Moonlight on My Mind

by Jennifer McQuiston

  “Might I have a moment to dress?” She held up her dress by way of answer. “I would prefer to meet the solicitor in something more substantial than my night clothes.”

  “Of course.” He pulled the key out of his pocket and handed it to her. “I’ll be waiting downstairs. But lock the door, if you please. The Blue Gander has a bit of a reputation for unruliness.”

  “Apparently, so do I.” She smiled sweetly at him, and he was nearly struck dumb by the blinding simplicity of her unadorned night rail and those upturned lips.

  He pulled the door shut in a muddled fog, trying to dissect why something as simple as a smile from his future bride should bother him so much. He landed on an answer just as his feet made contact with the top step and he still hadn’t heard the key turn in the lock.

  Her smile hadn’t appeared friendly in the slightest. It was a deceptive strategy, a means of distracting her prey so she could bend the situation to her will. Good God, what a complicated woman. But simple or complicated, it no longer signified. The only thing that mattered was that she had agreed to marry him.

  And then he could keep her from testifying against him.

  Chapter 7

  For Julianne, the ceremony was a blur.

  A laughable blur, given that it was conducted over a still-smoking forge and presided over by a great, burly beast of a blacksmith who still had the remnants of his dinner clinging to his beard. For the first time in her life, Julianne was glad her mother was no longer alive to see what had become of her daughter.

  Patrick’s friend Mr. MacKenzie had come along with them. She had expected frowning disapproval, considering the scandalous circumstances of the event unfolding with such blinding speed. But the dark-haired solicitor was cordial to her, if not outright encouraging.

  If the details of the ceremony were difficult to recall, the walk to Patrick’s house from the blacksmith’s shop was equally dim in her memory. No doubt it was cold. And dark. She allowed that there might have been stars. Heavens, there might have been wolves for all that she paid attention. But any physical perils to be encountered on the walk paled in comparison to the emotional dangers of the journey. Every step seemed fraught with the sort of tension that can only occur when one of the married parties was less than enthused by the prospect.

  And it was clear that she was not the one with the most misgivings.

  As Julianne stepped into Patrick’s pitch-black foyer and breathed in the unpleasant things that waited in the darkness, all she could think was that he seemed angry. No matter the earth-shattering kiss he’d offered to seal this devil’s bargain, he’d been closed off and silent from the moment the blacksmith had pronounced them husband and wife. Not that she blamed him. If their situation had been reversed, she might have liked to know the person she was marrying believed in her innocence.

  Or, barring that, regretted his role in the suspicions others held.

  But no matter her feelings, no matter her thoroughly hatched doubts, she wasn’t sure what to say in this moment. Something had happened that November day, something terrible and unchangeable. Marrying Patrick carried a sizable risk, one she hesitated to examine overmuch. She faced far greater ruin if he was eventually convicted of murder than she would have by remaining a soiled spinster. But her shifting memories were leading her to a completely different conclusion regarding his guilt. Surely others would be able to see it as well.

  And while Julianne could perhaps be faulted for often leaping into the fray without proper forethought, she knew this small truth: their wedding night was not the time to dredge up such painful memories.

  The direction of her thoughts was disrupted by eager paws and an even more eager tongue.

  “It looks like Gemmy is happy to see me again,” she offered to the darkness.

  She heard the unmistakable thud of her valise hitting the floor. A metal tin rattled, and then somewhere in the darkness a match flared. The meager bit of light settled around Patrick’s shoulders as he set the flame to the wick of a lantern that hung on the wall. “Gemmy doesn’t know you like I do.”

  She struggled to keep a rein on her own spark of temper. “You do not know me as well as you think.”

  That, finally, earned a backward glance in her direction. “I imagine I shall know you well enough by morning.”

  She swallowed hard. She could admit to herself that she was nervous about things to come, but to hear that he was thinking about it was disconcerting. “Perhaps you’ll even discover something you like.”

  He chuckled. The heavy sound blanketed the narrow walls of the hallway with its sheer unexpectedness. “And perhaps the dog Skip has sprouted a new limb. I’ll need a moment to check for this miracle.” He held out the lantern to her. “Stay here, please. And then I’ll escort you to bed.”

  Julianne took the proffered light and then her new husband disappeared around the corner. Stay here. Lock the door. He might chase the words with a “please,” but it did not change the nature of the commands. He was already ordering her about like one of his canine patients. Clearly, he needed a lesson in the way things would go on between them.

  She picked up her bag with her free hand, though the weight of it gave her pause. He had insisted on bringing it with them. Which meant he intended to spend their wedding night here, in a house better suited for a barn. The issue of cleanliness aside, the coming night sent her thoughts spinning on an uneven axis. She wanted to wrestle back the upper hand she had briefly enjoyed in that room above the Blue Gander. She wanted to strip away Patrick’s hard façade and make him lose all coherent thought.

  And, if she was honest, she wanted to give in to the wicked fever that threatened to consume her, as well.

  At her feet, Gemmy whined and scratched at her skirts. “Does he order you about as well?” she murmured, lifting the bag higher and wondering if she possessed the strength to haul it up a flight of stairs. “I imagine you don’t want to stay in this lonely hallway either.”

  She received a nudge from Gemmy’s nose in return. She wondered how the scruffy animal would get along with her elegant little dog, Constance, who was probably missing her by now. But wondering would not provide the answer, and so she dragged the bag over to the stairwell. Gemmy scrambled along by her feet, his nails clicking on the floorboards.

  “Does he sleep up here then, fellow?”

  Gemmy squeezed past her, and then she was following the little dog up the stairs, hefting her bag up each mile-high step. At least someone knew where they were heading. She would have a look at the room where she would lay her head tonight. And her gruff new husband would learn she was not planning to be a biddable sort of wife.

  He already regretted it.

  Not the act of marrying the woman who had accused him of murder. No, that, in the end, had been surprisingly easy. But the subterfuge behind these vows didn’t sit well. He was a man who had always prided himself on hard work and truth. None of those things had accompanied him into this marriage, and that guilt made him edgy. His instincts urged him to tell Julianne the truth, confess the reasoning behind this plan. Perhaps she’d even understand—the need to protect her neck was every bit as tied up in this drama as the need to guard his own.

  But he needed to be careful. For all her antics, he’d also seen a side of Julianne today that suggested a sensitive heart beat beneath his new wife’s very fashionable exterior. She had been kind to Gemmy, and quick to help an animal in need. She had admitted remorse over the trouble she had caused his family. Had traveled all the way to Scotland to find him on account of that guilt. It would not do to hurt her feelings, merely because of his own festering emotions.

  And he needed his wife happy with him if MacKenzie’s plan was going to work. Because not being compelled to testify against him was not the same thing as not being willing to. And he had a feeling that if scorned, Julianne would prove a formidable enemy, indeed.

  He turned up the lamp he had left burning on the kitchen counter, to find the black and white do
g awake. He crouched down, relieved to find the wound still closed and the sutures tight. The dog’s tail thumped once, twice. A good sign, but not surprising. He had every confidence Skip would be up and walking come morning. He had long since ceased to be amazed by the power of animals to recover from wounds that would have felled the strongest of men. It was one of the reasons he had studied at the veterinary college in Turin instead of seeking out a medical program.

  As a species, humans left much to be desired.

  He set down a bowl of water, which the dog lapped gratefully. “It appears you’ll recover.” He rocked back on his heels, eyeing the dog objectively. He couldn’t logically take an injured dog with him on the journey Julianne had planned for them. David Cameron owed him, particularly after the trouble the man had tossed Patrick’s way. He grinned, imagining his friend’s reaction to a few new pets. “Tomorrow is a new day,” he told the animal. “I’ve in mind a permanent new home for you, as far away from the vicarage as possible.”

  And given Cameron’s long, sordid history with Reverend Ramsey, it seemed sure those two would not cross paths in this life or the next.

  Skip blinked up at him. Patrick stifled the urge to continue the conversation, and instead settled for the requisite pat on the dog’s head. He told himself he didn’t care if Julianne overheard him, or whether she would think him deranged to hold a conversation with an animal. He often did such things—his profession had a way of turning the strangest of creatures into sounding boards.

  But of course, he didn’t want the dog to think he was touched in the head.

  Patrick left his patient to its healing and stepped into the hallway, only to realize Julianne was nowhere to be seen. And she’d apparently taken Gemmy with her. It seemed the little dog would follow anyone with a gentle hand and a pretty smile.

  As he headed up the stairs, anticipation and irritation warred with every footfall. He nudged the door of his bedroom open with his boot, his eyes confirming his suspicions. Julianne sat on his bed dressed in her night rail, the frothy blue gown she had worn to the blacksmith’s folded meticulously beside her. Gemmy’s head rested on his new mistress’s lap, and the faithless terrier eyed Patrick warily, as if he knew his master’s intentions to evict him.

  He stared at her, his body already stirring to life. The marriage required consummation to be considered legal. MacKenzie had been most clear about that—something about Scots law, and that he should leave no cause for an outsider to question the validity of the union. He was still numbed by the whirlwind turn of events that now found him married to one of the most notorious gossips in London, but not so numb he couldn’t admit a delicious anticipation for what came next.

  Of course, he was angry that he wanted to bed her.

  Hell, he was angry she made it so easy, negotiating the terms of a marriage settlement wearing only a filmy night rail. But it was an interest that would not be dissuaded, no matter his stern mental lectures on the topic.

  The sodding truth was she made a beautifully tidy package there in the clutter of his room, buttoned up and prim amid the comfortable rumple of his bedclothes, as if she was waiting to be unwrapped. She had taken her hair down, and he had to swallow his surprise at the sight of it, half dried and curling against her shoulders. Her hair didn’t fall in a neat, orderly pile. No, nothing about Julianne would be so predictable, or so obedient. Each copper-colored coil writhed with life in a separate but downward journey. He wanted to catch one in his hand, run his fingers over it before moving on to touch other interesting parts of her.

  Instead, he set the lamp he had carried from the kitchen on the top of his bureau, then shrugged out of his coat. He tossed it over a chair littered with open books and periodicals, causing a small army of paper to slide onto the floor in an ungracious heap—not that a few more made much difference on his hazard-strewn floor. The brewing altercation made the blood in his veins contract. “I asked you to wait in the hallway for your safety, Julianne. The stairwell is in disrepair, and half the boards need to be replaced. I am amazed I didn’t have to step over your broken neck to get here.”

  “You didn’t ask me to wait.” She smiled, and he was struck again by the sense that despite the graciousness of the gesture, she was merely baring her teeth. “You ordered me to.”

  A potent melding of exasperation and lust claimed Patrick’s focus. Trying to force Julianne to do anything was a bit like playing at the hazard table: one never knew what was going to turn up on the dice. He was her husband, and just an hour ago, she’d promised the blacksmith she would obey him. But she was proving a handful to steer in a straight line, and that made him uneasy on the matter of convincing her to withhold her testimony.

  Her gaze lowered to the terrier still lolling happily in her lap. “And I confess some surprise to hear you care about my safety,” she continued, her lips more a hesitant quiver now, “given that you derided Gemmy for greeting me with any measure of affection.”

  Christ. Is that was this was about? There was no denying she was a bloody, beautiful mess when she was angry. Indeed, she appeared nigh on luminous in her nightclothes, her unbound curls twitching about her shoulders. But there was nothing of affection in his reaction to such a sight. Did she expect platitudes and whispers of love?

  Because if she did, she had sorely overestimated his esteem.

  “I like you well enough, Julianne,” he replied, his voice a cautious drawl. And he did. Or rather, he liked her as a solution to his problem. He supposed he should soften his tone, but the woman brought something out in him. It seemed they were always sliding on the razor’s edge of a row, her words as sharp and cutting as any knife.

  But his cock did not seem to care. It had embraced its own ideas from the moment he’d seen her sitting in the middle of his unmade bed.

  “How does the patient fare?” Her words burrowed beneath his distraction, pulling him back to the intellectual dilemma she presented.

  “Awake. Drinking. All good signs.”

  “What will you do with him in the morning? Surely you won’t give him back to that odious vicar?”

  Patrick shook his head. “No, David Cameron owes me a favor, after having such loose lips in Brighton.” He smiled grimly. “Skip will be in good hands with him. I’ll try to convince him to take the lamb too.”

  “And what will you do with Gemmy?”

  At the sound of his name, Gemmy’s tail thumped hopefully against the bed. Was she really so heartless to imagine he would leave his dog behind? “Gemmy will come with us,” he said firmly. He would entertain no opinions to the contrary, no matter how dazzling her smile.

  “I am relieved to hear that.” She ran a hand over the dog’s fur in a manner that made Patrick’s stiffened spine relax a fraction of an inch. “I confess I’ve grown attached to him.” Clearly returning the sentiment, the terrier rolled over and offered her his belly, wriggling in the sheets. She stared down, and her brow pinched in thought. “When was the last time your bed linens were changed?”

  “Are you offering to wash them for me?” He began to work the buttons of his shirt. “Because you might want to wait until after we’ve soiled them properly.”

  Her eyes met his in an ominous flash of green heat. “I’ve seen stables with cleaner floors than yours. For heaven’s sake, you’re likely to give Gemmy fleas. You need a housekeeper.”

  “I’ve a wife.” He shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it away, perversely enjoying the way her eyes widened to follow the article’s deliberate, ceremonious path to the floor. “I’ve been told they are nearly one in the same.”

  At her strangled gasp, Gemmy hopped down from the bed and slunk for the shadows. Smart dog. Patrick took advantage of the newly vacated space on the bed and sat down to tug off his boots, hiding his grin behind clenched teeth. Then he eased back onto the mattress, holding fast at the invisible battle line that stretched between them.

  He cast up a brief prayer she wouldn’t clock him over the head with something for his i
nsolence. Proximity was necessary for the coming business, and whether she realized it or not, he was working his way toward her, slowly but surely, the same way he would approach a skittish animal that required his ministrations.

  He dwelled a moment on her scent. Even her fragrance was a poor match for him. She smelled clean, like soap and spice, heated to the point of combustion. He smelled of his daily activities: sheep, sweat, and probably something worse.

  And yet . . . as always, there was this odd, nettling attraction he felt in her presence, a surprising flare of interest that defied a scientific explanation. His thoughts were usually more ordered than this. More focused. Certainly more logical. For some reason, being around Julianne made him less like himself.

  Or was it that she made him feel more?

  He paused over that a moment, there on the bed beside her. His life in Moraig was orderly. Predictable. Perhaps, to some, it might even be considered tedious. He preferred it that way. It suited his character, this steadiness of spirit. But if he was pressed to point to the most enjoyable parts of his life, he could not deny he found more inspiration in the rare, heart-pounding moments—such as the need to save an animal whose life was literally in his hands.

  The thought of the coming skirmish with Julianne made him feel much the same way.

  She had once informed him—quite suggestively—that he’d think about her when he finally made it to his bed. And he had thought of her that November night, alone in his room, the memory of her quick wit and tempting smile every bit as potent as the kiss he had so brashly claimed, there in the foyer. If he was being truthful, he’d thought of her more than was sensible, even after she’d accused him of murder. The chit had made damned sure she was not someone he would ever forget, no matter the havoc she had wrought in his life.

  He concentrated on breathing a moment. Reminded himself she was the means to a necessary end, not a treat to be savored. She was neither a hopeful wish nor a regrettable memory. Tonight she was here. His for the taking.