Read Once in a Blue Moon for Free Online Page B

boards of Covent Garden.
    "God's me life, me nerves be frazzled worse'n a hangman's rope. And there's a gret big pain in me chest. Heart pulpy-taties, I be havin'—"
    "Palpitations," Lady Letty said with a sigh, and tossed down a hefty swallow of port.
    "Aye. Pulpy-taties. I'd better be takin' a double dose of rhubarb powder afore retirin' this night, else I'll not be gettin' a wink o' sleep."
     
    Becka Poole's hearty snores floated down from the attic, croaking and creaking like a pondful of frogs.
    Jessalyn rolled onto her stomach and pulled the pillow over her head. Normally she could sleep through anything. She was famous for it in truth—ever since she had slept through a Cornish flagh, a great storm that had uprooted a big elm tree and sent it crashing like a battering ram through her bedroom window. Tonight the air was still, with no sounds to disturb her except for the distant whisper of the surf, the occasional cry of a curlew, and Becka's snores. A small but comforting fire burned in the grate, and a hot brick had been rubbed between the sheets of her old-fashioned box bed. All in her world was as it should be, as it had always been since her first night at End Cottage, and yet...
    Yet there was an ache in her chest, a muted ache that had been swelling all evening, like a pan of dough set to rise on the windowsill.
    "Bloody hell." Jessalyn punched the pillow, then rolled onto her back, staring wide-eyed at the shadow-filled dark. She counted Becka's snores, getting as far as forty-one, before she kicked off the covers and got up.
    Lighting a candle, she went over to the cheval looking glass that stood beside her clothespress. She tilted the mirror so that she could look at the full length of herself, frowning at what she saw. The hem of her night rail gaped several inches too short, showing off her thin legs and big feet. The last time she'd gone to Penzance to be fitted for a new dress the mantua-maker had poked her ribs and said she was as skinny as a new-spawned herring. She hadn't grown any curvier in the intervening months, though she had certainly grown taller.
    You are a rather gawky, gangly thing....
    She picked up the candle and moved closer to the mirror. Gram said her hair was a loamy color, like the last russet leaves of autumn before they were stripped by the winter winds. That was a lot of flummery; red was red. She would have plucked out every single hair from her head if she could have been assured it would grow back blond. Gram also said she had strong, enduring bones, that she would be thankful for such bones when she was forty. But forty was old; of what use would good bones be then? It was her mouth anyway that spoiled her face. It was a clown's mouth, wide and red.
    She stuck two fingers into the sides of her mouth and pushed her lips apart, wiggling her tongue and making her eyes bulge out like a cockchafer's. She started to laugh, but the laughter caught in her throat.
    She knew she wasn't pretty, but it hadn't seemed to matter before. Well, perhaps it had always mattered a little....
    A man like him, though. He was handsome, even in his hard-mouthed way. And an earl's brother, too. He could have any girl he set his fancy for. She could tell that just by the way he talked, that cocky, teasing way he had of talking, that girls, women, always took to him. Anyone he fancied.
    He wouldn't look twice at a girl like her.
    She turned away from the looking glass. An old walnut bureau with peeling varnish stood next to the window, listing to starboard, for it had lost one of its feet. Jessalyn went to it and took out the journal that Gram had given her for her birthday four months ago. She ran her palm over the tooled Spanish leather, dyed an emerald green. With reverent care she opened the cover, breathing deeply the smell of crisp, new paper. The leaves were slick and smooth like silk, gilded gold on the edges. She had never written in it. She felt an odd reluctance to spoil the pristine whiteness