Leaning back, Clarence put three fingers into his fob pocket. He rubbed the two gold sovereigns he always carried for luck. "Of course, she has accepted, but then it was always understood between us that we would marry someday. We've set a date for the first week in June, but truthfully, old boy"—he leaned forward and put on a just-between-us-men smile—"I don't think I can wait that long."
McCady pinned him with his fierce gaze. Suddenly there was something dark and dangerous in the room, and Clarence wished he hadn't gone quite so far. After all, Mack had wanted Jessalyn very badly at one time.
"You will be good to her, Clarey," McCady said.
"I—I love her," Clarence answered, startled.
A ripple of feeling stirred in those dark eyes. "Don't tell me you love her. Love is a fool's emotion, another pretty word for lust and a moral excuse to fuck. All I care about is how you treat her. If you ever hurt her, Clarey, I will kill you."
"If anyone hurts her, it is likely to be you!" Clarence blurted, his face flushed.
"I will kill you," McCady said again.
Clarence stared into eyes that were utterly savage. The back of his neck and ears grew hot, and he jerked his gaze away. He cleared his throat. "I realize the committee's decision has been a bit of a setback for you," he said, desperate suddenly to shift McCady's mind off Jessalyn. "But it is really only a matter of stretching the company's assets until your locomotive can win the trial."
A fleeting emotion quivered in his cousin's face. Clarence suddenly had the unpleasant feeling that McCady was laughing at him.
Clarence cleared his throat again. "Unfortunately, with me serving on the committee, any financial transaction between us would present the appearance of collusion on our parts. Some could even look upon it as in the nature of a bribe." He studied the toe of his boot. "I have plenty of surplus capital lying around just itching to be invested in a worthy cause. A pity there isn't some way I could put it to good use and help you over this little setback." He lifted his head. "After all, Mack, even for cousins we are extraordinarily close. In some ways you are like a brother to me."
Clarence searched the face of the man across from him. Say it, he thought, look at me and acknowledge that I could be your brother.
McCady did look at him with those shadowed dark eyes, but he said nothing.
Clarence got to his feet, pulling out his repeater's watch and making a big show of being an important man with important things to do. He thought he should feel triumph, and he could not understand why all he felt was desolation.
At the door he paused and looked back at the man who stared, brooding, into the fire. He felt a pang at the sight of that harsh and elegant profile, the haughty cheekbone and sullen curve of that hard mouth. The beloved and hated face of his cousin... his brother.
Oh, McCady had found a few starry-eyed dupes willing to invest in his foolish dream, but the bulk of the debt was his. Only one bank had dared to risk lending the money to back his fledgling company.
Sometime toward the end of June, McCady Trelawny, the twelfth earl of Caerhays, would come to the Mechanics Bank of London, hat in hand, begging for an abeyance of the interest due on his promissory notes until the locomotive trials had been run. But he wouldn't get it. Clarence knew he wouldn't get it. Few people were aware of it, in truth, only two others knew of it besides himself, but...
Clarence Tiltwell owned the Mechanics Bank of London.
CHAPTER 14
A rocket shot across the sky, exploding overhead like a shattered star. Glittering blue fire rained down, silhouetting the trees, transforming branches into witches' claws and shadows in capering demons. Although the night was mild, Jessalyn shivered, huddling deep within the folds of her cloak.
"Are ye cold, miss?"
She shook her head, then heaved an enormous sigh. "Oh, Topper. I don't think I can go through with this. Dear life... if Gram were to hear of it, she would never forgive me."
"And who's to tell her, eh?" The young jockey was leaning against the trunk of an elm, his arms folded across his chest. Red globe lamps hung from the branches above, casting a ruddy glow over his face. "No one can see who ye are in them togs. Ye could be the bleedin' queen of Sheba. We need the blunt," he reminded her.
Jessalyn flinched as a Roman candle ignited with a boom and a hail of fire clusters. The Vauxhall pleasure gardens were suddenly as bright as a meadow at high noon, and she touched the spangled, lacquered mask she wore as if to reassure herself that it was still in place. Nervous fear sat on her stomach like sour wine.
The colored globe lamps in the elm trees winked red and blue and yellow eyes. The whistle and bang of the fireworks drowned out the lilting strains of a waltz. Arcaded colonnades surrounded a leafy bower where beggars mixed with bankers and dukes rubbed elbows with cobblers, and prostitutes and pickpockets fleeced them all. Within small discreet booths, gentlemen and ladies partook of flirtatious conversation and expensive suppers of muslin-thin slices of ham, tiny chickens, cheesecakes, and syllabubs.
And soon now, as soon as the fireworks show was over, many in the crowd would drift into the nearby wooden rotunda for the night's entertainment, and Jessalyn would...
Her stomach clenched again. She would do what she had to do. The money she was about to make would go a long way toward feeding them all in the coming months, not to mention the four racehorses that were even now consuming a fortune in oats in their rented stable at Newmarket.
A serpentine exploded above, spitting flames. A hand touched her shoulder, and Jessalyn whirled, her heart leaping into her throat. Topper, his gap-toothed grin splitting his face, held out a glass of the famous Vauxhall punch. "I bought ye a drink, Miss Jessalyn. Wet yer gullet with enough of this, and ye could waltz with the devil and not turn a hair."
Jessalyn's hand shook as she reached for the glass, but she managed a smile of thanks for the boy. She started to drink and nearly choked as pungent fumes swirled up her nose. The punch burned like liquid fire going down, but when it hit bottom, she felt all warm and tingly inside.
It gave her the courage to go around to the back of the rotunda and join the other sequined, spangled, and plumed performers awaiting their cue at the stage entrance. A pudding-paunched man waddled up to her. His hair was oiled and brushed behind his ears in stiff wings, and his collar points were starched so high Jessalyn feared he would cut off his head if he had to turn it suddenly. He was Mr.
O'Hare, who that afternoon had hired her to be the opening act in his Equestrian Spectacle.
"Miss Brown?" he said. His lips, thin and tight as a buttonhole, twisted into a knowing smirk. She had not been very original with her alias. "You're late."
Jessalyn said nothing; her mouth was too dry for speech.
"Take off the cloak."
Her hands tightened in the thick material at her neck. Then she loosened the barrel snaps and let the cloak slip off her shoulders. Mr. O'Hare had provided her with the costume, and Jessalyn suspected it had once belonged to a boy. It consisted of tight-fitting sequined white hose and a scarlet doublet shot with gold thread, like the court clothes of a cavalier from a long-ago era. Her mask was in the shape of a bird's head, with what looked like real parrot feathers beneath the lacquer. It had a great curved beak that was coming loose and wiggled when she touched it.
Mr. O'Hare's bold gaze roamed down the length of he exposed legs, then up again. Jessalyn's cheeks flushed hot behind the mask. His mouth parted in a smile, revealing a gold tooth that flashed in the lantern light. "You'll do. Oh, aye, lassie. You'll do."
He motioned to a stable lad, who brought over the horse she would perform on tonight. It was a circus horse, a rosinback—a mare with a broad level back and a coat as white as frothed milk. She had a wide leather strap called a surcingle cinched around her belly and ostrich plumes fastened to her head.
Jessalyn murmured sweet nothings in the mare's ears, checked the tightness of the surcingle a dozen times, and did a lot of fussing and fidgeting, while a wire wa
lker, a juggler, and a sword swallower warmed up the audience. Too soon she heard the revel master's voice echoing out of the rotunda's doors... death-defying equestrian feats. Jessalyn checked the surcingle again and thought she might get sick.
Suddenly Mr. O'Hare was flapping his arm at her. She sent the mare forward with a soft click of her tongue. Grasping the surcingle, she vaulted onto the horse's back and pulled herself into the kneeling position. She extended her right leg behind her, pointed her toe, and lifted her head high just as the mare burst through a paper hoop and into the rotunda's ring. A loud crack of sound smacked into her, and she nearly fell off from the shock of it. She thought someone had set off a rocket within the building. Then she realized it was the noise of hundreds of hands clapping.
The people in the boxes and gallery and the smoking, fluttering torches blended into a dizzying swirl of light and colors as she cantered around the small ring. Thumping canes and snapping snuffboxes, talk and laughter all blended into a frantic buzz, like a busy hive. Fear and excitement tightened her muscles. Her palms went wet with sweat. She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, centering herself to the movement of the horse. Soon the noise receded until it became nothing more than a whisper, like the distant wash of the sea across sand. Her senses became focused on specific things: the dusty smell of the sawdust that covered the floor of the pit; the smooth, oily feel of the leather surcingle; the dry, chalky taste in her mouth that came from nerves.
She performed her tricks flawlessly—the Flag, the Mill, the Scissors, and the "death-defying" Cossack Hang. It was while performing this feat, hanging sideways and upside down over the left side of the horse, with her left leg pointed skyward and her arms dangling over her head toward the ground, that she saw him.
It was only a fleeting glimpse, when her gaze had wandered from the rotating cherubs on the domed ceiling to the spinning tier of the upper boxes. But she could have picked out his face from among multitudes, even upside down. She took a better look when she righted herself and cantered around the ring again to the accompaniment of thunderous applause and cries of "Huzza!" He was in a front box with a party of two other men and three women. She wondered which of the women was his.
His expression looked reckless and dangerous, and his dark gaze speared her as if he knew, knew that it was she beneath the bird mask. Her whole body went hot, and she was possessed with a violent longing to gallop out of the ring and keep going until she rode off the end of the earth.
Once more she cantered around the ring, and as if pulled by invisible reins, her head lifted and her eyes were drawn up to his. He'd always seen her as a silly, bumbling, beetle-witted child, and his opinion was unlikely ever to change. But her heart was safe from him now; she would make sure that this was so. If she didn't allow herself to care what he thought of her, he could no longer hurt her.
She had one last death-defying feat left to perform and she knew which one it would be—the Standing Somersault, the trick she had shown off for him the day that he had first kissed her. The day that she had fallen into Claret Pond, and fallen so deeply in love that she had become lost and never found her way back.
But this time there were no rabbit holes to spoil the ending. She did it perfectly. She landed upright on the mare's back, standing tall, her arms lifted above her head as the mare leaped back through the ring and out of the rotunda, and wave after wave of applause washed over them.
Jessalyn jumped from the horse onto legs that suddenly felt as loose and quivery as jellied eels. She hugged the mare, planting a kiss on her pink nose. "Scrape off the sweat, and rub her down good," she said to the boy who came running up. The night breeze chilled her own sweating body. She wrapped up in her cloak as she searched for Topper in the crowd milling outside the arena door.
A hand clamped down on her wrist, jerking her around so violently she was flung onto his chest and had to grasp the lapels of his coat to keep from falling. Her head fell back, and her gaze clashed with hard, shadowed eyes.
"You're coming with me," he said.
She struggled to pull free of him. "How dare you presume to order me about. You are not my brother or my guardian. You are nothing to me." She liked the sound of that so much she said it again. "You are nothing."
"You are coming with me now," he said again.
"I am not. I have another performance—"
The rest of her protest caught in her throat as, slowly, he lowered his head, bringing his face so close to hers she could feel the heat of his breath and see the yellow sunbursts in his eyes. "The hell you do," he said, and Jessalyn thought the devil's voice would probably sound like that.
He strode down the broad treelined walk, pulling her after him. Stones bruised the soles of her thinly slippered feet. She clawed at the hand that was clamped like a vise around her wrist. "Let me go or I'll scream," she protested, but as soon as the words were out her mouth, she felt like a fool. They had sounded so silly, like something the heroine of a blue book would wail just before the villain ravished her.
"Go ahead, indulge yourself," her particular villain retorted in a mocking drawl that had her clenching her teeth. "Young ladies scream in Vauxhall Gardens all the time. It is practically a mating call."
He was right. The gardens were latticed with dark walks bounded by high hedges and hidden ornamental ruins that were havens for seduction. The night air was filled with the tinkle and gurgle of fountains, the rustle of wind-stirred leaves, and the squealing and shrieking of ladies losing their virtue.
The smell of lilac lay heavy on the breeze. Lamps winked like fairy lights in the trees, and the moon rolled across the sky, round and shiny as a new penny. It was a beautiful night, a night made for love. McCady's fingers crushed her wrist as he dragged her down the walk. She jerked hard against him, trying to pull free, and succeeded only in nearly wrenching her arm off.
He hauled her out of the front gate, then down to the riverfront, walking fast and jerking her along hard behind him, so that if he hadn't had such a death grip on her wrist, she would have fallen headfirst down the rickety wooden steps to the quay. "Oars!" he bellowed, and a moment later a small wherry bumped up to the dock, splashing stinking, oily water onto the warped boards.
His hands closed around her waist to lift her into the boat, and she lashed out with her foot, catching him high on the thigh, missing her aim.
"Bloody hell, Jessalyn." He grunted as she landed a good one on his shin, but it didn't stop him from tossing her like a sack of turnips into the wherry. She landed hard on the poorly cushioned thwart, rattling her teeth.
The ferry landing was marked by a red-and-blue-striped pole and a flaming link torch. The torch flared in a sudden gust of wind, filling the air with the reek of tow and pitch and highlighting the harsh bones of his face. For a moment fear overwhelmed Jessalyn's anger. He was capable of anything, was McCady Trelawny. He acknowledged no rules, answered to no one. Then her anger, like the torch, flared again.
She struggled to stand up in the rocking boat, but McCady held her down with a bruising grip on her shoulder while he paid the ferryman his sixpence. "Are you blind?" she shouted. "Can't you see that this man is abducting me?"
"Aye." The ferryman hawked and spit into the water. "They all say that at first. And they all comes to likin' it in the end." He pushed the wherry away from the dock, and it was gripped by the river current.
"Where are you taking me?" Jessalyn demanded. Her voice caught on a slight tremor, and she tried to swallow it back down into her chest, where the fear resided.
For answer she got the slap of oars in the water. Lights from the gilded barges of the livery companies and the spanning arc of Westminster Bridge twinkled and sparkled, so that it seemed as if all the sky's stars had fallen into the river. There were people on the bridge, in those barges. Yet she knew she could scream herself hoarse and no one would come to help her.
They landed near a stand of hackney chariots, and he hailed one. His hand gripped her elbow, pushing her u
p the steps into the carriage. She fell onto the cracked leather seat, thrusting her cold feet into the straw on the floor, shivering, rubbing the bruises he had put on her wrist. He spoke to the driver, then climbed in beside her. She sat unmoving, stiff as a pit prop. The carriage started forward, clattering over the cobbles.
"Take that ridiculous thing off your face."
Her hands flew up to the bird mask. She fumbled with it, knocking the loose beak askew. She untied the strings and let it fall into her lap. A night breeze, smelling of London soot and river sludge, blew under the hackney's hood, cooling her burning cheeks. The flaring gas jets in the street spilled intermittent light into the carriage, casting his features into sharp bones and dangerous shadows.
The hackney slowed to turn a corner, and a boy ran up alongside, tossing a handbill into the earl's lap. He crumpled the paper in his fist and tossed it out again, swinging his head toward her, his earring winking like a golden eye.
His hand lashed out to fling open her cloak. He stared at her forever, and she felt the strangest awareness of her own body within the exotic clothes. Her breasts, taut and aching, pressing against the stiff satin of the doublet. Her legs, covered only by the thin silk hose and quivering as if they were naked.
He spoke through tight lips. "You have always had a propensity for trouble, but even at sixteen I doubt you were capable of hatching such a half-baked, bird-witted scheme that could so ruin you in the eyes of the world."
She jerked the cloak from his grasp, hugging it close to her chest. She hadn't wanted to ruin herself; she only wanted to earn some money to see her family through the next couple of months, until her marriage next June.
"Say something, damnation."
Her head snapped around. "Why should I? You're making enough clack for both of us. My lord."
A muscle jumped along his jaw, and his fists clenched. "Tomorrow I shall have a word with the man who operates that—that circus. I assure you that he will no longer be requiring your services."
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