yellow silk primroses. The straw was cracked and unraveling at the brim, the silk flowers drooping and faded.

  She put the hat on and studied herself in the round looking glass that was inset into the wardrobe's door.

  It was a pretty little hat, but it was meant for a much younger girl, a girl just emerging from the schoolroom, awkward and giggly and apt to take herself much too seriously. A tightness squeezed Jessalyn's chest as she thought of the girl who had worn this hat that long-ago summer. For the first time she understood just how incredibly young she must have seemed to him.

  Turning away from the mirror, she pulled off the hat with a savage gesture. It was an old, useless thing, meant for the rubbish heap; she shouldn't have kept it.

  Yet with care now, and gentleness, she put the hat back in the box, and as she did so, she noticed, beneath the tissue that lined the bottom, the corner of a green leather book. She took the book and went with it to the window seat. As she ran her palm over the embossed leather, the smell of mildew wafted up at her. She saw where splotches of black fur marred the gold gilt. The sight of the decay filled her with such a deep sadness her chest ached.

  A primrose lay pressed against the flyleaf inside. It was nearly transparent, so dry she feared that if she so much as breathed on it, it would crumble into dust. Taking extra pains not to disturb the flower, she turned to the first page. The ink had faded, but she could still read the words.

  I met a man today...

  CHAPTER 15

  The front door opened with a squeal of its unoiled hinges, and Jessalyn jumped at the noise. She scooped up the stack of tradesmen's bills, shoving them beneath a pillow. She sat on the pillow, then snatched up Napoleon and the Weatherby Racing Calendar and planted them both in her lap. Settling back in an Egyptian couch with crocodile claw feet, she assumed what she hoped was a look of angelic innocence.

  She heard Becka's voice in the front hall. That would be Gram coming home. Gram, who persisted in giving away money they didn't have. Just this afternoon she had gone to deliver a new pair of crutches to the rag-and-bone dealer's crippled son. And she had taken to buying so many baked potatoes from the thin, ragged girl who sold them on the corner that even Becka professed herself to be heartily sick of them. But Jessalyn couldn't ask Gram to economize on charity, and she didn't want to worry her. So she kept the mounting bills a secret and prayed for a turn in the abysmal Letty luck.

  Jessalyn heaved a gusty sigh. The movement disturbed Napoleon, who let his displeasure be known by digging his claws into her thighs. He had grown into a crotchety cat, though still runty. He did not like London and had yet to forgive her for bringing him here.

  Four years ago the Sarn't Major had come to Gram and said it was now or never if they were going to make one last run in the big races. So he had walked their string of horses to Newmarket, and she and Gram and Becka had taken the stagecoach. They had moved into her mother's house here in London, one in a square block of contiguous town houses called the Adelphi.

  Outside, the house was made of brick, delicately ornamented with pilasters in the honeysuckle design. Inside, the beautiful classical rooms had been turned into something only Cleopatra would feel at home in. Lotus bowl chandeliers and walls papered with hieroglyphics and sphinxes, sideboards with water lily carvings, and chair backs shaped like coiling serpents. In the dining room stood a table made of a single piece of white marble in the shape of a sarcophagus.

  Lady Letty couldn't enter a room without shuddering, and Becka claimed all the sphinxes and crocodiles gave her hillas. But Jessalyn secretly loved the house. She would wander the rooms, wondering about the woman who had lived here, the woman who had betrayed her husband and deserted her child to follow a Grand Passion. She would study her face in the looking glass, searching for that woman in herself. But her big mouth and fiery hair, her long lankiness were all Rosalie the bal-maiden's. She was a child of barren moors and sea-battered cliffs. Of that mysterious, exotic woman who had liked lions and lyres, she saw nothing.

  That woman, the mother of her memory, had been fair and dainty with a whispering voice and an elusive, musical laugh. That woman had held her to her breast and kissed her forehead when she had fallen on the stairs and bumped it on the newel-post. It was the one clear memory she had of her mother. That woman must surely have loved her. But not enough to keep her.

  The door to the drawing room opened, and Jessalyn lifted her head, expecting Gram.

  "Oooh, me life and body!" exclaimed Becka Poole, exhaling a deep, shaky breath. She stood in the doorway, a goose wing duster in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. The scar was as red as a whiplash on her pale cheek.

  Jessalyn jumped up, spilling Napoleon onto the floor. He hissed and swiped a paw at her skirts. "Becka? Have you taken ill?" A sudden fear stole her breath. "Is it Gram?"

  Becka's raisin-colored eyes focused slowly on her mistress. "'Twere a man."

  "A man?

  "A gennelman's gennelman. He brought this letter for ee." She held out the piece of paper clutched in her fist.

  Jessalyn reached for it, but the girl wouldn't let it go. "Becka?"

  "Eh?" Becka started, releasing her grip on the letter. "That gennelman's gennelman, miss—he were the handsomest man I ever did see, with golden hair and strange eyes, all pale shimmery brown like brandy. Sadlike, they were. They put me in mind of the crucifixated Jesus in that painting what's in St. Paul's Cathedral. He looked at me with them eyes, an' I felt these contraptions low in me belly. Spasmslike." She started to rub her stomach, then noticed the duster in her hand. She stared at it as if she'd never seen it before. "Never have I felt such a wambling of me innards afore. Mebbe he be the devil in the disguise of an angel what tried t' put a hex on me. 'Tes a good thing I be wearin' me hagstone."

  She shuddered dramatically, touching the leather cord at her neck. "Cor, miss, I looked up into them eyes of his an' nearly perspired right there at his feet!"

  Jessalyn deftly turned a laugh into a cough. "Perhaps you ought to lie down for an hour or so to calm your nerves."

  "Ais, miss. A lie down would do me proper. Me nerves be scattered something fierce."

  Becka left, moving like a sleepwalker. Jessalyn smoothed out the crinkles in her letter. She felt a shiver of excitement, for no one had ever sent her a letter before. It was expensive hot-pressed paper, creamy and gilt-edged. She broke the wafer and unfolded the paper, and a bank note floated to the floor. There were five of them—five ten-pound bank notes. His direction was embossed at the top, but the only thing written on the paper was a signature: "Caerhays" in bold black handwriting.

  A cold anger filled Jessalyn as she left the drawing room and climbed the stairs to her bedroom. With calm deliberation, she changed into an old kerseymere walking dress with a matching spencer. There was an ink stain on the cuff, and the cloth was of a color that resembled the sludge that collected in the London gutters when it rained. She could not remember when or where she had acquired the hideous thing, but it would certa
inly serve her purpose today. Today she wanted him to see that she cared not the slightest whether she impressed him or not, as she set about telling him where he could go with his bank notes and what he could do with them when he got there.

  Her hair was braided in a coronet on top of her head, and she left it alone, merely covering it with the ugliest hat she could find, a plain black poke bonnet. Within a bare ten minutes she was in a sedan chair, being carried to a certain earl's lodgings on St. James's Street.

  They had just turned off Piccadilly when the chair was dropped with a sudden jolt that rattled her teeth. She could hear shouts and the pounding of feet; then something hit the chair with a thud, rocking it so hard it nearly tipped over. Fearing a riot, she cautiously raised the window shade and leaned out.

  A coal wagon had run into a huge dray loaded with chickens in crates, spilling black briquettes and squawking fowls into the street. It seemed that all London, including her chairmen, had converged on the scene to make off with the chickens and the fuel to cook them with.

  Jessalyn got down to walk the rest of the way, leaving the money for her fare tucked in the frayed satin seat. Chicken feathers swirled and floated in the air. The fog had worsened considerably since that morning. It was like being smothered by heavy, foul-smelling fleece. Her eyes burned, and she tasted coal soot when she swallowed.

  At last Jessalyn spotted the building she was looking for. But a group of young bloods was between her and it, lounging against the stone bollards that separated the sidewalk from the street. In unison they lifted their quizzing glasses and ogled her, clucking like the chickens as she came toward them.

  Jessalyn stared through them as if they did not exist. One thrust his walking stick into her path, and she went around it. Another stuck out his boot, catching her skirt with his spur. She jerked, and the material came free with a rip. She was shaking, and her palms were sweating in her limerick gloves by the time she gave the iron bellpull a tug.

  The stranger who opened the door was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, with gentle golden brown eyes and a finely sculpted head topped by short blond curls. He was wearing only a shirt and buckskins, and the muscles in his arms and legs were like anchor chains. He could have been cast in bronze and mounted in a museum and not looked out of place. Jessalyn realized suddenly that she was staring at him with her mouth gaping open.

  "Guid afternoon, Miss Letty," he said, his voice melodious with a Scottish lilt.

  Jessalyn hesitated, surprised the man seemed to know her. "Is this where Lord Caerhays— Is he expecting me?"

  "His nibs's precise words were—begging yer pairdon, miss—that once I had delivered his missive, I should expect ye here within the hour, clacking like a dog with a can tied to its tail. If ye come in, I'll go and wake him."

  "So Caerhays is still abed in the middle of the afternoon, is he?" Jessalyn said, stepping into the narrow vestibule. "Did his lordship get foxed last night?"

  He turned his eyes on to her, eyes that were the exact color of brandy when warmed by a candle flame. Yet they held a tinge of sadness, like those of a gentle and forgiving priest who still couldn't help being disappointed by the foibles of his flock. "Aweel," he said softly, "far be it for me to comment on his nibs's nocturnal habits, miss. But he spent the wee hours in a Jermyn Street hell. Drinking, gaming. He tells me such things are what earls do."

  "They are the sort of things the mad earls of Caerhays do," Jessalyn said.

  He let loose with a sigh as mournful as a funeral bell. "Tis in the bluid, I fear. When the bluid wears thin, it becomes susceptible to mental afflictions. This way, if ye please, miss."

  With an air of stately gloom he led her up the narrow stairs to the modest bachelor lodgings. Jessalyn followed, wondering if the man was playing some game at her expanse, for he was unlike any manservant she had ever encountered, with his beautiful face and his salty Scottish brogue peppered with London cant.

  He ushered her into an apple green parlor that was cheerful even in the dim light of a foggy day. The room was elegantly appointed, with carved pine paneling and light satinwood furnishings. But it also had a lived-in look: A pair of boots lay kicked off beside a reading chair; riding gloves and a crop had been left on the mantel. A patent lamp cast a warm glow over a desk, where that morning's Times lay ironed and cut, beside a dog-eared issue of Mechanics Magazine.

  The door opened behind her, and Jessalyn whirled, her heart thudding.

  But it was only the manservant, back again and bearing a tray. The smell of coffee and toasted crumpets filled the room.

  "If ye've come to return the blunt, miss," he said, "ye might want to suggest to his nibs that he toss a wee bit of it in my direction. We've been so let to pockets around here I've holes in my stockings ye could put a fist through." He had set the tray down on the desk, and now he pointed to a glass of cloudy liquid that sat next to the japanned iron coffeepot. "And see that his nibs drinks his tar-water. For if he awakes with the very devil of a heid, I should not be surprised."

  Jessalyn thought she saw laughter lurking in the man's remarkable eyes, although his mouth remained turned down like an inverted bowl. "How long have you been with Lord Caerhays, Mr...?"

  "I go by the moniker of Duncan," he said, and suddenly she could have sworn that he winked at her. "Although I'm not saying I was born with it, ye mind. I was his nibs's batman in the war. Now I'm his valet when he wants to act all dukey and put on airs. Aweel, life was simpler before he became a swell, that I can tell ye. Give him a hot supper and a dry cot and he'd purr like a kit. Now he's got a railway to build and debts so's he can't sleep come night— no matter that 'tis on a feather mattress—and a bruither what goes pegging off and leaves him with a title he don't want and even more debts. Tis enough to choke a man." He paused at the door to heave a great mournful sigh. "The army was simpler, miss. Then all I had to worry aboot was him getting some beef-witted notion in his noddle to be a hero and get himself killed."

  Jessalyn said nothing. She didn't want to hear about McCady's troubles. She didn't want to start feeling sorry for him when feeling anything for him at all was so dangerous to her vulnerable heart.

  The door closed behind the manservant with a gentle click. Left alone to wait, Jessalyn made a slow circuit of the room.

  Thrust into one corner stood an old table heaped with draft drawings. Half of the scarred oaken surface was taken up with the model of an iron horse that ran around a miniature circular track. The locomotive was similar to the one she had ridden on that long-ago summer, except this boiler was more streamlined and the—the cylinders, he had called them, now slanted upward at sharp angles, so that they resembled a grasshopper's legs. The model engine had tiny carriages and wagons hitched to the back of it. A tightness squeezed Jessalyn's chest as she imagined cartloads of people and goods being whisked from one end of England to the other on McCady Trelawny's incredible invention.

  McCady Trelawny's incredible folly.

  For that was what they were calling it—Trelawny's Folly. Although she could never forgive the callous, jaded lieutenant who had rejected her, there had been times during the years while reading the ridiculing stories in the newspapers when she had wanted to weep for the young man with a fire in his eyes who had taken her for a ride on his marvelous locomotive.

  Experts had been quoted, saying that crops would be ruined by the belching smoke and fields set afire by spewing cinders. Cattle would be scared into infertility by the dreadful noise. The passengers and freight Trelawny hoped to carry on his infamous railway all would be blown to smithereens. One man had even attempted to prove, with charts and diagrams, how all that steam being released into the air would affect the tides, causing a great wave that would rise up and swallow the whole island of Britain.

  Lieutenant Trelawny, the papers said, had threatened to drown the man in a horse trough. And Jessalyn, reading it, had ached for him. She kept seeing his face the way it had been on that day of the Tiltwells' Midsummer's Day house
party, when the passionate fire in his eyes had been doused by ridiculing laughter.

  Only once had she read anything the least positive about the potential of rail transportation. The article had mentioned all the innovations in Trelawny's new steam locomotive. Most had been too technical for her to understand. Except for one: He had invented a new type of rail that rested on sleepers made of rolled iron that would not crumble under the heavy weight of the engine the way the Tiltwells' tramway had broken into pieces that summer. No longer were passengers in danger of being tossed out onto their dairy-airs and into prickly gorse bushes.

  She was smiling as she thought of this when something spangled caught her eye. It was partially covered by a crumpled piece of draft paper. It was the bird mask that she had been wearing last night, with its lacquered feathers and crooked beak. She picked it up—

  "Good afternoon, Miss Letty."

  She stood in profile to him, the light from the wall sconce illuminating her face so that it looked soft and smooth like clotted cream. An ugly black hat covered her hair, yet tiny wisps had fought free to lie against her cheek like licks of flame. Five years of trying to forget, and all it had taken was one look at her and he had never wanted any woman more.

  At his greeting, her fingers squeezed the mask so tightly it cracked, making a sound like the discharge of a pistol. Now she turned slowly to face him. Dark smudges lay like old bruises under her eyes, and her lower lip looked even fuller than usual. Deliberately he kept to the shadows of the doorway. He thrust the tips of his fingers into the waistband of his riding breeches and leaned against the jamb. A tense silence filled the room; it thrummed like a battle drum in his blood.

  "How did you know it was I?" she finally said. "Last night, I mean..."