Moonlight on My Mind

by Jennifer McQuiston

  The vicar finally seemed to shake himself to lucidity, though his eyes did not leave her chest. “I confess, I had not pegged you for someone who would consort with a woman of questionable virtue, Mr. Channing.”

  Julianne’s irritation shifted into peevish territory. Nothing untoward had happened here, and she refused to act as if it had. This gentleman might be a vicar, and she might be a girl who hid her poor eyesight from the world, but even she could see hypocrisy when it was dangled in front of her nose. She fitted a smile to her face, summoning her three years of experience dealing with London drawing rooms. “Why, how refreshing it is to hear a man stand in judgment of a woman. And how original of you, sir.”

  A wheezing sound gripped the vicar’s throat, and his eyes bugged round in his skull. “Reverend Ramsey,” Patrick said hurriedly, taking the man by the arm and steering him toward the sleeping dog. “I realize this seems a bit . . . improper. But Miss Baxter is an old family friend, the daughter of the Viscount Avery.” He glanced over his shoulder, and motioned with his chin toward the fabric she clutched in her hands. “She is here only because she assisted with your dog’s surgery today.”

  Julianne lifted a brow. That wasn’t precisely true, and they both knew it. Then again, she supposed he’d scarcely burn in hell for the sin of lying to a vicar when he had other more impressive ones at the ready.

  As the pair bent to inspect the black and white dog, Julianne turned back to the stove and wrung her lingering irritation out on the wet bodice. The bloodstain was still there. If anything, it was even more noticeable, now that the other layers of dirt had been loosened. With no other choice on the horizon, she slipped the damp fabric over her shoulders, though her skin practically screamed in objection. Only when she felt she could face them with some degree of respectability did she turn back around.

  “It’s not my dog,” the vicar was saying. “Skip is . . . taller.”

  “The dog is lying down.” Patrick’s voice echoed with a dry wit she remembered from their oft-remembered waltz, so many months ago.

  “Well, it looks nothing like Skip. You’d know that if you attended church more often.”

  “I attend as much as my conscience bids me.” Patrick’s voice remained flat, the picture of disinterest. “And for all that it was a puppy the last time I saw him, it strikes me that this animal is either your dog or its twin.”

  How does he do that? Julianne wondered. How could someone remain so steady in the face of such derision? Despite the underlying sarcasm evident in his choice of words, Patrick outwardly appeared no more ruffled than if he was flicking a fly off his evening meal. She wanted to rake her nails across the vicar’s face, and she was only watching the interplay.

  Julianne drifted closer, trying to unravel the odd pieces of the conversation. To cover the fact she was hovering, she picked up the bloodied saw that still sat upon the table, ran a dish towel over its length, and replaced it in the cupboard. A sudden silence sent her peeking over her shoulder. Patrick was staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face.

  The good vicar, however, was glowering. “Miss Baxter, wasn’t it? You certainly seem at home here, for someone who is merely visiting a spell.”

  “Jul— that is, Miss Baxter is not staying,” Patrick said quickly. “I had planned to deliver her to the Blue Gander so she can take a room for the night.”

  Ramsey smiled nastily. “It is clear she has assisted you with something here this afternoon, Mr. Channing, and I’ll wager it’s something more than surgery. Although I suppose the Gander is as good a place as any for a tryst. It’s a veritable den of iniquity.”

  Julianne had heard enough. She slammed the cupboard door shut and conjured the frosty Society miss she kept bottled for special occasions. “There has been no seduction, Reverend, no matter your slavering imagination on the topic.”

  Patrick took a step toward her. “Miss Baxter—”

  Julianne dismissed him with a sharp wave of her hand. “I shall forgive you for not knowing that this man is the new Earl of Haversham, given that the news has not yet reached Moraig. However, from this point on, you will address him as my lord, as is his due.”

  The vicar began to sputter.

  “Julianne—” Patrick said, more sharply this time.

  “And next time you choose to question my virtue, you might consider averting your eyes. I am sure the good Lord would not wish you to risk permanent damage to your vision.”

  The vicar’s face turned a frightening shade of red she had only ever seen in overripe berries. He looked from Julianne, to Patrick, back to Julianne again. And then he stormed out of the kitchen, leaving the dog to its admittedly brighter fate.

  Patrick exhaled loudly as the bang of the front door echoed faintly from the front of the house. His gaze settled awkwardly on her mouth, which had the unexpected—and unwelcome—effect of making her skin flush warm, no matter the travesty of her cold, wet bodice. “You’ve quite the tongue on you, Julianne.”

  She bit back a smile at his automatic use of her first name. “A consequence of my education at the hands of the ton, I’m afraid. That man is a bully.”

  He nodded slowly. “Aye. He is that. But I’m afraid Reverend Ramsey also holds the ear of every rumormonger in town.”

  She tucked an errant curl behind one ear, wincing as she realized exactly how much of her hair was springing free. She probably did look as if she had just tumbled out of bed. Still, she doubted Reverend Ramsey held quite as much sway in the town as Patrick credited him. “Honestly, the man is a lecher. And if you’ve been able to hide in plain sight for eleven months, it suggests the information flow in Moraig is predominantly circular.”

  “Still, I suspect everyone here will know of this by morning.”

  Julianne smiled tightly. Even should the information leak forth, she could not imagine it reaching London. “How fortuitous, then, that we shall not be here come morning.”

  His lips tipped downward. “Oh?”

  She nodded. “We’ll be on the coach to Inverness, and then on to Summersby.”

  Patrick’s eyes probed hers, suddenly cold for all their rich brown color. “I’ve agreed to nothing of the sort, and well you know it.”

  Julianne looked away first and smoothed an uncomfortable hand over the front of her ruined bodice. No, blast the man. He’d not agreed to it. Not yet.

  And that had her very, very worried.

  Chapter 5

  Patrick left Julianne at the Blue Gander in the hands of the innkeeper whose eyes had brightened at the arrival of a moneyed guest from London, even one wearing a filthy, wet dress. Guilt trailed him for depositing her there, but he told himself he wasn’t abandoning her. For Christ’s sake, she’d traipsed across the entirety of Scotland without a chaperone. She could survive a bloody night on the Blue Gander’s sheets.

  At least here she’d find servants to order about. Indeed, as he headed for the posting house, the sound of her voice trailed him out the door, already demanding a hot bath and tray of food to be brought up to her room.

  The quiet of the street should have felt like a balm to his soul after the last few hours in her stinging presence, but instead, the darkness sent his thoughts tumbling. He’d lost a brother in the last year, and Julianne’s claim that he had now lost his father was still untenable.

  It was easier to keep grief at bay when one considered whose lips had delivered the news. He reminded himself he’d seen this woman lie before: beautifully, flawlessly, with tears in her eyes and the perfect, thin waver to her voice. Then, she’d been describing how she had seen him point his hunting rifle at his brother and pull the trigger.

  Annoyance coiled beneath his skin as he stepped into the posting house. He was willing to admit a role in his brother’s death. Grief had not clouded his judgment in this regard—he blamed himself almost every day. The truth was there, and he was man enough to take responsibility for his actions. But not for the account she had provided to the world—and, more importantly,
to the magistrate.

  Mr. Jeffers had already gone home for the evening, but Julianne’s bag and his own letter were produced by a dutiful clerk. Patrick returned to the Blue Gander with no clearer a plan than when he had left Julianne there, but he did take a childish pleasure in at least denying her the courtesy of dry clothing while he indulged in a much-needed drink. He carried her bag to a table at the farthest corner of the inn’s public room, dropped his limbs into a chair, and ordered up a whisky he couldn’t afford instead of the pint he ought to have.

  He searched her bag first, though his actions gave him the merest moment’s pause. His fingers tripped over filmy nightclothes and silk stockings and endless handfuls of neatly folded frocks that looked better suited for garden tea parties than a sojourn to northern Scotland in autumn. He took pleasure in shaking them apart, destroying the evidence of her care in packing.

  Childish, perhaps, but one had so few chances to get the best of Miss Julianne Baxter.

  When he had firmly established she carried neither a weapon nor a sensible cloak with her, his impatience and his conscience finally gained enough ground to move on. Pulling the letter from his coat pocket, he studied the address. By tacit agreement, his father’s letters had been forwarded through a trusted third party to avoid detection by the authorities, though they had all been written—and addressed—in his father’s hand. His stomach turned over as he admitted to himself this missive was already different. The other letters had been addressed in a tight, neat scrawl, his father’s mark of efficiency.

  This one held loops and flourishes. A feminine hand.

  His mother’s hand.

  He broke the plain wax seal with his lungs sealed tight, then scanned the pages with an almost fatalistic sense of expectation. Regret to inform . . .

  Dire circumstances . . .

  Please come home.

  He read the last line three different times, scarcely able to make sense of it. What, exactly, was he to come home to? His mother believed him guilty. Or at least she had, once upon a time. Worse than the puzzle of his mother’s words was the irrefutable proof that Julianne appeared to be telling the truth, at least in the matter of his father’s death.

  He scrubbed a hand across his face, wondering how his mother had even known where he was. She must have, all these months when he’d thought she wanted nothing to do with him. And yet, she’d not set the authorities to his path, though she’d believed him well guilty that day he’d left. Too afraid to lose yet another son, even one such as he?

  Or had forgiveness finally found its way into her heart?

  The grief he had held at bay this full hour past surged upward like a welling tide. His family had always been close, and Eric’s death had been hard on all of them. He could not imagine what his mother and sisters must be going through in this moment, dealing with such an unexpected blow as his father’s death alone. He swallowed the anguish that lodged thick in the base of his throat. By the devil . . . his father. Gone. The title in question.

  The estate in the balance.

  As if summoned by his inner turmoil, Patrick’s friends James MacKenzie and David Cameron strode through the door, jostling and joking and sliding about. They threw themselves into the chairs opposite him.

  “Heard you carried off Reverend Ramsey’s dog to surgery this afternoon,” MacKenzie said with cheerful deviltry. He eyed Patrick’s glass and signaled for the serving girl to bring him one of the same. “I trust you charged the bastard double if you are celebrating with whisky.”

  Patrick schooled his features into what he hoped was some measure of calm. He was usually the quieter one of the group, the studious counterweight his friends relied on to balance their more volatile natures. But in the hours since Julianne Baxter had bounced into his life, he’d been turned on end and inside out, and now he felt close to exploding. “Why are you both here?” he growled. “Did your wives toss your tiresome arses out already?”

  “They are both attending this evening’s meeting of the Ladies’ Philanthropic Society.” James grinned. “Which leaves us free to have a wee drink.”

  David Cameron snorted. “Wee drink? I’d suggest we start with a full bottle, and proceed posthaste from there.”

  His words rang with the same brogue as James’s, marking them both as Moraig locals. Though he’d been here eleven months, at times Patrick still felt like an outsider. He’d felt that way sometimes when they had all attended Cambridge, the youngest of the group by three years. Although James and David had been at each other’s throats for much of the past year, they appeared to have forged a happier peace in recent days. The sight of their new camaraderie would have warmed Patrick, if not for the grief that numbed his bones.

  David held up a finger to the serving girl. The servant predictably inclined her head as if to say she’d be happy to serve up a bit more than the requested drink, but he did no more than return his attention to the table and grin at the two of them. Patrick raised a brow that his friend should so flawlessly pass such a blatant test. He would have once laid money David would have been the last man standing in their small circle of friends, happily whoring his way through life.

  It was disconcerting for Patrick to realize he was now the odd man out.

  The Gander was not yet busy, given the early hour for drinking, and his friends’ whisky arrived before Patrick could make any real headway on his. David raised his glass and smiled across the table. “What shall we toast tonight, gentlemen? The future?”

  James held up his own glass. “Aye, I think the future could use a toast. Mrs. MacKenzie has given me permission to share the news, at long last. Looks like I’ll be a father, come February.”

  David clinked his glass against James’s. “Oh, I say, that is brilliant news! Given the way Channing cocked up the job sewing you up a few months ago, he’ll need those few months to practice for the wee one’s delivery.”

  The smile fell away from James’s face.

  “Georgette will not need help of that sort,” Patrick assured him, seeking to assuage the swift flare of panic in his friend’s eyes. He had suspected this for some time, given Georgette’s changing shape, but it was good to hear it from his friend’s lips. “Georgette is young and healthy and I have the utmost faith in Moraig’s midwife.”

  James nodded, but sipped his whisky a bit less exuberantly.

  “And I regret to say I won’t be here for the happy occasion.” Patrick dislodged his friend’s surprised looks with a grim smile. “I’ve received a bit of news today. I am to be charged with murder, it seems.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence. And then David laughed. “Is this about that business with McBride’s horse again? Honestly, someone had to put a bullet in the animal’s head. It had been down for a week. And how much whisky have you had? It’s not like you to start without us.”

  “I am not jesting.” Patrick stared moodily into his glass. He had carefully kept the details of his brother’s death hidden from his friends, but things were already sliding to hell and gathering speed. They would hear about it soon enough, and he preferred to be the one to impart the information, rather than the gossip-prone beauty lounging in her upstairs bath.

  “My brother died this past November.” He raised the glass to his lips and took a hearty swallow. “We’d been hunting—arguing, actually—and a shot went astray.”

  “Eric is . . . dead?” At Patrick’s nod, James exhaled slowly. “That’s a bit of terrible news. You always spoke of him with such affection when we were at Cambridge. I remember being envious that you actually seemed to get on with your family.”

  David nodded his agreement. “Condolences seem a bit tardy, all things considered.” His gaze turned sharp. “All this time, some eleven months, you’ve been walking around Moraig tending our cattle and sewing up our dogs, and you’ve been the heir to an earldom?”

  Patrick answered with a curt nod, the all-too-natural question scraping at his conscience.

  “Why didn’t you tell
us about your brother’s death when you arrived?” David pressed. “We’re friends, Channing. We would have helped.”

  “Because . . .” Patrick shook the cobwebs of regret and hesitation from his head. “It may have been an accident, but mine was the bullet that struck him.”

  There was a long silence as his friends wrapped their heads around his explanation. “Bugger that,” David finally breathed, his knuckles white around the glass in his hand.

  “There were questions, naturally. My father had somehow suppressed much of the talk, probably because of his influence and friendship with the local magistrate, but his recent death has loosened the control he’d kept over the process.”

  His two friends regarded him a long moment, then cast surreptitious glances at each other. David spoke first. “Your father has died too?”

  “He died last week.” Patrick gestured to the letter that still lay open on the table beside him. “I’ve had a letter from home. Now that my father is gone, an inquest has finally been called. I suspect it’s a mere formality until I’m charged with murder.”

  James regarded Patrick a long, studious moment, appearing every inch the solicitor he was trained to be. “But if it was an accident, it seems more appropriate to classify it as manslaughter, not murder.”

  Patrick felt jerked back to the pain of that day. “A witness claimed she saw me aim for my brother. In the eyes of many, there was a logical motive. Eric was the heir. His death left me in line for succession.” Indeed, it seemed few had refused to entertain the possibility of his complicity in a darker plot.