Once in a Blue Moon (27 page)

The gambler would be on his own, and all his gold be snatched, disappearing into London's wretched rookeries. It was a sardonic stroke of revenge worthy of a Trelawny. The debt of honor would be settled, and London's poor would eat heartily and sleep warmly tonight at Nigel Payne's expense.

Lord Caerhays had almost escaped by the time she caught up with him. She slipped her arm through his and steered him down the hall. "McCady, you naughty boy, you cannot possibly be leaving. Not when I haven't seen you for ages."

At a sharp nod of her head, a handsome young footman resplendent in livery and powdered wig opened the door to the green salon. "Fetch us some champagne," she said, not bothering to look in the servant's direction.

The room was too hot, and she moved the pole screen in front of the fire. A faint memory of hashish lingered in the air from last night's debauch. Its scent of sweet decay clung to the opulently upholstered furniture and the heavy green velvet curtains. The windows ought to have been opened that afternoon, and the wilting flowers that graced the cut-crystal vases and bowls replaced. Such lack of attention, she vowed, would cost the majordomo his job on the morrow.

After the servant had poured the champagne and quit the room, she lounged back on a midnight black sofa. She knew the opaque velvet complemented the vivid brightness of her henna-washed hair and the whiteness of the skin she bathed nightly with distilled pineapple water. She sipped at the sparkling iced wine, enjoying the tingle of it on the roof of her mouth and the sight of McCady Trelawny looking blatantly virile in a dark blue tail coat and thigh-hugging cream pantaloons.

There was a wildness about him tonight that stirred her. She wondered what he had done to get his hands on so much money, for she'd heard he hadn't a feather to fly with. She hoped it wasn't anything that would land him in Newgate, though in truth she wouldn't put it past him to have robbed the National Treasury.

She had known all three of the Trelawny boys for years— much too handsome for their or anyone else's good; sullen, proud, and filled with such joyless restlessness. Hell-bent on self-destruction, they drugged themselves with pleasure and flirted with danger, courting their destiny of disgrace and violent death with wild abandon. But a part of her had always hoped that McCady would somehow find a way to escape his fate.

She had never forgotten the first time she had seen him, the night his older brothers had brought him to this house. So young he had been, a mere boy. Too young to understand what was being been done to him. Until that next morning—after a night of debauchery that had put even herself to the blush—when she had seen the shadows in his dark Trelawny eyes and known that deep within him some- thing that was gentle and good had been brutalized beyond repair.

"McCady?"

He turned, still lost in thought, and for a moment all his defenses were down, and she was shocked by what she saw in his eyes.

She had seen those eyes hard and sharp as an ax blade as he wagered more than he could afford on the turn of a card. She had seen them looming above her in the night, hot and glowing with passion. She had seen them turn dull and remote with self-disgust the morning after. But she had never seen them as they were now, filled with such raw pain. Whatever or whoever had hurt him—it had gone soul-deep.

He noticed her studying him, and he lowered his lids, hiding his thoughts. His mouth curved into a cynical smile. Only she, who knew him well, saw that it lacked his usual bravado.

He tilted his champagne glass at her in a mocking toast. "You ought to congratulate me, Maggie. I'm about to become a married man."

She felt a sharp and unexpected pain in her chest. "So it has happened to you at last," she said, and her smile felt tight. "What is she like—this girl who has managed to capture a wicked Trelawny's heart?"

He lifted a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "I haven't the vaguest notion what she's like. I only met the chit for the first time two hours ago."

"The money. I see..." The odd tightness in her chest eased somewhat. She rubbed her finger around the rim of the champagne glass, making it sing a mournful hymn. "Haven't you ever felt it, McCady? That breathless excitement when someone enters the room. That hot surging in the blood. That tingly, dizzying, wild and frightening feeling called—"

"I take the girl to bed, and it's gone by morning."

"Love," she finished softly.

This time his smile was cruel. "You're slipping, Maggie. A good whore should never allow herself to become sentimental over what she sells."

She arched a perfectly plucked brow. "Are you describing me or yourself?"

An emotion flared behind the shadows in his eyes, gone before she could read it. He set his champagne down untouched. "It's too late anyway," he said, so softly she wasn't sure she'd heard him right or for that matter what he meant by it. "It's too late," he said again, and shrugged as if he didn't care. But even separated by the width of the room, she could feel a tension vibrating along every inch of his whipcord-taut frame.

She went to him. She used her little finger to trace the beautiful, sulky curve of his mouth. It had been a long time. Years. "Share my bed tonight, McCady."

"I am not in a generous mood."

"Then take."

His fingers closed over her wrist, and he brought her hand to his lips. He smiled, but shook his head. He bade her a polite good-bye, and when the door had shut behind him, she pressed the hand that he had kissed against her cheek.

It was a sentimental thing to do, and she sneered at herself for it, but she went to the window for one last glimpse of him. She knew somehow that he would never return to this house again.

Jessalyn Letty peered out the carriage window at the long line of stanhopes, landaus, and phaetons winding ahead of them. "We shall be another hour at this rate," she said, as their red-lacquered vehicle rolled forward a few more inches, then swayed and jolted to a stop. "We could have walked there by now ten times over."

"Tain't the done thing, gel," Lady Letty pronounced, "hoofing it to a ball." She flicked open a silver plate snuffbox and took a pinch, then offered some to Clarence Tiltwell, who declined. The sharp smell of ambergris and bitter almonds filled the carriage, making Jessalyn's eyes water.

Lady Letty blew a loud sneeze into her handkerchief. "What a sad crush." She sneezed again. "One would think all of London is determined to attend this Hamilton person's rout. What is the world coming to? The man is a mere corn merchant."

"Aloysius Hamilton is also a banker," Clarence said. "A lot of people owe him money."

Lady Letty heaved a great whistling snort, like a boiling kettle. "Aha! So you're in hock to him, are you?" Using her quizzing glass, she appraised the blue satin and black leather interior of Clarence Tiltwell's town coach. It was top-of-the-line and ruinously expensive. "Just how badly dipped are you?"

Clarence's gentle laugh echoed in the roomy carriage.
"I
am a banker as well, Lady Letty. People owe
me
money."

"Tain't the done thing, Tiltwell, to bring up a subject so crass as debts and money whilst in polite society," Lady Letty said, completely oblivious of the fact that she had been the one to raise the subject. "If you are ever to rise above your tutworker origins, you should know that, boy."

"Oh, Gram..." Jessalyn cast a glance at Clarence, but if his feelings had been wounded, his face didn't show it. No color mottled his fair complexion, and his eyes, reflecting the light from the roof lanterns, merely looked amused.

The coach, which had been rattling across the cobbles, suddenly quieted as they pulled onto the bed of straw that had been laid in the street to cut the noise in front of the Hamilton Mayfair mansion. Lights blazed from the unshuttered windows, and lanterns flickered on decorated poles. A linkboy ran down carpeted steps to open their carriage door.

No sooner had they descended into the street than a ragged urchin squirmed his way past the footmen and postilions to shove a rusty tea tray up into their faces. "Buy me gingerbread, yer honors!" he cried. "Fresh and 'ot!"

Lady Letty opened her reticule, but the postboy drove the child off with a crack of his whip. "Don't," Clarence said, stilling the old woman's hand. "For if you buy from him, there'll be a hundred others to take his place. You cannot feed them all."

It did indeed seem as if a hundred gaping faces crowded around the carriages. These thin, pale faces of the poor who had come to witness the lavish sight of Quality arriving at a ball. The stink of their unwashed bodies and pawned clothes hung over the street, mixing with the smell of horse dung. Their murmuring voices and occasional cries reminded Jessalyn of the sea slapping the Cornish cliffs and the screams of the gulls.

She slipped her arm through her grandmother's, drawing her into a comforting embrace. In the smoky light of the flambeaux, Lady Letty's face looked pinched with pain. It was the children, Jessalyn knew. Even after four years of such sights, her grandmother could not bear the plight of London's children. For Rosalie, the bal-maiden, had never forgotten what it was like to go to bed on a pile of rags with a belly swollen and cramping from hunger.

The linkboy ushered them up the stairs and through the front door. The earthy smells of horse and sweat were replaced by the honeyed fragrance of the best wax candles and the floral and spice of many perfumes. They were passed on to a groom of the chambers in powdered wig and glorious livery, who announced their arrival in stentorian syllables.

The Hamiltons stood at the top of a long, curving white marble staircase to receive their guests. Mr. Hamilton was a fat little squab of a man with a great pair of mustaches that if uncurled would reach thrice around his head. Mrs.

Hamilton was draped with gobbets of jewelry and rouged to the eyes.

The ballroom shimmered in the illuminated brilliance cast by the latest gas chandeliers. Dozens of faceted watch balls hung from the ceiling and window niches, reflecting the dazzling room a thousand times over. Plumed headdresses were
le dernier cri
for evening wear this year, and the room was full of feathers, undulating and swaying like wheat blowing in the wind.

"Gram has discovered the faro tables," Jessalyn said as she and Clarence faced each other in the first quadrille. "I cannot imagine where she found the stakes. I hope she isn't playing with vowels."

He drew her in a graceful circle in time with the music that floated down from the minstrel gallery. "Actually I lent her a few pounds," he said. "I thought she would enjoy the evening better." His lips parted in a wide smile, revealing the boyish gap in his front teeth. He looked especially handsome tonight in a bottle green velvet coat that matched his eyes and set off his buttercup yellow hair.

"That will teach you to admit that you're a banker," Jessalyn said, laughing and feeling a deep rush of fondness for him. And a wrenching guilt for promising to marry him when all along her heart still belonged to McCady, and always would. "I shall, of course, pay you back. Otherwise, when Gram loses it all, which she is bound to do, she will try to sell you one of her snuffboxes—"

"I shall buy it and sell it back to you later. How is that?" His smile was so warm and caring. An odd tightness squeezed her throat, making it difficult to speak.

"Clarence, I... You are a true friend."

The dance had ended, but Clarence kept hold of her hand. His eyes bored into hers. His face was taut with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. An intensity and a hunger. "I hope that I am more than that," he said.

She withdrew her hand. "I... It has grown rather warm in here. Perhaps a glass of champagne punch?"

He stared at her as the silence stretched between them. She held her breath, afraid that he would voice aloud the thoughts she could read in his eyes. But then his gaze shifted away from hers, and the moment passed.

"Yes, of course," he said, and, bowing, left her.

She watched the whirling dancers, and her chest tightened with a bittersweet ache. She thought of her first grown-up party of that long-ago summer, dancing with McCady, the way he had teased her when she tripped over his feet and then made herself dizzy staring at the ceding, the way he had—

It was as if he'd come walking out of her memory. Suddenly he was there in the doorway and looking over the ballroom as if he were the dark prince and everyone else his subject. Everything inside her seemed to give way, and for a moment she forgot to breathe.

He turned slightly, to greet his host, and Jessalyn stared at his proud profile. With his too-long hair and pirate's earring, he didn't look quite civilized. His sharp-boned face and hard body were too masculine for his elegant clothes.
He doesn't belong here,
she thought. Not in London with its boring crushes and oppressive rules. He belonged in another time when men wore armor and conquered kingdoms and lived by no rule but that of the sword.

I want you, Jessalyn.

Wanted her but could not love her.

Her emotions waged the same war as they had that day he had so coldly asked her to share his bed. Her Letty pride had demanded she slap his face, the hurt child in her had wanted to scratch and claw at him and hurt him back, but her woman's heart had wanted to fling herself into his arms and love him anyway. Love him hard enough and long enough until he had no choice but to love her back.