Once in a Blue Moon (14 page)

Shouts bounced against the rocks, and lantern lights bobbed like fireflies above their heads. Stones clattered and rolled down the cliff path.

"Here they come," he said, his voice low and breathy. "We are two lovers enjoying the night and each other.
No
matter what I do, keep your face hidden and your mouth shut."

The gaugers were getting closer. She could hear their boots crunching across the sand, and their lanterns threw shafts of light through the decaying fog. "Why can't you tell me your plan?" she whispered. "Surely it would help—"

He turned toward her. She caught the flare of twin fires reflected in his dark eyes before he rolled over on top of her and his mouth slammed down on hers.

He molded his mouth to hers, sucking and pulling on her lips, filling her with his breath and the taste of brandy. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back, to hold on to him, hold on.... His tongue slid past her parted lips, filling her mouth. Dear life, his tongue was in her mouth, and the thought of it, the pure, piercing intimacy of it, ignited a hunger deep within her that exploded, blazing up hot and fast as if she, like the driftwood, had been doused with alcohol and set alight. Moaning, she arched into him, pressing, trying to fuse their two bodies and assuage this burning, burning place in her belly. His tongue moved, stroking the inside of her mouth as if he were tasting of her, and the burning place grew hotter, melting her from the inside out....

"Stand up there, and do it nice an' easylike."

His mouth released hers, but slowly, coming back to brush her lips with his, once, twice more. The color was high on his cheekbones, and she could see the pulse beating wildly in his neck before he rolled off her. He stood, pulling her up with him and thrusting her behind his back. Her muscles were heavy and aching, and her chest heaved so hard she unconsciously put her clasped hands up to her breast to keep her heart from bursting right out of her.

A group of men stood before them, bundled up against the fog in oilskins and seaboots. One disengaged himself from the rest and stepped forward. He had a brace of pistols tucked into his belt and a battered face with a nose like a grubbing hoe. He was one of the men Lieutenant Trelawny had been drinking with at the Midsummer's Eve fair.

"Lieutenant, sur!" the customs officer said, surprise in his voice. "What are ee doing out on a night such as this?"

"I'm spending an hour or two with my girl," he answered, but there was a rusty catch to the words, as if he were having a hard time finding his breath.

"Bain't the weather for it, if ee don't mind me sayin' so, sur. 'Tes weather for staying close at home by the fire."

"This fire does us well enough. Her father doesn't like me. And she has lots of brothers." He shuddered dramatically. "Big brutes, they are. With lots of muscles and fists."

The customs man tried to get a look at Jessalyn, but Lieutenant Trelawny shifted his weight, shielding her. She pulled the hood closer about her face.

"Ye wouldn't happened to have seen a lugger, would ee, sur?"

"Well, I've been a bit preoccupied, you understand." He flashed a just-between-us-men smile that the gauger answered with a leer. "But I doubt I could have missed seeing a ship come into the cove, even in this fog."

The gauger scrubbed a big paw across his chin. "Ais, no doubt, sur. No doubt. A score of longboats unloading tuns of brandy on this beach would have been hard to miss."

"The only brandy I've seen is this which I've brought along with me to keep the chill away." He produced the small flask from his coat pocket, flashing his sudden, charming smile. "Though I could not swear any tax was paid on it, coming as it did from my brother's cellar."

"You wouldn't mind us searching them cellars, would
ee...
sur."

He hesitated for the briefest moment. Then he lifted his shoulders in a lazy shrug. "If you think it necessary. But I must see the lady home first. You may wait for me at the entrance to Caerhays Hall."

"Oh, we'll do that, sur. You can be sure we'll wait for
ee,
sur. Right there on the front steps o' Caerhays Hall."

"Dear life, what can you be thinking of?" Jesssalyn said in a loud whisper as soon as the preventive men had disappeared up the cliff path. "You can't let them search the hall. Won't they find—"

His fingers brushed her lips, still swollen and tender from his kiss. "Shhh. They won't find much. All the good stuff was drunk long ago."

"Then they'll search all the fish cellars in Mousehole and—"

"And they won't find anything but fish." He reached for her at the same time that she took a step toward him. The hem of her cloak caught on one of the rocks, gaping open. He had meant to take her arm, but his hand closed over her breast instead.

She wore only a night rail of loosely woven linen. The thin material, damp from the fog, clung to her skin. Her breast tightened and swelled, her nipple hardening and pushing up between his fingers.

He went utterly still.

The fire blazed hot at her back, and the wet sea air caressed her face. Her breast where he touched her burned, burned.... He stared at her breast, at her taut nipple pushing against his fingers, and his eyes were two black pools, reflecting nothing but the flames. He looked feverish, as if the skin had been pulled too tightly over the sharp bones of his face. His nostrils flared wide, the way a stallion's does when it is frightened. Or excited.

She leaned into him, to feel his heat, to fill her senses with the hot smell of him. His fingers moved, closing around her nipple. She gasped at a feeling so piercing it was on the edge between ecstasy and pain. The words came out of her without thought. "Kiss me again."

"No," he said, on a rough expulsion of breath. He jerked his hand back, as if he had just now felt the searing fire.

Her heart swelled, pushing against her chest, making it difficult to breathe. "Why not?"

"Because you are too young," he said, his chest expanding in a deep sigh.

"You kissed me a moment ago to fool the gaugers." Her lips trembled into a smile. "I am a whole five minutes older now."

"I don't want to kiss you, dammit!"

Something broke inside her in a terrible gush of pain. She whirled and took two stumbling steps through the deep sand.

"Oh, bloody hell!" He snagged her cloak with one hand, the other grabbing her waist, twisting her around and hauling her up against his chest. Seizing her hand by the wrist, he pressed it against the front of his buckskin breeches. "Feel that, damn you. Feel it! You might be a virgin, but you live on a stud farm, for the love of God. You've watched a stallion cover a mare. You know bloody well what it means when a man gets hard like this for a woman. If I kissed you, feeling the way I do now, I'd soon have you flat on your back on the sand with that bloody, useless thing you're wearing ripped right down the middle. And then, by God, there would be hell to pay. For the both of us."

He was stiff and hard beneath her hand. And alive—
a
swelling, pulsating heat. Her fingers closed around him.

"Jesus Christ!" He flung her off him so violently she nearly stumbled.

"If I wasn't
a
virgin, would you want to kiss me then?"

He thrust his fingers through his hair. His head fell back, and his eyes squeezed shut. Tremors racked his body as if he had a chill. "Don't ask such improper questions."

She didn't care. She needed to get close to him, to be held by him. It took only one step to bring her body up next to his again, and she took it. She laid her open palms on his collarbone, pushing aside the lapels of his coat. He was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling. "Please," she said. "Don't treat me like a child. I—"

"You
are
a child!" He thrust her off him. But then
a
harsh, racking sound burst from her, and he pulled her back against him, gathering her in his arms. "Ah, dammit, come here, baggage."

Tears clogged her throat, building and building, until it felt as if she were choking. Then they exploded out of her in shuddering heaves. "I only asked you to kiss me. I never meant, I never wanted, I didn't—"

"I know. It's all right." He held her while she cried, and though she didn't feel it, he buried his mouth in her hair. Finally she subsided into shudders and little hiccupping breaths. "Are you done blubbering all over my chest?" he said.

She nodded, her forehead rubbing against his shoulder. Her throat was sore, and her eyes burned. She couldn't lift her head and face him. The pain had drained out of her, leaving her sick with shame. Keeping her head down, she sniffled in a deep breath, rubbing her eyes with the tatted lace cuff of her night rail.

"Don't use your sleeve, for God's sake. Have you no idea at all of correct behavior?" He thrust a handkerchief of fine Indian cotton into her hands. "Here. Use this."

She pressed the bunched-up handkerchief to her mouth to hold back another welling sob. Her head fell against him, her forehead nuzzling into his neck. He was still holding her, one hand tangled in her hair, the other pressing into the small of her back, and, oh, the way it felt to be in his arms, to be surrounded by his wonderful heat and strength.... She nestled into him, breathed against the warm skin of his neck, smelling sea salt and woodsmoke and brandy. And that male smell that was uniquely his. She wanted to burrow deep into him and breathe in the smell of him through every pore of her body.

Her lips brushed against the pulse in his throat. It leaped and throbbed against her open mouth, pumping to the hard rush of her own blood. His fingers tightened in her hair, pulling her head up. His eyes flared like exploding suns as his gaze fastened on her mouth. She leaned into him, melted into him. His head dipped, and his breath trailed across her lips—

"Jessalyn!"

They separated slowly, as if drugged. Clarence Tiltwell stood at the very edge of the light cast by the fire, his eyes wide with shock. He jerked into movement, striding across the sand to grasp Jessalyn's arm, pulling her away from Lieutenant Trelawny's side. His gaze stabbed at his cousin, and his jaw muscles tightened. "You bastard."

One corner of Lieutenant Trelawny's mouth twisted with something that might have been regret. "I know. You think
I
ought to be buried at the crossroads with a stake through my heart."

"You bloody bastard," Clarence said.

Lieutenant Trelawny met Jessalyn's eyes, but his thoughts, his feelings were shuttered against her. She didn't know what he wanted, what to do to make him want her.

"I'm taking her home," Clarence said.

"Please do," Lieutenant Trelawny answered, and to Jessalyn's horror he sounded utterly bored with the whole tawdry scene. Fresh tears welled in her eyes as she turned away from him.

McCady Trelawny stood still, his hands hanging loosely at his sides, until Jessalyn and his cousin disappeared beyond the reach of the firelight, into the darkness and the mist. He groped behind him, felt rock and grass, and subsided onto the dune. His long fingers pressed hard against the bones of his face, stopping the ragged noise of his breathing.

"We thought ee had forgotten us, sur," the gauger said.

"On the contrary." McCady's voice was full of sophisticated ennui. "I had, however, unfinished business to attend to first, you understand. A gentleman should never leave a lady unfinished."

The gauger's thick lips twisted into a leer. "I told the others, sur." He looked to his cohorts for confirmation. "Didn't I tell ee the randy young buck would probably take his sweet time a-rogering the wench, whilst our own cocks and bobbles rotted in this frigging damp?"

McCady laughed, for even in his present mood he could appreciate the irony. The one time in his sorry, misbegotten life he'd actually done the honorable thing, and here he'd had to disguise it with a cloak of indecency. He couldn't understand anyway what it was about sweet, innocent Miss Letty that made him behave so outside his reprehensible character, that inspired strange protective feelings within him he didn't want and didn't know what to do with.

Young
Miss Letty. Too bloody young, but not so young that she didn't know what she was offering. Yet when he was with her, when she looked at him with those gray eyes that saw everything and hid nothing... She almost had him believing that he could do anything, even change the man that he was. She had him feeling that he'd been put on this earth to protect her from the world. And God, what a bloody jest that was, because it wasn't the world she needed protecting from; it was himself.

His mouth twisted into a bitter smile as he led the gaugers up the steps and into Caerhays Hall. The front door was unlocked, for there was nothing inside to steal. His brothers had pawned or sold everything down to the wood paneling to feed their gambling and opium habits.

He had been inside the house only once since he'd returned to Cornwall, and now, while the gaugers searched the cellars, he roamed the rooms. He climbed rickety, worm-eaten stairs to bedchambers that were sour-smelling from the damp and full of mouse droppings. His footsteps rang on the stone-flagged floor of the great hall. He looked at the empty niches that had been cut into the walls for statues long gone, and he felt sad. No, sorrow was too strong an emotion. He felt regret. He wondered, in the same idle way one would wonder what it would be like to be the prince of Wales, how much it would cost to restore the house to its former glory, if it had ever had a former glory. As far as he knew, every Trelawny ever born had died in debt and disgrace, and he wasn't likely to break with the tradition.