Moonlight on My Mind

by Jennifer McQuiston

  She pretended to study the meager selection of fabrics, waiting until the shopkeeper’s attention was fully absorbed with the new arrival. Then she pulled back the velvet curtain and stepped behind it, letting it fall with a muffled rush.

  In the rear of the shop, the atmosphere was markedly different. Fabric was offensively strewn about, with little rhyme or reason, and chaos was the order of the day. The air hung thick with the scent of silk and wool and lamp oil, and Julianne wrinkled her nose against the unpleasant scents. The girl with dark hair was bent over a pile of piecework in one corner, and Julianne’s chest felt hollow as she spied her.

  “Prudence,” she whispered.

  The former maid leaped to her feet, and the fabric in her lap slipped to the floor. “Oh!” Her hand fluttered about her chest. “You . . . you startled me.” She sounded close to breathless. “You . . . that is, customers aren’t allowed back here.”

  “Which is why you retreated behind the curtain, isn’t it, Prudence? You should remember from last November, I am not so easily dissuaded.”

  “Please, Miss Baxter.” The girl was trembling visibly now. “I . . . I can’t risk getting sacked. Not from this job too.”

  Julianne knew the vivid flush of triumph. She’d not broken her promise to Patrick, and yet she’d stumbled across the maid anyway. “It is no longer Miss Baxter. I am Lady Haversham now. And what do you mean, sacked? The whole point of my speaking on your behalf in November was to make sure you weren’t blamed.”

  “It is not so simple, miss. A house in mourning doesn’t have house parties,” Prudence choked out. “Or hire new maids. I’ve been out of work since November last. My mum is sick, and the doctor is expensive. I had to come from Leeds to take this job, even though I knew it was a poor idea to come back to Shippington.”

  “That may explain why you are working here, but why are you afraid to speak with me?” Julianne demanded. The former servant’s cowardice had gotten them in this muddle, and a bit of explanation was the very least she was owed. “Perhaps you would prefer I fetch the magistrate so you may explain it to him?”

  That, finally, brought a flush to the girl’s pale cheeks. Her gaze darted toward a bolted door at the rear of the room, but Julianne stepped to the left, effectively blocking the girl’s escape. By God, she would be caught in last year’s fashions before she let the chit fly out the back door now.

  Prudence wrapped her arms around herself, her chest heaving in protest. “Please,” she moaned. “I can’t speak with you about this.”

  Julianne slipped closer to the frightened girl and tried on a more soothing tone, the sort she typically reserved for first-year debutantes who had ripped the hems of their ball gowns or spilled punch down the front of their bodices. “Nothing is going to happen to you, Prudence. I just want to talk to you about what happened last November.”

  “Oh . . .” the girl moaned, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I knew this job was trouble.”

  Julianne only narrowly resisted the temptation to shake the former maid’s thoughts back to center. “Focus, if you please, on the matter of what has you so upset to see me. And why do you so object to Shippington? It’s just a town.”

  “Being so close to Summersby brings back terrible memories of that day,” Prudence cried softly. “I told myself it would be all right, that you had gone back to London. But then I . . . I saw you. Walking in the procession for Lord Haversham’s funeral. And that was when I knew I had made a dreadful mistake.”

  Julianne fought back an impatient huff. “What has seeing me at the funeral to do with any of this?”

  Prudence swiped a hand across her eyes. “I didn’t only see you. I also saw . . .” Her voice fell to a tear-soaked whisper. “I saw the man who held the rifle that day.”

  Julianne’s heart began to thump in her chest. Surely she’d misheard the girl. Surely it couldn’t be so simple. Patrick had not been at the funeral. “Are you sure?” she pressed, her mind racing with swift surety toward a new conclusion, one she’d never considered in all these long months.

  “I’m quite sure I shall never forget that face,” Prudence choked out. “I see him in my nightmares.”

  By the stars. It was unconscionable.

  And yet . . . now that she considered it, Prudence’s explanation made so much more sense than the one they had all presumed to be true. Julianne had seen someone running away from the scene. Prudence had been adamant she’d seen a man aim and pull the trigger. That she could have overlooked such an obvious fit to the events of that morning made her lungs feel heavy now with regret. “Do you know who the man is?” Julianne demanded.

  “No.” The girl shook her head, swallowing a hiccup. “I was so surprised, I just dashed into the nearest shop and waited for the funeral procession to pass on by.” She swallowed, and accepted the kerchief Julianne handed her to wipe her eyes. “I was not of a mind to march right up and ask his name, mind you.”

  Excitement coursed through Julianne’s limbs. As chilling as the idea was that someone might have purposefully murdered Eric, this, finally, was the proof Patrick needed to convince everyone of his innocence. She needed to tell him.

  She needed Prudence to tell him.

  Surely he couldn’t be angry with her. She hadn’t purposefully tracked the girl to ground. And Prudence had just named someone else as the killer.

  Well, not named exactly, but still . . .

  Julianne swallowed the lump of excitement swelling in her throat. “Where was this man standing when you saw him?” she pressed. Perhaps it didn’t matter that Prudence did not know the man’s name. Julianne had attended the funeral, after all. Perhaps she could name the killer herself, although she was loath to go down this particular, twisted path again.

  Prudence shuddered. “He was standing near the family.”

  “Was he tall or short? Portly or fit?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. He was taller than you, I think.”

  Julianne recalled with frustration how she’d needed to similarly extract the description of the killer in November. That had turned out poorly, but this time, she was determined not to leap to an incorrect conclusion. “What color was his hair?”

  “I couldn’t tell. He was wearing a tall black hat. And . . . and a black coat.”

  Julianne struggled against a building impatience as she realized they were speaking of a man of unknown name and hair color, who would have the audacity to wear black to a funeral, and who was possibly—but not decidedly—taller than her. “If you cannot recall any of this, how can you be sure he was the man who pulled the trigger?” she asked in irritation.

  “ ’Twas his eyes.” Prudence exhaled, shuddering with the effort. “I’ll never forget them. So cold. Like he could see through me. He looked up toward the folly when the smoke cleared, and it felt like the hand of death was settling over me.” The girl’s voice rasped low. “He did the same thing during the funeral. Looked right at me.”

  Good heavens. Julianne supposed that explained Prudence’s hysterics last November well enough, as well as her white-faced terror now. “Was he a guest at Summersby?” she pressed. “Or perhaps a servant?”

  “He did not eat with the servants during the November house party. And . . . he wasn’t dressed like a servant. His clothes were finer than that.”

  A terrible thought occurred to Julianne, like a gust of wind that scraped skeleton branches against windows in the dead of winter. Many of the guests who had attended the funeral were still in residence, a perpetual plague of Patrick’s family and friends who would not leave.

  Whoever this was, he could still be at Summersby.

  She grasped the girl’s arm. “Prudence, you must come with me. You must tell someone.”

  “Oh no, miss,” Prudence protested through a fresh wave of tears. “I couldn’t. I’ve told you all I know.” She tugged against Julianne’s ruthless grip. “I . . . I would like to go now.”

  “Go where? You’ve the shop to mind, or you’ll lose your
position. And you’ve said you need the money.” An idea took root. “Let me help you. You said you wished you had not come to Shippington. I could help you get back to Leeds, if you will but assist me with this small matter. How much to pay your mum’s doctor, and make sure you have enough to set by?”

  Prudence stilled. “Oh . . . would you, miss? Perhaps a few quid? If you’ll grant me this, I promise, I shall disappear and you’ll never see me again.”

  Julianne released her hold on the girl’s arm to dig through her reticule. “I shall give you four—no, five gold sovereigns, but you must come back to Summersby with me and help identify the man who killed Lord Haversham’s son.”

  “But . . . the killer could be there. What if he saw me that day? What if he tries to kill me?”

  Her fearful tone ruffled Julianne’s sympathy, but not her resolve. “Don’t you see?” Julianne stretched out her palm, hoping the fistful of coins she had retrieved from her purse would be enough temptation for Prudence to stay. “The man, whoever he is, is most certainly dangerous. If you stay silent, someone else could be hurt by him.”

  Prudence reached out her hand and cupped the coins. She seemed to weigh them a moment, closing her eyes against whatever internal struggle claimed her. When her lids next opened, her face crumpled with new tears. “I . . . I am sorry, miss. I wish I could help you, truly. Please, have a care for yourself. I’d hate to see you hurt.” And then she lunged to the door, threw the bolt, and fell out into a spear of sunlight.

  “Wait!” Julianne cried, scrambling to give chase. She tossed herself after the terrified girl, her heart pounding a terrified hole in her chest. She had just found the woman who held the key to Patrick’s acquittal.

  She could not lose her now.

  Desperation surged through her as she stumbled into a back alley. In her vastly inappropriate heels, the walls of the nearby buildings proved too narrow to do little more than lurch unsteadily a few steps at a time. A horrible smell wafted on the air, along with a swarm of black flies. She could see the hem of Prudence’s skirt disappearing some hundred feet or so up ahead. Were there five doors leading off into the flanking buildings? Or were there six?

  She aimed in the general direction where she imagined Prudence had gone, only to trip over a refuse barrel from a butcher shop.

  She tumbled to the ground, and blackness crept in on the periphery of her vision as she tried desperately to shake the bits of offal from her hands. Her body insisted she scream, but she shoved the instinctive urge away. Because being tangled in a barrel of intestines was not the worst possible thing that had happened to her today. Patrick’s brother had very likely been murdered in cold blood, and the deed had been pinned on Patrick. Prudence was gone, the five sovereigns with her.

  And Julianne had no idea who the killer might be.

  Patrick knew she was looking for him, even before he saw her.

  His awareness of her was often subtle, a shift in the atmosphere of the house. Julianne was a force unto herself, and it should not surprise him that the air would bend to her will. But the rumpus down the hallway was no bending of air. It sounded as though a herd of cattle had been admitted to the front foyer.

  She was probably feeling neglected and stomping about to demand her fair share of attention. God knew he’d rather put his hours to better use enjoying his wife than sorting through Summersby’s accounts, but if he was to take over the estate and leave it well prepared in the event things took a regrettable turn, this afternoon’s focus had been necessary.

  He kneaded the knot that had taken hold in the back of his neck as the sound of her heels clipped down the corridor. Perhaps an hour’s diversion and then a return to the books would not be remiss. He glanced out the window and was shocked to see evening shadows stretching across the lawn. No longer afternoon, then.

  Perhaps she had a reason to be angry.

  He pushed back from his father’s desk and the task that had occupied his attention for the entirety of his afternoon. He’d resisted sitting down to it at first. He’d presumed, as he had all these years, that the work of managing the estate was tedium personified. And indeed, he’d spent the first hour staring at the notes scribbled by his father’s steward and gnashing his teeth. But as he’d slowly begun to apply a more clinical eye, he had been surprised to discover there was a pattern to the work, a need to sort out problems and apply an appropriate intervention. Not that different from the practice of veterinary medicine, really.

  He’d spent the latter part of the afternoon working out solutions and feeling somewhat more optimistic about filling his father’s shoes.

  A knock came, firm and quick and so very Julianne that it sent a smile blooming on his face. He took a step toward the door, already contemplating how he might reap the benefits of his wife, spitting mad and looking for his undivided attention. By the devil, she had proven a surprise this week. He’d thought he was marrying her as the means to an end, only to discover that the means was the most pleasurable part of it.

  He opened the door and his smile fell away, chased by the sight of her. She didn’t look angry. She looked awful. In fact, she looked so awful his eyes simply didn’t know where to land.

  Her hair was coming down from its pins, and her skirts were smeared with blood—clearly not her own, given the remaining bits of gore clinging to the fabric. Had she taken a spill off her horse and injured them both? Tried her hand in the kitchen, as both scullery maid and cook? Butchered a bloody cow?

  “What has happened?” he demanded.

  She closed the door and leaned back against it. “Would you happen to have some brandy?”

  The scratch of her voice only plucked more violently at his misgivings. “What has happened that I should need a drink to hear your confession?” he asked slowly.

  “It is for me, Patrick. Not you.” She drew a haggard breath. “I’ve ordered a bath, but I wanted to speak with you before I went up.”

  He sniffed. Not even a fresh cow. She smelled worse than she looked, if such a thing were possible. And this was Julianne. If she felt this conversation was more important than bathing, something was dreadfully wrong indeed.

  He poured her a glass of brandy. She drained it, sputtering only a second before holding it out for more. He added another finger and then waited for her to explain herself.

  Her fingers curved around the delicate crystal glass. “I’ve been to town.”

  “I had not realized you’d gone out.” Indeed, he’d been preoccupied with books the entirety of the day, and he’d neither seen nor heard her until now, with the sun almost gone from the sky. There was plenty to get a body into trouble in Shippington. Particularly if that body—delectable though it might be—belonged to his wife.

  A pulse of worry rounded through him. God’s teeth, what had she done, that she was tossing back brandy as though it was water? Something had happened on her trip into town, and he’d wager it wasn’t anything as innocuous as meeting the vicar in her shift.

  “I’ve seen Prudence.”

  A tensile silence descended over them. He could almost swear he could hear the irregular beating of her heart. Or perhaps it was his own, bounding in denial.

  The afternoon’s success in his father’s chair fell away. It scarcely mattered whether he felt more competent now to assume the responsibility of the title if the gallows loomed once again on the horizon. But worse was the shattering sense of betrayal that snaked through him. Over the course of the past week, he’d begun to hope—and believe—in a future. With her.

  He’d placed his life in her hands, despite better sense, despite even the tutelage of history to guide him. He ought to have known better.

  “For the love of God, Julianne, you promised me not even a week ago you would not,” he snarled, knowing he sounded like a wounded animal, and feeling little better.

  “Please don’t shout at me, Patrick. I’ve had a devil of a day.” The finger she pressed to her forehead left an offensive smear on one temple. “I did not
go to town intending to find Prudence. I only went to visit the seamstress, as we discussed. It is not my fault she had taken a position there. And you are the one who insisted I go to Shippington instead of Leeds, horrifying experience though it was. I had planned to ask you to come with me, but you seemed in no mood for coercion when I checked in on you this morning.”

  He uncoiled his muscles, but only just. The blood still pounded in his ears. He had indeed insisted Julianne utilize the services of Shippington’s seamstress. But he had been speaking of a hypothetical use, trying to mitigate the potential damage of a trip into Leeds. And that was before she’d staggered into the study covered in offal and demanding brandy to assuage her guilt.

  He forced his fingers to unclench. “Just tell me, Julianne. What about this meeting with Miss Smith has you so upset you would forgo a bath for it? And why are you covered in the worst parts of a cow?”

  “She spoke to me about the murder.”

  His stomach tightened in denial, even as his thoughts clawed toward survival. Because that was the next step, wasn’t it? The bloody maid still thought he had murdered his brother.

  “Has she spoken with the magistrate then?” His mind began to toss over the chances of escaping this alive. He didn’t like the odds.

  “I don’t think she’s spoken with him, no. She’s powerfully afraid to speak to anyone. She bolted when I encouraged her to come to Summersby and talk to you. I lost her somewhere between the alley and the butcher shop.” She swept a reluctant hand down her dress. “This happened when I gave chase.”

  A harsh laugh escaped him like a cannon blast. Not that the thought of Julianne sprinting to catch the woman who would hang him was anything close to amusing. It was done, even if it hadn’t been done purposefully. The second witness had emerged and now his chances to escape a conviction were shattered. The devil take all, it was his worst nightmare.