Once in a Blue Moon

by Penelope Williamson

  His head fell forward, and he groaned her name against her hair. He swung her up into his arms and carried her to the bed.

  The old rope springs moaned beneath them. The army blanket was rough under her back; every inch of her skin felt flayed, too sensitive to bear so much as a breath. He lay beside her, partially covering her, and his shirt brushed against her breasts, tormenting her nipples. His hand stroked the length of her, and his gaze followed, fire scorching along the path of fire.

  "I knew the hair between your legs would be this color," he said. "Like a burning torch." His fingers lightly, lightly touched her there, and she gasped and arched up off the bed, as if he'd lit a fuse, setting off a rocket inside her.

  He seized her mouth in a long, fierce kiss, then pulled away from her and sat up. He tugged at his boots, cursing them when they resisted. He yanked his shirt over his head, popping buttons that clattered and rolled on the floor. He stood up. He hadn't bothered with refastening his pantaloons; they gaped open at the waist, revealing a dense triangle of dark curling hair. He stood sideways to her, and she could see plainly how the tight wet doeskin cradled the heavy bulge of his sex. He peeled the wet cloth down over his hips, baring to her fascinated gaze the curved, muscular moon of one buttock... and his swollen member, bursting free. It was thick and ridged with veins, purple-red, almost glistening. Her breath escaped through her parted lips in a tiny, whistling sound.

  "Is that a gasp of fear or awe?" He stood, grinning, before her. Blatantly virile and arrogantly aware of it.

  Laughter bubbled up and poured out of her, raucous and squeaky as a rusty gate—and dying when she noticed the purple-red weal that curved around his thigh. She reached up and ran her finger along the length of the hard, puckered ridge. "You could have been killed," she said. The thought terrified her. That life was so precarious. That she could lose him. Even the little of him that she had could be lost to her forever.

  He removed her hand and brought it to his lips as he eased down onto the bed beside her. He stared at her, and the skin across his cheekbones seemed to tauten, his lips to tighten, as if he were in pain. "Laugh again," he said.

  "Why?" He grinned at her, and she giggled. "No one—" She giggled again. "No one can laugh on command. It isn't—" A hooting snort burst out of her, sounding like a dull saw going through wood.

  He laughed along with her, smothering his face between her breasts. "God, I love the way you laugh," he said. "I get hard sometimes just hearing you laugh."

  She looked down the length of their two bodies, lying side by side: his hard and sun-browned, hers cream pale and softer. At his manhood, lying thick and heavy against her hip. "You're hard right now."

  He rose up and rubbed his sex over her belly. "Feel it. This is what you do to me, Jessalyn. Are you pleased with yourself?"

  She was rather pleased with herself. And curious about him. She touched his hard length lightly with her fingertips, surprised at the silky slickness of his skin and the burning heat. She felt him shudder, heard his sharp intake of breath.

  He took her hand and wrapped it around him. "Hold me. Grip me tight."

  He filled her hand. She squeezed him gently, instinctively making a fist and stroking his thick length to the root. He made a harsh sobbing sound, like an animal in pain.

  She let go of him. "Did I hurt you? I didn't mean to hurt you."

  He laughed, nuzzling her neck. "Ah, Christ, no, you didn't hurt me. That felt so good, so good...."

  For one long suspended breath out of time, he stared at her, as if etching her face into his memory. Then he lowered his head and licked the curve of her breast where it swelled beneath her arm. His tongue traced the shape of it, stroking underneath, following the gentle upward slope to the quivering peak and he sucked it deep into his mouth.

  Dear life...

  She had never felt anything like this before. Oh, God, he had her nipple in her mouth, suckling on it like a babe. She didn't know men did this; it was wicked, it was wonderful, Fireworks shot off in dizzying whirls inside her, falling and dying into a throbbing heat low in her womb.

  He lathed slick, hot kisses all over her breasts and down her belly, sucking at places she didn't even know she had. His long hair brushed her skin, tickling, igniting little gorse fires. His breath bathed her in fiery gusts. His back trembled and grew taut and slick with sweat beneath her roaming hands.

  She almost screamed when he palmed her mound. His fingers tangled in the red nest of hair, tracing the grooves of her body where her legs joined. He pushed a finger deep inside her, then pulled it out, in and out, in and out, in long, rhythmic thrusts that seemed to match the wild pumping of her heart. With the pad of his thumb he stroked the lips of her sex, pushing upward, touching some exquisitely sensitive place deep inside her that stopped her heart. Her hands clawed at the blanket; her head thrashed. She undulated her hips, pumping them against his stroking, probing fingers as the most terrible pressure built inside her. She opened her mouth to tell him to stop and whimpered instead. Dear life... she was going to die if he didn't stop. She arched her back, bucking hard against his hand, begging for, begging for, begging...

  Her chest heaved with the effort to breathe. His mouth was on hers, kissing her. He spoke into her. "Not yet, Jessa. Not yet..."

  And then she felt his burning hardness probing at the wet, quivering place where his fingers had been.

  His hands slid beneath her bottom, raising her hips. She felt a tiny tremor of fear now, for it had hurt so the last time. He entered her slowly, pushing into her inch by inch, until he was buried to the hilt.

  "Don't move," he said though his clenched teeth. "Wait... a moment..." His head bowed, his hair lapping at her breasts, as he drew in short, panting breaths. "God, you are so tight. Wet and hot, like a mouth."

  A deep, tearing moan escaped him as he settled deeper. Instinctively she wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him deeper still. He began to move within her. He flattened his palm against her stomach, his fingers inching down, finding her in the tight tangle of red curls, rubbing her in rhythm with his pounding thrusts. The pleasure was so exquisite it raised a scream in the back of her throat. The old rope springs squeaked and groaned, and the wooden bedstead knocked against the wall, pounding, pounding, and she couldn't bear it, couldn't bear it, couldn't—

  She exploded inside, shuddering, shattering, dying....

  She awoke to the smell of him. But when she stretched out her hand, the space beside her was empty and cold.

  She pressed her face into the pillow, afraid to open her eyes and discover she was alone. But then she heard a soft sound, like a sigh, and slowly she turned her head.

  The fire, too long ignored, had gone out. There was no light in the room except for a muted dawn filtering through the single window. He stood, a black silhouette before it, his back to her. McCady Trelawny, this dark-souled man, whom she loved with all the depth and power of her woman's heart.

  She watched him, afraid to breathe. For one afternoon and a night he had been hers, his rough and tender touch, his hungry kisses, his man's sex buried deep inside her. She had always known that by giving him her body, she would be giving him the power to hurt her beyond measure. Yet she had never been able to change what was in her heart: She loved him so much. Beyond pride and shame and regret.

  He must have felt her eyes on him, for he stiffened and turned. His dark angel's face looked fiercely beautiful in the diffused light and as remote as the stars.

  He took a step toward her, then stopped. He was dressed, and she felt suddenly shy in her own nakedness, vulnerable. She pulled the sheet over her breasts. "I'm leaving for London this morning," he said.

  Pain slammed into her like a fisted blow. She shut her eyes to hide the rush of tears and swallowed down rising sobs. She would not cry. Nor would she ask him why, but he answered her as if she had.

  "Because I must make one last, useless, wasted effort at trying to save my railway company. Because I have business in London
anyway that must be seen to before the August trials. And because"—his breath caught, and naked pain flashed across his face—"because I want you so bloody badly I can scarcely breathe when you're near me, so how could I possibly go on living in the same house without touching you?"

  She straightened her legs and pushed herself up onto her elbows. There was a burning soreness between her thighs. And an odd pulsing deep within her belly, as if the shudders and tremors that he had wrenched from her again and again throughout the night lingered in her still, echoing.

  "I shouldn't want to live at all if you weren't here to touch me."

  "Jessalyn... you don't understand." There was a faintly bitter tilt to his mouth. Her chest tightened with panic, cutting off her breath. She was failing him, losing him, and she didn't know what to do to stop it, what it was that he wanted from her. "I'm done for, dished up, cut all to pieces," he went on, the words mocking, but the pain lingering in his eyes. "I don't know why it is that I have been able to bed other women and walk away from them without a moment's thought. But with you I've always... Ah, hell, Jessalyn, I keep trying not to hurt you, and all I seem to do is bring you pain. Within six weeks I'm likely to be carted off to debtor's prison. I cannot take you down into ruin with me."

  Her voice was hoarse from the pain in her throat. "And if I don't care what becomes of me as long as we're together?"

  He came to her. He stood above her, looking down at her, and his eyes seemed to penetrate through all the effort she was making not to weep, not to beg, penetrating into her soul. "I care," he said in a ragged voice.

  He leaned over to brush a kiss past her mouth, so light and fast she barely felt it. Until afterward, and even then it was but the lingering trace of a memory on her lips.

  "I love you," she said. But by then she was speaking to an empty room.

  CHAPTER 22

  Pale arms groped through the iron bars. Dirt black hands clawed at the air. Jessalyn bit back a scream, stepping out of reach. The face that peered down at her was hidden by a tangle of white beard. Black eyes burned, looking slightly mad.

  But the voice that spoke was sane, educated. "You wouldn't perchance have a penny to spare a poor debtor, child? Nay, even a farthing to ease the lot of a benighted soul, condemned by a cruel vagary of fate to this hell upon earth."

  Jessalyn fumbled in the bottom of her reticule until her fingers felt a half crown. She tossed the coin through the bars, rather than put it into the man's hands. With a cackle of glee, he disappeared after it.

  She hurried across Fleet Market, but she could not help looking back over her shoulder. She felt mean for having treated the poor wretch as something less than human, but he'd had the look and stink about him of gaol fever.

  Hell upon earth.

  Fleet Prison. Massive walls, pitted and black with soot, looming out of the yellow fog. Somber walls, unrelieved by the small iron-barred windows of its crowded, vermin-ridden cells. Such would be McCady Trelawny's fate if she failed in her plan to save him.

  At first it had been only a half-formed idea. But with every rattling mile of the mail coach ride to London; with every dawn hour spent in torchlit yards, bolting down mugs of ale and treacle; with every village passed, horses' hooves clattering on stone and the echo of the postboy's horn in the air, the idea had coalesced into a resolution. She would find a way to save him.

  Still she could not shake off her grandmother's warning, given that morning, the morning McCady had left her.

  She had found Lady Letty sitting up in bed, wearing a voluminous cap decorated with love knots and ribbons, and caught in the act of hiding a snuffbox beneath the sheets.

  Leave it to Gram to have already borrowed or stolen a box from someone, since the few she'd had with her here in Cornwall had all been lost in the fire. Luckily, the bulk of her precious collection was still safe in the London town house.

  "Gram, you are incorrigible," Jessalyn scolded. "You know what the doctor said about indulging in that bad habit, a woman of your age."

  Lady Letty's snort ended with a sneeze. "Living is a bad habit for a woman of my age."

  Jessalyn sat on the lemon-striped chintz bedspread, picking up the old woman's hand. "You must concentrate on getting well. You'll want to be strong enough to make the journey to Epsom next month for the Derby."

  She looked up to find her grandmother's tin gray eyes intent on her face. "So he made a woman of you last night, did he?"

  Jessalyn's cheeks burned, and her gaze dropped to her lap. Does it show that badly? she wondered. Had he left a mark on her like a lingering illness? A fever in the eyes, a weakness of the heart. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows, but at the moment she longed for some obscuring Cornish fog.

  "Ha! At least you can still blush. He'll wed you now, gel, or I'll see him in hell."

  Jessalyn said nothing. She could hardly tell her grandmother that far from marrying her, he was even now refusing to have her as his mistress.

  Lady Letty pushed herself farther up the mound of pillows, dusting brown powder off her bodice. "You'll do well with Caerhays. They say rakes make the best husbands, know how to pleasure a woman. Lord knows your grandfather did." She reached beneath the sheets, pulling out the snuffbox. She rubbed the lid with her finger, a faraway look misting her eyes. "He loved me, the addlepated fool. Though he never thought to say the words—not once, till he lay dying. Nearly killed him then myself for waiting so long. Men never know whether they're thinking with their heads or their cocks."

  "Gram!"

  Lady Letty snorted a laugh. "In my day we knew all the words and used em, too. So how was he, eh? Did he bed you well? He's always looked at you as if he wanted to devour you. I 'spect last night he did."

  Jessalyn's blush deepened. She struggled to gather her scattered wits, bringing up the original purpose of her visit. "Gram, I must go to London."

  A crafty look stole into the old woman's eyes. "Chasing after him, are you? I'll countenance your going only if you take Becka with you. Appearances, gel. And though it might be shutting the paddock gate after the horse has bolted, you are to give me your word you'll stay out of his bed till he meets you at the altar."

  "I am not chasing after him. He isn't even to know I've gone. And I will not leave you here alone—"

  "Caerhays's housekeeper can look after me. We get along. She grew up next to the slag heaps just like myself." Her gnarled, mottled hand reached out to cover Jessalyn's slender pale one. "He's dished up proper, isn't he? That's why he won't marry you. He's given up, and so you think there's nothing for it but to save him yourself."

  Jessalyn sighed. There was no hiding anything from Gram. "I'm going to try," she said.

  Lady Letty grunted. "Have a care in the saving of him, mind, that you don't damage his man's pride in the process. He'll not forgive you that."

  "Then I shall just have to take care he never finds out."

  ... take care he never finds out.

  Jessalyn turned her back on Fleet Prison. She pulled her cottage cloak more tightly around her throat, dug her hands deep into her fox fur muff, and bent into the wind. The fog was frozen and heavy, smelling fouler than a tannery. It was weather more suited to January than April.

  She walked past brick houses garbed in soot and packed together like books on a shelf. Past shops selling bootlaces and tea trays. Past smells of boiled cabbage and roast potatoes.

  The direction she was searching for turned out to be a seedy warehouse by the river that smelled of hemp and tea. It butted up against a gin shop, whose open door spilled raucous laughter and tobacco smoke into the chill air. Something stirred beneath the stoop, and Jessalyn pulled back her skirts, expecting a rat. Then she saw a woman crouched there, holding a screaming baby in an egg crate lined with straw. She watched in shock and horror as the woman filled a sugar-tit from a gin jug and stuck it in the baby's mouth.

  Her stomach spasmed with nerves. An iron grille covered the warehouse's single window, and the black paint on the do
or was peeling. If it weren't for a small plaque etched with the words Tiltwell Enterprises, she would have doubted she had the right place. She hesitated a moment, debating whether to knock, then pushed down the door latch and entered a small dim room.

  A row of clerks perched on stools facing the wall, quills waving madly in the air as they scribbled. It was as cold in the room as it was outside. The men all had potato sacks wrapped like shawls over their patched coats, and the fingers poking out of their ratty mittens looked blue.

  One of the men creaked to his feet and came to greet her. He wiped his sleeve across his dripping nose. It was red and round, like a copper knob. "I would like to speak to Mr. Tiltwell, if you please," Jessalyn said, her breath wreathing around her face in tiny white puffs.

  The clerk peered at her through a pair of horn spectacles, greasy with thumb prints. "He's out just now. Collecting the rents."

  "Then I shall await his return."

  The clerk snuffled a sneeze into his neckcloth and motioned for her to follow him.

  The room he showed her to was somewhat warmer, for a small coal fire burned in the grate. It was sparsely furnished with a few battered cabinets, a wooden coat-tree, and a plain dark oak desk. The walls were hung with shabby paper, broken only by a single dirt-streaked window. It looked out on a dark courtyard that was empty except for a soggy ash heap and a rusty water pump.

  A few moments later Jessalyn heard voices. Clarence's, the clerk's, and another, deeper voice with rough country accents.

  The door opened, and Clarence entered, bringing the chill and smell of fog into the room. He looked splendid, tall and handsome in a merino greatcoat and top hat. Yet the sight of him did not make her legs tremble or her stomach tingle, and the ache in her heart came from sadness, not yearning.

  He flashed a gap-toothed smile, and his bottle green eyes lit up at sight of her. "Jessalyn, what a pleasant surprise!" He removed his fur-lined gloves, slapping his hands together. "Brr. It's a mortal cold day out."