Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  His gaze went to the mask in her hands, then back to her face. "I would know you anywhere."

  The words were the most intimate he had ever spoken to her. He wished he hadn't said them because in the end they were only words. The bruised look didn't leave her face, and the mask trembled in her hands as she laid it back down on the table.

  He came toward her, then past her. He was not dressed; that is, he wore only a shirt and riding breeches. Nor had he shaved. He wasn't in the mood to play the part of the gallant today.

  He picked up the glass of tar-water off the tray, grimaced at it, then poured it into a pot that held a pathetic fern with curling brown fronds. It was where the tar-water disappeared every morning. Duncan thought the plant had some sort of mite. He'd been dosing it with julep elixir all summer.

  Since he could not trust himself to look at her, McCady stared out the window. Fog had condensed on the glass, trickling down in miniature rivers. A laundress walked by in the street below, a bundle of dirty linen lashed to her head. The clap of her clogs on the cobbles echoed in the thick air beyond the window, almost drowning out the tick of the gilt clock on the mantel.

  At last he turned around. She stood in the center of the Turkey carpet, rail-slat thin and wearing something that looked as if it had been plucked straight off the back of a Spitalfields washerwoman, and still, he wanted to take her face in his hands and kiss her mouth, and he almost hated her for it. He didn't need her in his life, couldn't afford to need her, and that was the end of it.

  He studied her out of angry, narrowed eyes. "That dress is utterly appalling," he said.

  "Do you think so?" She looked down at herself, and a secret little smile hovered at the corners of her mouth. "I'm actually rather fond of it."

  He started to laugh and wound up wincing as pain shot through his head. "Bloody hell... Do sit down, Miss Letty."

  Not waiting for her to obey him, he sprawled into the chair behind the desk, leaning his elbows on the stained blotter. He pressed his thumbs into his closed lids. The pounding in his temple was louder than a bal-maiden spalling ore. "God." He sighed, rubbing his hand over his beard-roughened face and up through his hair. "I have—"

  "The very devil of a heid?"

  He lifted his aching head to stare up at her out of eyes that felt as dry and brittle as seed husks.

  She laughed then, a sound that was breathless and rusty. His chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe. "Such are the wages of sin, my lord," she said, and laughed again. "Pity you couldn't bank them, for you would be a rich man."

  "Sit down," he snapped. "And quit looking so bloody smug."

  She settled gracefully into a chair and folded her gloved hands in her lap. Her gaze met his, soft and gray and cool as a dawn sky. Her composure surprised him. He wanted to rip into it, to tear it in two like a pocket handkerchief.

  "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "Aside, of course, from courting trouble again like a lusty scullery maid."

  Her eyes widened, and the gray sky darkened. "Why, whatever do you mean? My lord."

  "I mean, Miss Letty, that ladies do not come unescorted to a gentleman's lodgings. Should anyone of any consequence at all have seen you enter my door, your reputation will no longer be worth a tin cup to spit in. You will be utterly destroyed in Society's eyes."

  She actually had the audacity to smile at him. "For an avowed rake you seem overly concerned lately about Society's eyes. But I did not came here to bandy words with you. I came for—"

  "Seduction."

  That stiffened her spine like a ramrod. "Seduction?"

  "Your purpose in coming here. Why else would a woman come alone to a man's lodgings unless it is for the purpose of allowing herself to be seduced?"

  She jerked open the ties of a battered red morocco reticule and pulled out the folded bank notes he had sent her that morning. From the expression on her face he expected her to fling them at his head. Instead she stood up, laid them on the desk before him, then sat back down again. "I will not be your ladybird."

  Smiling suddenly, he leaned back. He stretched out his legs, linking his fingers behind his head, elbows spread wide. The movement pulled his shirt open at the neck. He could feel her gaze there, like a warm sigh.

  He pitched his voice low. "But I could make you sing with pleasure, Jessalyn."

  Her bosom swelled as she sucked in a deep breath. She swallowed, hard. "I am not a green girl anymore. I'm not as impressionable. I'm not as impressed with you. My lord."

  "I am devastated to hear that." He stood up and circled the desk, coming toward her. Came until his thighs pressed against her knees, pressed until he could feel the heat of her. "Because I"—he leaned over and rested his hand against her face, tilting her head—"still have a weakness" —he played his thumb against the corner of her mouth until her lips softened and parted. Slowly he lowered his head, bringing his lips within a sigh of hers—"for leggy redheads." He kept his mouth close to hers, breathing on her lips until her lids began to flutter.

  He plucked a feather off the brim of the ugly black bonnet. He picked another off the front of her bodice, where her breasts pushed out the braided front of her drab spencer.

  He brushed the feathers along the bone of her jaw. "Have you been cleaning out a chicken coop?"

  She held herself still, as if she thought she would break if she so much as breathed.

  He brought the feathers up to caress her lips. He heard her trap a moan deep in her throat. The scent of her, of Pears primrose soap and warm woman, swam to his head like brandy. His breath faltered and then came back, fast and uneven. Seduction. He had set out to seduce her, and he was the one being seduced.

  "I want you," he said. He dropped the feathers and traced the wide line of her mouth with his fingers this time. Her mouth... whoever drank of her mouth was thirsty forever. "I want you in my bed, Jessalyn. And you want to be there."

  All the color seemed to have collected in bright bands across her cheekbones, leaving her lips bloodless. She shook her head slowly, back and forth. "No."

  "Yes."

  Her breasts shuddered with her uneven breath. She looked up at him out of eyes that were as dark and turbulent as an autumn rainstorm. She started to push herself out of the chair at the same time that he grasped her arms to haul her out of it. Her reticule slipped from her lap to the floor, spilling its contents, but neither of them noticed. He touched his lips to hers.

  And the world caught fire. Desire and need surged through him with such force that he swayed, his lingers gripping deep furrows in the rough material of her spencer. His tongue slipped between her parted lips to fill her mouth, and nothing had ever tasted more wonderful than Jessalyn, sweet Jessa...

  A moan vibrated deep in his throat. His palm slid down to the small of her back, and he pressed her into him, grinding his hardness against the softness of her belly. Her roaming hands burned him, claimed him.

  She slanted her mouth away from his, her breath blowing hot on his cheek. "McCady, please... we must stop." Her fists gripped his shirt, but instead of pushing him away, she pulled him tighter against her. "I love you too much. I—"

  Every muscle in his body went rigid, and he thrust her away from him. "Don't say that."

  She certainly hadn't meant to say it. Her fist was pressed against her mouth. Her eyes looked haunted by something so deep it was beyond words.

  But then her hand fell from her mouth, and she lifted her chin into the air, a woman prepared to do battle. And if he could have, he would have smiled. "I can't help what I feel," she said. "I love you."

  He gave a sudden sharp jerk of his head, backing away from her. "Don't feel it. Don't even think it." He backed another step until he bumped up against the edge of the desk. He shook his head again, trying to clear it of the roaring blood still pumping hard through his veins. "What you think you feel—it doesn't exist beyond a commodity for sale in Covent Garden. No different from a head of lettuce or a basket of oranges. And just as perishable,
just as cheap." He drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly, trying to ease the tightness in his chest. "Jessalyn... I can't give you what you want."

  She regarded him carefully out of solemn gray eyes, her head slightly cocked. "What is it that you think I want, McCady?"

  "What all women want. Promises no man can ever keep —forever and happily-ever-after." Love, he thought. But he didn't believe in the word, so he was careful never to use it. He had never told a woman he loved her. It was part of not making promises he had no intention of keeping. "You want marriage." His hand slashed through the air, cutting off any protest she might have made. "I can't give it to you, Jessalyn, even if I wanted to. My brother has saddled me with a gaming debt that honor demands I must pay at a time when I've barely a groat to bless myself with. My grand scheme to build a railway is a national joke, and I am on the precipice of being flung into debtor's prison. To put it bluntly, sweetling, I need a rich wife."

  For a moment a trace of a strange smile softened the grave curve of her mouth. "And I still haven't two beans to boil together to make soup."

  She stood tall before him, her eyes, calm and wise, searching his face. This was not the same Jessalyn who had stood on a beach of white sand and blue water and begged him not to leave her. And still, he ached for her with a hunger that was a heavy, hollow feeling in his gut.

  "Very well," she said. "You cannot love me, and you cannot offer me marriage. Then what can you give me?"

  The blunt honesty of the question startled him, but the answer rose easily to his lips. It was an answer he had given many times before, to many other women. "Pleasure," he said. "For as long as it lasts."

  Again that strange little smile. "You want me to be your ladybird. Until you tire of me."

  His mouth took on a cynical twist. "You are much more likely to tire of me first."

  She turned her back on him, going to the window. She held aside the mulberry brocade curtain. Her hand looked slender and vulnerable against the heavy dark material. He could see the white of her face reflected in the watery glass, but not her expression. His body felt heavy, his blood thick with desire.

  "I want you, Jessalyn," he said, and saw a shudder ripple across her back. "I want to kiss your mouth. I want to hold your naked breasts in my hands. I want to lay you down on my bed and bury myself inside your wet heat and make you mine."

  She was trembling at his words, but she wouldn't look at him. He pictured himself crossing the room and taking her in his arms. He knew that if he did that, she would be unable to resist what was between them, what had always been between them. But as always with her, something held him back: strange protective feelings he didn't want and didn't know what to do with.

  He began to measure the lengthening silence with each tick of the clock. At last she turned to face him. He could see nothing in her eyes now but himself, reflected into eternity. "I deserve more, McCady. And so do you."

  She knelt on the floor to retrieve her reticule. She stayed in that position a moment, her back curved and taut, like a bow strung too tightly. He wasn't going to beg. He had never begged a woman before, and he wasn't going to start now.

  She pushed herself to her feet and headed for the door. "Jessalyn."

  She turned, and the sconce caught the brittle shimmer of unshed tears in her eyes.

  He picked the bank notes up off the desk. "You will take these with you."

  Mutely she shook her head.

  "Take them, Miss Letty. Or I shall have a word with my starchy, sobersides cousin. He should find it most edifying to learn that his betrothed is in such straitened circumstances that she was forced to gallop around the Vauxhall rotunda in spangled tights."

  She sucked in a sharp breath. "You would not dare to stoop so low as to tell Clarence."

  "When one is as sunk in the depths of depravity as I, one gets used to stooping." He gripped her wrist and pressed the stiff paper into her hand. He could feel the beat of her blood, hard and fast, beneath the softness of her skin. "Take them."

  Her fingers opened, and the notes floated to the floor. "Tell Clarence the whole, then, if it pleases you to hurt me. But I will not take your money. Not even if I had chosen to become your ladybird would I have taken your money, my lord."

  He let go of her wrist, but the pounding of her pulse echoed in his blood. He nodded to her, his head stiff. "Duncan will see you home in a hackney."

  The manservant appeared on cue, a grim look on his handsome face. "I've got one all ready and waiting, miss. Those loungers who gave ye that wee bit of trouble earlier are still littering the street. Young coxcombs and fribblers, with nothing better to do than..." He trailed off as he caught the expression on his lordship's face. "Now, don't ye go getting all murderous on me, sir, else ye'll be winding up in gaol sooner than they can bankrupt ye there, and with a hanging charge wrapped around yer neck. I'll see the lass comes to nae harm."

  McCady's hands uncurled as the desire to smash his fists into nameless faces slowly faded. Duncan would see her safe. He didn't want to let her go, but every line of Jessalyn's body shrieked that she wanted to be away from him.

  He watched her follow Duncan down the stairs and out the door. Back within the apple green parlor he went to the window. The hackney driver ran up to lower the steps, and she paused. Her face, turned in profile, shone like a half moon in the fog. A tendril of hair, bright as a sunrise, slashed across her cheek.

  He gripped the curtain as if he needed it to hold himself up. He wanted her so badly he could scarcely breathe from the pain of it.

  The driver closed the door and climbed into his box. The hackney rolled into the street with a jingle of harness and a clatter of wheels. Yellow fog swirled and eddied, swallowing the black carriage, and she was gone.

  Hands clenched, he threw back his head, the tendons of his neck standing out like ropes. "Jessalyn!" he shouted.

  And slammed his fist into the window. He didn't hear the shattering tinkle of falling glass, or see his blood splashing in bright starburst patterns on the parquet floor. She was gone, and all that was left was a vast emptiness and the echo of his heart, knocking like a wheel out of gear.

  He wanted her, wanted her, wanted her....

  CHAPTER 16

  The two hundred doeskin bags made a pile the size of a hayrick in the middle of the thick Brussels carpet in Aloysius Hamilton's elegant coffee room.

  "Quite a sight, ain't it?" the corn merchant said. He hefted one of the bags in his big hand, then let it fall with a satisfying jangle. "Twenty thousand pounds in gold. Don't suppose you'll be wanting to count 'em, eh?" He bellowed a laugh, which trailed off when the man beside him did not even furnish an answering smile.

  "Are you certain you wouldn't prefer to take a promissory note after all?" Aloysius felt obliged to ask, though he fervently hoped not. Just the logistics of converting the twenty thousand pounds into gold sovereigns and conveying them to his Mayfair mansion had taxed even his considerable organizational skills. And he'd spent all of last night sweating like a spit goose with fear that thieves would make off with the fortune, in spite of the veritable army of Bow Street runners he'd hired as guards. He hated to think that it could now all have been for naught.

  Yet the earl didn't seem either pleased or displeased with the proof of Aloysius Hamilton's efforts. He merely stared at the hill of money bags, an attitude of weary disdain on his highbred face. "Let's get on with it, shall we?" he said.

  Aloysius led his guest to the end of the room, where a pair of imperial chairs addressed each other across the expanse of an elegant walnut desk. He wondered at the earl's limp, but given the man's morose mood, he thought it best to keep his wonderings to himself. They took their seats, and Aloysius positioned a document adorned with ribbons and seals before the earl.

  "Just affix your name to the last page, my lord, directly after mine."

  After the briefest hesitation the earl reached for the weighty papers. "If it wouldn't inconvenience you, I should like to read it ove
r one last time."

  "Eh? Oh, aye, aye. Of course. Take your time. All the time you need."

  A thick silence settled over the room. Aloysius toyed with the jeweled rings and gold seals on his fob, then busied himself with twisting the tightly curled ends of his waxed mustaches. His wife kept nattering at him to shave them off, said they weren't fashionable. But he would almost rather walk into the Bank of England with a bare arse than bare his upper lip. He was never going to be one of the Bow Street set anyway. He was a nabob; whatever small social status he achieved, he had to buy.

  Aloysius stole another look at the earl. A gold earring winked in the dark hair that hung ragged and long over the stiff velvet collar of his fashionable tail coat. The man looked like a damned Gypsy, yet somehow he managed to carry it off. Such a thing was bred into one's blood and bones, Aloysius supposed: how to dress, how to behave, how to think. Take this matter of honor. The man might be a scapegrace, but he possessed a strict code of honor that Aloysius, the corn merchant, only dimly understood. The twenty thousand pounds, for instance—all of it would go to pay off the gaming vowels of the earl's brother, who had been caught cheating at cards and so had put a pistol to his head.

  Honor. Tailor and butcher bills could go unpaid for years, but gaming vowels were debts of honor and had to be settled before all others. His father could die in a drunken stupor, his brothers could turn themselves into opium eaters and whoremongers, but honor dictated that as the heir to the title the young earl must now make good on every shilling of those vowels. As an English gentleman he could do no less.

  "I trust you find it all in order," Aloysius said when the earl looked up from his perusal of the document.

  The earl said nothing, merely reached for the standish, and Aloysius noticed for the first time the bloodstained bandage wrapped around the knuckles of the man's right hand. "Been engaging in a bout of fisticuffs, eh?"

  The fingers of the injured hand curled slightly. "Only with myself."

  "You ought to have a care with it. I had a brother who died of a cut that became septic...." Aloysius's voice trailed off. The earl in his arrogance would doubtless have little sympathy for the fate of a poor collier's son.