"Duncan isn't the sort to take advantage of an innocent girl's susceptibilities."
"If he allows her to fall in love with him when he does not really want her love, that is all it takes to break an innocent girl's heart."
She had the satisfaction of seeing his face tighten with a flash of pain before she turned away. But it did little to mend the pieces of her own broken heart.
She got as far as the stairs before she fainted. Although she didn't know it, he caught her before she hit the floor. And though she didn't feel it, he kissed her forehead, but not her lips.
One storm after another came in from the sea, and time dribbled more slowly than sand through the hourglass on the Reverend Troutbeck's pulpit.
Jessalyn paced before a dying fire, too restless to sleep. In the two days that she had been at Caerhays Hall, she had managed to avoid coming face-to-face again with its master. Pleading smoke-induced headaches, she had taken all her meals on trays and spent the afternoons sitting with Gram. But it did little good. His presence was everywhere: in the smell of his shaving soap, which lingered in the hall outside his bedroom door, in the soiled cravat left carelessly draped over the newel-post at the top of the stairs, in the deep timbre of his voice heard across the stableyard.
The wind lashed at the house. Candle flames fluttered in their glass globes, and the maroon curtains on the big four-poster rustled as if stirred by an unseen hand. Drafts of damp air swirled around the room in spite of the embroidered silk Chinese screens set before the door and windows.
Jessalyn shivered, pulling the quilted satin collar of her borrowed night robe tighter around her neck. She went to the velvet-draped window, drawn to look out at the storm-ravaged night. She could see little of the wild, overgrown gardens below; sea spume carried inland by the wind had left the panes crusted with salt like pickled herrings. Water splashed against the glass. At End Cottage, when it stormed like this, they'd had to lay rags along the windowsills to catch the leaks.
She supposed the same was probably true for much of the rest of Caerhays Hall. Only a portion of one wing had been renovated thus far. And even then Jessalyn imagined the cost must have been enough to make a rich man wince, for the great old house had been allowed to deteriorate for too long.
The changes were all Emily's doing. Her presence, too, was everywhere, and although Jessalyn tried hard to avoid the lord of the hall, she found herself seeking out the company of its lady.
That afternoon she had come across Emily in the drawing room, arranging daffodils and bluebells into a milk glass vase. She looked frail and delicate in her almond green merino morning dress, even though it was cut full beneath the bosom to allow for her pregnancy. Her short silver blond curls shimmered like a wind-stirred lake in the shaft of rare sunlight that came through the chintz-draped windows.
Jessalyn told herself she was being foolish, but she felt as dowdy as a brown hen in a puce fustian that had been borrowed from Squire Babbage's wife, who next to herself was the tallest woman in the county. The dress hung on her like a wet sail, and there was still a gap of three inches between the padded hem of the skirt and Jessalyn's slippers.
But Emily's smile was warm and friendly as Jessalyn paused in the doorway to the drawing room, unsure of her welcome.
"Jessalyn! I trust your headache is better." Emily returned to her arrangement, cupping a sun yellow bloom in her palm. "These spring storms play havoc with a flower garden. I should like to replant the conservatory someday. But that is for the future."
Jessalyn entered a room that was decorated in a soft color scheme of ocher and citron and a mismatch of styles that all somehow seemed to go together. "You have done wonders with the house already," she said.
Emily flushed as she set the vase of flowers on a pier table between a pair of silver candlesticks. "Much of this furniture came from my mother's attics."
It occurred to Jessalyn that she knew all about catching pilchards and training racehorses, yet she was sadly lacking in domestic talents. Emily might be a corn merchant's daughter, but she was better suited to be an earl's wife than Jessalyn would ever have been.
"We can afford very little at the moment," Emily said in a cheerful lilt, sounding as if she truly did not care that the whole world knew her husband to be on the precipice of ruin. Yet Jessalyn noticed that she nervously fingered the fringe of the tippet she wore around her shoulders. "Caerhays says Wheal Patience should start paying its way soon. He is hoping for a windfall of profits to settle the interest on those monstrous railway loans."
"There is the baby," Jessalyn couldn't keep herself from saying. "And the settlement that will come to you from your father once the child is born."
Emily pressed her palm to the swell of her stomach. "Oh, yes, there is that. The babe might come in time, and it might be a boy. But though I couldn't bear to see Caerhays flung into Fleet Prison, I cannot help wishing he didn't have to be saved in that way. He is so proud. I think that he would so much rather save himself." The blue eyes she lifted to Jessalyn's face were shadowed with worry and a kind of sick yearning. "He is not the sort of man to have married for money. Oh, I know he claims it is a Trelawny tradition, but he says it with such a bitterness in his voice—"
Emily froze at the rap of bootheels on the stone-flagged floor of the great hall. Color flooded her cheeks, and she seemed to hold her breath. Then they heard the deep rumble of Duncan's voice and an answering giggle from Becka.
"Oh!" Emily exclaimed with a soft little sigh. "I thought it might be... He's gone to Penzance to coddle his precious locomotive. Something arrived by the stage from a foundry in Birmingham yesterday. Copper tubes, I believe he said, although what on earth their purpose is I haven't the least notion."
Emily's face came alive as she spoke of the earl, and her gaze kept drifting to the door as if still she hoped he would pass through it, even though he was not expected.
Jessalyn pictured the two of them discussing his inventions over their coffee cups at breakfast. Or they could have walked along the beach at Crookneck Cove, chasing the gulls and the waves and laughing while he promised that she would be one of the first to ride on his new locomotive. Perhaps it was at night, when he held her in his arms, that he whispered of his dreams, asking her to share in them, while she touched his man's body, touched his man's soul.
And Jessalyn had had to look away from Emily's bright and lovely face because she could not bear such thoughts.
Yet now, in the dark and empty hours of the storm-ravaged night, they came to her again, unbidden, unwelcome, unbearable. Emily lying in McCady's arms, touching, touching...
She pushed herself away from the window. Suddenly she wanted to feel the violent fury of the rain beating against her face, to be swallowed by the black night, to be buffeted and plundered by the wind. She wanted to fling out her arms and embrace the storm, to be ravished by it.
She threw off her night clothes and struggled into Mrs. Babbage's rough fustian dress, not bothering with shift or stays. She had no cloak, but she knew there would be a set of oilskins and seaboots in the kitchen, for no Cornish house would be without them. Taking up a candlestick, she stepped into the hall.
Only a single glass taper lamp lit the dark walnut-paneled passage. She passed Emily's door and then his. They did not share a bedroom, but then no fashionable couple of the ton did. Somehow she found herself pausing in the middle of the hall, ears tensed for a sound, his voice, his footstep, beyond the old-fashioned iron-banded barrier to his chamber.
The door swung open, so startling her that she nearly dropped the candle. Hot wax splattered, missing the dish and burning her hand. She stared up at him, eyes wide, as she sucked the stinging web of skin between her finger and thumb.
The room was dark behind him, except for the flickering orange glow from the fire. Shadows lay like blades across his face. He was bare from the waist up. A light mat of dark hair limned the bulges and hollows of his chest. He stood with one arm braced, his hand pressing so hard aga
inst the jamb that the veins stood out against his skin. She could imagine the power of him, how he would feel beneath her hands.
"What are you doing still up?" he demanded in a voice as dark and shadowed as the rest of him. "I thought you had a headache."
Her breath came out in a soft whistle. "I—I thought to go for a walk along the cove."
"It's high tide. The sea is battering the cliffs, and there's no beach to walk on. It's too dangerous."
He took a step closer to her, into the hall. Water dripped from his long, windblown hair, and his wet buckskins lay plastered to his flesh, slick and shiny like the coat of a seal.
She wet her lips, swallowed. "Yet you braved the storm."
He said nothing.
"Well, perhaps I'll read then. If I might borrow a book?" He shrugged, and the naked muscles of his chest flexed. "Of course."
She turned and walked with stately dignity down the hall, although her insides were frothing and frizzing like a glass of effervescent lemon. Behind her the old wood creaked like dry bones.
She stopped and spun around so abruptly he nearly walked into her. His hand grasped her arm. He let it go immediately, but it was not soon enough. Jessalyn had to fight for the breath to speak.
"I can find my own way down."
He gave no answer, and when she turned and descended the stairs, he came after her.
He opened the door to the library for her. But he straddled the threshold, so that she had to walk by him, so close her sleeve brushed his bare chest. He smelled of the rain and wet leather and the cool night air. Her nipples, naked of a modest shift, tightened and scraped against the coarse fustian. Never before had she been so aware of her own body. She felt all tight and hot, as if her flesh were swelling and pressing against her skin.
He lit an ormolu patent lamp that sat on the massive pedestal desk. Papers were spread in disarray beneath it. Cost sheets, she noticed, for Wheal Patience. Covered in red ink.
He splashed brandy into a toddy glass, drank it down, and poured another. Carrying the freshened glass, he went to the hearth and tossed more coal onto the fire. Flames leaped up the chimney, brightening the room and bronzing his skin with a soft golden glow. Never had she been more aware of him as a man. The strong, slender sinews of his sun-browned hands. The way his naked chest expanded and subsided with his every breath. The way the damp leather breeches clung to his slender hips and long, lean thighs.
He spun around suddenly, and the firelight danced off the facets of the glass in his hand. He lifted it and one brow in a silent offer.
Her mouth was so dry she had to swallow before she could speak. "No. Thank you."
He took a step toward her, and she scooted around him as if he were a snake lying across her path. She put the desk between them and pretended to be fascinated with the contents of the podium bookcases, which were mostly empty.
His voice came from behind her. "We haven't much of a collection, I'm afraid. The Trelawnys have never been ones for scholarship, and books are easy to dispose of when one is sadly dipped and in need of the ready in a hurry."
She lifted her head and saw his reflection in the grilled glass doors. His face was dark and brooding. Their gazes met and held as if locked, and Jessalyn stopped breathing. Outside, the wind moaned and the rain beat violently against the tightly closed shutters.
She fumbled open the case and pulled out a slim red leather volume, not even bothering to check the title.
He set the toddy glass down with such force it chimed like a dinner bell. When she turned around, he was in front of her, blocking her escape. She backed up until her bottom struck the sharp corner of the desk. Her name, carried to her on the sudden wash of his hot breath, was drowned out by the howl of the wind.
Rivulets of water had trickled from his hair onto his shoulders and chest. It glistened on the bare flesh, matting the hair into swirls around his nipples, funneling down over ridges of muscle, following a dark arrow to the waistband of his tight, low-slung buckskins, where they gaped open, the top two buttons left negligently undone.
She jerked her startled gaze back up to his face.
He took a step toward her, and her breath left her chest in a low, keening moan. His mouth had taken on a ruthless slant, and the yellow sunbursts flared bright and hot in his eyes. He smelled of brandy now and a feral heat. A leashed violence seemed to shimmer in the air around him like heat waves off a smithy's forge. As if he were a wild animal that had been caged too long and had gone suddenly mad from his captivity.
He will take me, she thought, take me here on the floor of the library with his wife upstairs. He would take her, fiercely and hungrily, the way a man took a woman he wanted.
And she would let him.
Suddenly he spun away from her. His back shuddered, and the words sounded torn from him. "Get out of here, Jessalyn. Now."
Jessalyn fled the room and didn't stop until she was safe within her own bedchamber with the door shut and bolted behind her. She leaned against the wall, her chest jerking with the effort to get enough breath.
Nothing had happened. He hadn't touched her, barely spoken to her, only looked at her. Yet she felt ravished.
CHAPTER 20
Jessalyn walked across the soot-dusted stones of the courtyard, her wooden pattens clattering, echoing like pebbles dropped down an empty well.
All that was left of End Cottage was the tall ornamental chimney stack. With its scalloped cap and red and yellow checkered brickwork, the chimney looked sad and lonely thrusting up among the broken, blackened beams and charred rubble. Like a gaudy strumpet long past her prime.
Jessalyn tasted the grit of ash on her teeth. The smell of burned wood pinched her nose. The sadness and loneliness were there, too, within herself. She had known love in this house, and security. She told herself that it was not the house that had made her feel these things. The essentials in her life remained: the people she cared for and who cared for her and Cornwall, with its moors and cliffs and, always, the enveloping sea.
The patch of primroses still bloomed against the paddock fence. She picked one, stroking the starburst of yellow petals across her cheek, closing her eyes to let its faint, sweet scent banish the scorched smell of destruction.
An angry yowl broke through her thoughts. Napoleon streaked across the courtyard until he was almost upon her, then skidded to a stop and sauntered slowly, as if he hadn't been all that pleased to see her. Laughing, she bent to pick him up. "Where have you been, you wretched cat?" she said, rubbing noses with him. He'd been missing since the fire, and she'd feared he had run off for good.
Napoleon burst into a raucous purr. But after a moment the fickle beast squirmed to be let down. Tail swishing, he began to stalk a robin that was searching among the stones for moss to build a nest.
Jessalyn set out across the headland toward the cliffs. The rain had started the gorse to blooming, so bright a yellow it hurt the eyes. The moors were a palette of earthy colors from the pea green of new grass to the light biscuit brown of salt-scrubbed rocks. But the sea was all sulky gray, muttering and grumbling across the sand. In the cove below a flotilla of fishing boats was dressing sails to catch a sudden shift in the wind. A pair of sea gulls flapped across the sand, fighting over a fish head.
A patch of familiar blue linsey-wool fluttered on the sea side of the cliff hedge. Jessalyn called out Becka's name.
The girl started to run, then stopped, turning her face into the stones. Her shoulders shuddered, and Jessalyn heard choked and strangled sobs. She approached slowly, not wanting to frighten the girl into hying off.
She touched her bent head. "Becka, m'love. What has happened?"
Becka's answer came out muffled by tears and a red cotton kerchief.
Jessalyn used her fingers to stroke the sweat-damp strands of hair off Becka's face. "Is it Duncan?"
Becka blew loudly into the kerchief, then took her nose out. It was pink as a gooseberry, and her plump cheeks were white and blotched with tears like
a soggy bun. But the scar looked red and welted, newly cut. "Me heart, she be b-brokennn!" she cried, the last syllable ending in a wail.
Jessalyn gathered Becka into her arms, stroking her heaving back. "If he has compromised you, m'love, I shall compel him to marry you."
Becka shied away from her. "Ooh, God spare me. I bain't never marryin' Mr. Duncan. Never!" Her eyes grew round as jingle wheels. "Ee can't force me, can ee?"
"No, of course not. Not if you don't want to."
Becka's plump chin took on a stubborn tilt. "Good. 'Cause I doesn't. Why, what would he be wantin' with the likes of me? I'd be of no more use to him than a mule with a wooden leg." She flung back her hair, twisting her face toward the merciless eye of the sun. "Look at me! What man wants a woman what looks like this?"
"Someday there will be a man, a decent, kind man, who will love you for what you are," Jessalyn said softly.
Becka dashed tears out of her eyes. "Oh, aye, mebbe if he be ugly as a two-headed toad hisself, but not un like Mr. Duncan." She drew in a deep, shuddering sigh. "And he hasn't complicated me neither, 'cause I haven't been lettin' him do no coosing around. Well, mebbe I did allow him to kiss me oncet. Mebbe twice. But no more. And though me heart be broken into a million crims, ee won't see me going all historical—ascreechin' and atearin' out me hair over a man. Look at me hands, calm they be."
The hands she held out were red and work-chapped and nail-bitten, and tears welled in Jessalyn's eyes. She closed her fingers around Becka's rough ones, but Becka jerked away from her and took off running down the cliff path. Jessalyn thought about following, but she could offer the girl little comfort. It was that wretched Duncan she had to see and get set straight on a thing or two.
She returned to the hall, only to be told by one of the earl's two stable hands that the manservant had gone down to Wheal Patience. Something had got to rattling in the pump engine, the boy said, and Duncan was one of the few coves around these parts, besides the earl, who knew how those infernal things were put together. Determined to have it out with the man immediately, Jessalyn set off for the mine.
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