Once in a Blue Moon (38 page)

"Jessalyn, Jessalyn..." He shook his head, as if admonishing a slow-witted child. "Do you take me for a fool? You want it for
him
—for Caerhays. He finally has done it, hasn't he? He's made you his Trelawny whore."

A rush of heat spread up her throat. "How dare you?"

"The man is married. Have you no shame?"

"Emily is dead!" Jessalyn blurted, guilt making her shout the words.

Clarence straightened with a snap, and his pale face took on a sudden animation. "Dead, by God! And the brat? Would it have been a boy?" He threw back his head and hooted a laugh at the ceiling. "Poor cousin, to be so close and then
phit"
—he snapped his fingers—"it's gone." He paced the bare plank floor, chuckling to himself. Suddenly he swung around and his gaze refocused on her. "And you think he'll marry you—teetering as he is on the verge of ruin and disgrace? He hasn't a hope or a prayer of escaping prison, now that his little heiress is dead."

Jessalyn stared at him, seeing the fair, slender face of the boy she'd ridden bareback with across the moors, the boy she'd challenged to a diving contest in Claret Pond, the young man who had given her her first kiss before a Midsummer's Eve bonfire. Surely that Clarence would have emptied out his purse to save his cousin.

She lifted her hand to him, as if reaching across time to the boy he had been. "Oh, Clarence, I can understand why McCady's pride has forbidden him to ask it of you. But what has stopped you from offering to lend him the money he needs?"

"My dear, he owes it all to me in the first place. It is
my
bank that holds his notes." He paced the room, pumping his arms, then grasping his hands together as if in prayer. "By God, I have waited years to bring McCady Trelawny to his knees. If there was truly any justice in this world, he would soon go the way of his brothers, and I could come into the title, but as it is, at least I can have the satisfaction—" He stopped, swinging around, and a crafty look narrowed his eyes. "He must be getting quite desperate now if he has sent you to me."

"He didn't send me. And you mustn't tell him, Clarence, please. You know how he is, his pride. He would never forgive me if..." Her voice trailed off. She was speaking to him as if he were the old Clarence. But she didn't know this man.

A withdrawn look had settled over his face. He adjusted his neckcloth, smoothed down the lapels of his coat, as if regretting now his earlier outburst. He went back to his desk and settled into the chair. He shot his cuff, dipped a quill into the inkpot, and began to write in a red leather ledger.

Jessalyn drew in a breath to speak, then expelled it in a silent sigh. She retrieved her cloak and muff off the coat-tree and went to the door.

"I shall give you the ten thousand pounds, Jessalyn."

Her hand fell from the latch, and she turned. She stared at his bent head, not daring to breathe. He continued to write, the pen scraping roughly across the paper. "Will you, Clarence? And what must
I
give you in return?"

He tossed down the pen and leaned back in his chair, fingering the coins in his fob pocket. His gaze was as cold and merciless as a winter wind. "You will give me yourself, of course."

"I
see." Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them back. She lifted her chin. "I know all about these sorts of transactions, for someone once explained them to me in great detail. I am to become your ladybird. For one night? Or do you wish for a more permanent arrangement?"

"Oh, no, my dear. I still want you for my wife. I will
have
you for my wife."

Jessalyn's breath caught in her throat like a clap of bellows. It was odd, but the thought of being this man's wife was a hundredfold more intolerable than being his harlot. "No," she said.

He raised one languid blond brow. "Not even to save your lover's life? It costs to
live,
you know, even in Fleet Prison. Warm blankets and food and gin and the rope mats they give you to sleep on—they all must be paid for. You must even pay to have the irons struck off your ankles; otherwise you are left chained to the floor. They all cost, Jessalyn, and he'll not long survive if he doesn't get them."

Jessalyn's mouth tasted like burned paper. She did not want to listen to Clarence's words. She did not want to have to make such a choice.

He picked up the quill and began to rub the feather back and forth across his palm. "And what is it the philosophers say—one cannot live on bread alone? One needs plans, ambitions, dreams. Already he has had to grovel, to sweat and bleed to lay those forty miles of track. He's even swung a pick himself if the stories are true." His voice turned soft and menacing. "You would be preserving his dream, Jessalyn."

"But I don't..." Slowly she shook her head. She felt weighted with a great inertia, like a butterfly trapped in a bucket of treacle. It seemed to be taking all of her energy just to think. "I don't understand. Why do the very thing that will save the man you've set out to destroy?"

"Because more than his ruin, my dear, I want you."

Memories came to her one after the other, like chains of paper dolls. McCady riding a wooden horse, his face alight with laughter while lights whirled around his head like stars; his long, scarred hands cradling a tiny baby,
Babies and winsome virgins always put a quiver in my knees and a quake in my heart;
steam wreathing around his dark head as he shoveled coal into a firebox,
I should like to come along with you, Lieutenant Trelawny....

Dark eyes, sun-bright with passion, seeing beauty in her body, touching her,
I have wanted you since you were sixteen....

Jessalyn clasped her hands behind her back and held herself tall. She lifted her chin and stared down her nose at this tutworker's grandson. "Then you may have me, Mr. Tiltwell," she said. "But ten thousand pounds is not enough. You are to settle
all
his notes, not simply forgive the interest. All of his debts, down to the last farthing."

His head flung back. "But you're talking about over forty thousand pounds!"

"That is my only offer. Take it or leave it."

He stood up and came to her, trying to intimidate her with his man's authority. A frown thinned his mouth, and a muscle tightened along his jaw as he stared at her, gauging her resolution. Jessalyn stared back at him. Beneath her corded muslin skirts, her legs were shaking. But she didn't blink.

He pursed his lips, pushing out a breath. "Very well, Jessalyn." He held up his hand, and the soft menace re- turned to his voice. "But
I
have a condition as well. Once you are my wife, you will not go near him. Nor will you mention his name, to me or within my hearing. To us it will be as if he has died."

It felt as if a bone were caught in her throat. Unable to speak, she jerked her head in a sharp nod.

"We have an agreement then. You will become my wife, and I will give you his promissory notes, fully settled, on our wedding night."

She looked up at the pale, thin face of the man she had once thought of as her dearest friend. Tears blurred her eyes. She tried to hold them back, but they overflowed, spilling down her cheeks. "Why, Clarence? I thought you loved him. I thought you loved us both."

He caught her tears with his fingers, and his face softened. "I can make you happy, Jessalyn. You'll see that I can make you happy. In time you will forget him. You will cease loving him and come to love me instead, as you were always meant to."

"I will never forget him. Or stop loving him."

Clarence's thin nostrils flared slightly, but he went on, as if she had not spoken. "We shall be married immediately. I should have no trouble obtaining a special license—"

"No. We will be married the week after the Derby."

He pressed his tongue between the gap in his teeth and slowly shook his head. "Jessalyn, what purpose would it serve—what would it serve
him
to wait?"

She backed away from him, her fingers fumbling behind her for the door latch. She had to get out of this miserable room before she was sick. "Because the Derby is
my
dream, and I will not have it sullied by living it as your wife."

He brought his face toward hers, but she turned her head aside. His fingers spanned her jaw, holding her still, while he planted his mouth on hers in a hard, punishing kiss. "You had no right to give him something that was mine," he said, his breath hot against her mouth. "It shall be a long time before I forgive you for that."

She jerked out of his grasp, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. "You do not own me, Mr. Tiltwell."

Topper walked down Fleet Street, feeling on top of the world. He whistled through the hole in his teeth at an apple-cheeked maid, who had stepped out of a tavern to empty a slop bucket. He tossed a penny into the lap of a legless man who rolled by on a three-wheeled chair, playing a pipe. A lamplighter appeared around the bend ahead of him, reaching up with his long pole, and soon small points of light began to appear, one after the other in the misty dusk. Topper fancied they looked like a string of pearls.

Tipping his hat, he stepped aside for a gentleman, who was preceded by a liveried footman with an ivory-handled cane.
Someday I'll be like that swell,
Topper thought. Someday he, too, would be rich and wear flashy togs and ride in a coach with postilions and matching pairs. And if he felt like hoofing it, well, then, he'd have a footman go before him to pave the way.

His nose twitched at the aroma of fresh hot-cross buns wafting from a pastry cookshop. He bought a mutton pie but passed up a strawberry tart for dessert. The Derby was coming up, and a knight had to watch his weight when he was riding the horses. Someday, though, he'd be able to stuff his face with strawberry tarts till he shot the cat. He'd be that rich.

Now the guv'nor—he was that rich, Topper thought as he turned off bright, noisy Fleet Street and began to wend his way through dark, narrow streets toward the river. His gaze darted to the shadows, searching for footpads; they'd as soon bludgeon your head in as spit at you in this part of town. Rich as a king was the guv'nor, though you wouldn't know it to look at where the man conducted his business. But then it wasn't smart to flash the ready when you were sitting cheek to jowl with boozing kens and tenements. 'Course, a lot of the guv'nor's money came from those same boozing kens and tenements. Two shillings a week he got from every man jack who dwelled in this particular rookery.

Topper knew well what living in those places was like: the dark, dank rooms lit only with stinking tallow dips; the walls alive with wood lice. Just as he knew what it was like to be so hungry you'd eat a rotting apple core off a sidewalk slimy with spittle. Or melt the stubs of candles into your gruel to make it thick enough to fill your belly.

A door swung open, and a sweep's boy stumbled out into the street, nearly knocking Topper down. The lad was bent double under a bag of soot, and his master was flailing at his legs with a broom handle. Topper hurried away from the sight. He knew what
that
was like, too. Being roused at dawn out of a cold bed of soot bags and straw and set to work cleaning rich folks' chimneys. To have your knees and elbows made tough as leather by rubbing them with brine, till they streamed with blood and you were screaming from the pain of it. To be forced into a flue too narrow for a rat, forced to climb until you were trapped, unable to go up or down, trapped in the dark...

Topper's mind shied away from these memories. Those days were over now and best forgotten. And besides, as bad as being a climbing boy had been, Topper knew there were other, worse ways of starving. Like spinning catgut in the workhouse or working for a molly-house where you had to sell your body like a girl. Or you could get caught cutting purses and be sent to gaol. Topper shuddered at the thought. The idea of being shut up in a small dark cell made his belly go all over queasy. Those times he'd been trapped, the walls squeezing in, the air black and thick, had left Topper with a mortal fear of small dark places.

There was only one thing he feared worse, and that was getting the sooty warts. It happened sometimes to climbing boys, those who managed to grow old enough to bed girls. Not that they were able to bed girls for long after they got
that
hellish disease. Their privates were usually entirely eaten off by the time they died.

He'd noticed the sores six months ago.

Topper's mind slammed shut on the thought. They were nothing to worry about. Just something he picked up from that dolly-mop he'd bedded the night of the Crombie Sweeps, when he'd gotten stew-eyed drunk on Strip-Me-Naked gin. If they were sooty warts, they would hurt, wouldn't they? And these sores didn't hurt. They were hard and scalylike; he could poke them with a pin and not feel a thing. No, they weren't sooty warts. Just something he'd picked up from that dolly-mop.

The gin shop was busy tonight, with men standing three deep at the bar to wet their whistles with a glass of ninepenny. Topper entered the warehouse through the back way and slipped into the clerks' room. Light shone beneath the closed door of the guvnor's office, causing the tall stools to throw weblike shadows onto the wall. A cultured voice, cold with anger, said, "You bloody fool. You weren't to have set fire to the house while she was
in
it."