She cataloged the myriad touches she had accumulated over the course of two and a half weeks of marriage. More than she could count on her fingers. Nary a one where anyone but she could see. Was it any wonder Mr. Blythe and George Willoughby were questioning the purpose behind their marriage? To the world, theirs must seem a cold sort of showing.
Julianne fought her mind’s insistence on drifting back to the conversation with Blythe. She watched Patrick toss the delicate silk thread out onto the water and pull it back in cunning, short strokes, and could not shake the sharp new thought that perhaps her husband had done nearly the same thing to her. Because if Mr. Blythe had been right about the matter of the guests’ speculation, what else might he have had correct?
Had Patrick really married her to ensure her silence?
It was a stinging idea, but it was persistent. She had refused to believe Mr. Blythe’s vile claims last night, and she didn’t want to believe them now. But had she reacted so strongly to Blythe’s taunts out of loyalty to her husband, or cowardice? She’d always prided herself on being able to read people, to understand their motives. She’d never truly believed Patrick’s explanation for marrying her was to save her reputation.
But she’d thought she understood his reasons for marrying her. She had presumed that, like her, Patrick felt this same driving, needy force that seemed to consume her every time she saw him. Every time he kissed her. She’d been pushed—almost blindly—by an emotion she could now see came grievously close to love. She felt blind still, groping her way through a darkness she’d not seen coming.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Her stomach jumped in time with the smooth, unerring flick of Patrick’s wrist, spooling into a tangle of confusion. She might arguably be called a fool, but she had never before considered herself a coward. But she was beginning to wonder if true cowardice was refusing to see what was looming before her. She was rather afraid she did not want to dissect Jonathon Blythe’s accusations or George Willoughby’s explanations because of what she might find.
It took forever for the girls to admit they were not going to catch a fish that afternoon. Longer still to gather up the blanket and their picnic remains and set back toward the manor. As they began the long trek home, Eleanor and Mary chattered on like small sparrows, pulling George Willoughby by the hand as they skipped ahead on the path.
Only when the trio had disappeared around a bend up ahead did she feel Patrick’s hand reach out and brush her own. When he pulled her down a side path, she didn’t resist, not even when briars pulled at her skirts and her shoes became hopelessly smudged with mud. Just a few hours ago, she would have welcomed the opportunity for a stolen kiss. Heavens, just a few hours ago, she might have suggested the excursion herself.
But now, his quest for privacy niggled at her, like a key in the wrong lock.
He pulled her behind the trunk of a large oak tree and brought his lips down to hers. She sorted through the taste of her husband as he kissed her, sunshine and laughter and the turnovers they had eaten during the picnic, tart and sweet and faintly spiced. She wanted him to kiss her forever. But forever was a tricky beast, when there were questions burning her tongue as fiercely as his kiss.
He seemed to sense her hesitation and pulled back. “Is something amiss, wife?”
Julianne looked away, down the path they had just come down. She could hear the concern in his voice, sounding every bit as real as the faint shouts of the girls. It should have warmed her heart to hear such regard in Patrick’s voice, and his ready use of the word “wife.” But she, of all people, knew that concern could be conjured, words chosen with care to bend someone to your will.
“Why did you marry me?” she asked. It felt as though her soul was being split open to ask it, but she resolutely pushed her shoulders back. “Was it only to ensure my silence?”
His lips tipped downward. “Did George Willoughby tell you that, when he sidled up to you on the blanket?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. “This isn’t about your cousin, Patrick. Why did you marry me?” she repeated. Louder now. A question and a demand.
But his eyes were unreadable, his jaw set to stone. “Why are you asking me this now, Julianne, instead of then, when it mattered?”
“I assure you, it matters now.” Her chest felt muffled, as though her heart was wrapped in wet wool. “Was our marriage nothing more than a ruse to prevent me from testifying against you?” She waited. For an answer, for a reaction. Perhaps, if he didn’t—couldn’t—say those words, there was hope yet for them, a glimmer of something salvageable from what was fast becoming the wreck of her heart. But instead of handing her the answer she wanted—the answer she still foolishly believed and prayed he might give—he gave her the answer she feared.
“Aye,” he ground out.
That single word cut with the surety of a saber. For a moment, she only blinked, sure she had misheard him. But one did not mistake an admission like that.
Blythe was right. It was a refrain chanting in her ears, deafening in its simplicity. And she realized she should have guessed it, from the start. After all, one did not marry someone he scarcely knew unless he had a very, very good reason for it.
“So it is true,” she gasped, stepping away from the man she had married for no other reason than foolish, girlish fancy. She had once considered Patrick little more than a pawn in her grand game, though that sentiment had ended nearly as soon as it had started. It was disconcerting to realize she was now the one so used. She wrapped her arms around herself, her mind too numb to sort through all the implications of his admission.
Was the day warm, after all? She felt so cold.
“In my defense,” he said slowly, his expression still too blank for comfort, “I have regretted the lie, nearly every day since.”
In his defense. She wanted to cover her ears with her hands, block out the sound of those words. What did that mean, exactly? She only heard that he regretted it. He regretted her. And she felt cleaved in two by her naïveté.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why did you not simply tell me, from the start?”
He exhaled loudly, and one hand came up to scrape against his already unruly hair. “I should have. I should have been more honest. But at the time, my choice seemed . . . fair.”
Understanding nudged aside her mind’s quest for denial. Oh God. He had married her for what, exactly? Expediency? Convenience?
Revenge?
And he’d done it brilliantly too. He’d never once insisted she withhold her testimony. But he’d certainly asked it of her, hadn’t he? Gauging the perfect moment of weakness, no less, that night in Leeds when she’d been knotted with tears and desperate to make things right between them. And ever since, he’d implied she held the noose in her hands, reminding her—with subtle, frequent encouragement—of the vital need for silence.
She took another step back, wondering how far she would have to run to reclaim her pride. A mile? A thousand miles?
She waited for him to go on. To further explain his decision, to apologize. The sounds of the day intruded into the aborted conversation. Leaves rustled. The distant sound of girlish laughter hovered, somewhere up the path. But louder than all of it was the pressing clamor of Patrick’s silence. She, of all people, knew what that hard quiet meant. He was guilty.
Or at least, he believed himself to be.
Her throat closed over the silence. And then she was stumbling away, choking back her tears, scrambling to follow the blurry path back to the manor.
“Julianne!” Patrick called out from somewhere behind her. “Wait!”
But there was no waiting for this. The memory of that first fumbling night came flooding back. And that glorious night in the folly, and every night since . . . she’d tossed herself on him, like an East End doxy. But worst of all was the haunting realization that she deserved this. All of it—the humiliation, the pain. Perhaps she even deserved worse.
Because hadn’t she told the first lie?
Roots and limbs reached out to hinder her blind charge, but she plowed on, desperate to put as much distance between her and Patrick as possible. She had spent three years avoiding the sort of emotionless match that most in the ton accepted as their due, determined to find someone who would appreciate her for who she was, rather than who she pretended to be. She had thought . . . well, she had thought wrong.
She was in love with the blasted man. Helplessly, hopelessly in love with him. And he had sold his soul for her silence.
Chapter 22
Patrick awakened to a dawn and a marriage bed much colder than he’d expected.
It took him a slow, blinking moment to sort out the difference. Instead of his wife being tangled in his arms, as she had been these few days past, Julianne was hugging the far side of the mattress, curled up tight, a wall of muslin and pale skin that told him her state of mind in no uncertain terms.
Damn it to hell and back. Yesterday had not gone well.
He had told her the truth, a decision that turned out to be far more difficult to manage than his usual inconvenient silence. He regretted not having told her the truth from the first, but he could not regret the decision to marry her. She was the single bright spot out of the entire unholy mess of his life. But how else could he have responded to her trembled accusation? He could no longer remember the reasons he married her, much less justify them.
He had flung himself into this marriage knowing his motivations were wrong, only to discover the sweetest of promises in her kiss. He’d latched on to the hope she would find their union pleasing enough to not question the reasons behind their marriage. And the rub of it was that regardless of why he married her, the reason to stay married had nothing to do with her testimony, and everything to do with how she made him feel.
He lay there a moment, adjusting to wakefulness, wanting to gather her in his arms and tell her. To prove that the reason why he had married her no longer mattered. But the sound of oncoming hooves snatched his attention, rattling the windowpanes like distant thunder.
He eased out of bed and pulled the curtains aside. Through the morning mist, he could see three horses—only two with riders—cresting the last swell of Summersby’s long drive. He recognized the magistrate’s familiar, lean frame, sitting tall in the saddle, and beside him, the stockier frame of someone who looked very much like his cousin, Jonathon Blythe. He could think of no explanation for the fact that the men were riding toward Summersby as if the very hounds of hell were nipping at their heels, except one.
Julianne approached the window, her arms wrapped stiffly around her. “Is it the magistrate?”
“Yes,” he admitted, already turning to grab a pair of trousers from his bureau, where Julianne kept them neatly—maddeningly—folded. He might be unable to avoid the coming confrontation, but he had the right to greet the men who would arrest him clad in something other than his unutterables. “Blythe accompanies him. I imagine this means the inquest has returned a charge of murder.”
Julianne’s night rail billowed around her legs as she stepped up to the window and squinted out into the morning. She stood a long moment, though he knew she could likely make little sense of the view. “Why would Mr. Blythe come to arrest you?”
“Perhaps Farmington felt I might not go willingly.” Shippington was a small town. So small, in fact, it had never needed to hire a constable. But a citizen who wished to press charges was legally entitled to make an arrest. “Blythe likely offered his assistance.”
“Your cousin hates you enough to not only see you hang, but escort you to the gallows?”
Patrick hesitated. He didn’t want to answer these questions, but the fact she was speaking to him—even of such difficult things—was a stark improvement over how they had ended things yesterday. “He has always been determined to best me.”
And if not best him, destroy him.
He did not trust Blythe to leave Julianne out of whatever this was that simmered between them, and that sent his feet turning for the door. “Stay here,” he told her, worry for Julianne’s safety easily outweighing the desire to gather her in his arms and explain away the hurt that had lingered in her eyes since yesterday.
The approaching pair had a riderless horse in tow, for God’s sake.
Whatever business brought them here, they did not plan to leave alone.
Patrick strode down the stairwell, two steps at a time. His boots echoed against the mostly silent house. It was early enough the lingering guests were all still abed, though he could hear the voices of some of the early servants, kindling the fire in the parlor. They looked up as he passed, but did not question his direction, and he supposed the dogs dancing attendance at his heels lent his mission some legitimacy.
Mr. Peters was not so easily fooled, however. The aging butler met Patrick at the door in his nightcap, his eyes drawn with worry. “Riders approach, my lord. Should I summon a few sturdy footmen?”
Patrick shook his head. Farmington was widely known as a fair and peaceful magistrate, but Blythe’s arrival lent a decidedly different flavor to the morning. He did not trust this to go smoothly, and for better or worse, Patrick was responsible for everything and everyone at Summersby, from the broad-shouldered footmen down to the lowest scullery maid.
He would not see any of them placed in danger now.
“No footmen,” he said firmly. “I would be grateful if you would personally summon Lord Avery and ask him to see that Julianne stays in her room.” Patrick had a feeling he was going to need an ally in the older man this morning, even if from a distance.
And at the very least, he was going to need someone to hold Julianne back.
The butler nodded his acquiescence. “Very good, my lord. But please . . . have a care. We’ve just gotten you returned home safely. We would not have you removed from us so soon.”
Patrick opened the door, calming himself with a deep draught of morning air. The men were sawing their mounts to a stop, their horses blowing hard. The pair must have departed Shippington when it was still dark, and judging by the froth flying from their mounts, they must have galloped much of the way. Gemmy and Constance nosed their way through the open door and bounded out to greet the dismounting newcomers, barking and jumping up on the men with grass-slick paws. In the uncertain light of dawn, he glimpsed the glint off Blythe’s revolver as he raised the butt of it threateningly. Anger suffused through Patrick.
Only cowards—or idiots—threatened dogs with guns.
Patrick whistled sharply, calling the dogs back. Gemmy bounded back toward him, but Constance returned more slowly, her hackles on full display. Damned ill-behaved dog.
But not as difficult as her mistress, who even now was emerging in the open doorway beside him. She had thrown on a dress of bright, marigold yellow—living proof she could move quickly when she wanted to—but she’d missed a handful of buttons across the front, and her hair flamed defiantly around her face.
“Julianne, go back to the room,” he growled. The looming danger required his full attention, and Julianne’s distracting presence had a way of sending his wits to ground. Exasperation crowded into the keen edge of his worry as, far from obeying, she bent down and scooped Constance up in her arms.
“You cannot prevent me from being here, Patrick.” She glared up at him over Constance’s fur, her determined green eyes a distraction he did not need.
“Damn it, this isn’t a social call.” Indeed, that was now clear. Jonathon Blythe’s pistol was now out on full, pointed display, and Patrick felt perforated by fear. Not fear over what might happen to him. No, the fear of losing his wife to a misfired bullet was by far the more terrifying possibility of the morning.
Julianne ignored his protests and pasted on what he could now recognize as her practiced smile, the one she trotted out for enemies and idiots. “Gentlemen,” she called out from the top step. “Lovely morning for a visit.”
The magistrate’s eyes darted uncertainly between them. “We’ve . . . er . . . we�
�ve not come for a visit, Lady Haversham.”
“Oh?” She continued to smile—far too sweetly. “Perhaps you’ve come for breakfast, then?”
Farmington tipped up the brim of his hat and wiped the sweat away from his brow with the back of an uneasy hand. “We have come to bring you in, Haversham.”
“The jury returned a decision on the inquest late yesterday evening,” Blythe’s self-satisfied voice chimed in. “We’ve a warrant for your arrest.”
Patrick’s chest hollowed out beneath the weight of his cousin’s words. It was done. The whispered threat that had chased him for eleven months was now officially a murder charge. He scarcely knew whether to laugh or curse at the obvious progress that had been made.
Behind him, muffled shouts rang out. Lord Avery all but tumbled from the house, Mr. Peters on his heels and panting hard. The viscount’s hair was sticking out at odd angles, and he was heaving, as if he had jogged the entirety of the way from his room. Yet his eyes were still capable of flashing an aristocratic warning.
“What is this about, Farmington?” he demanded. “Haversham is a peer.”
“He’s a peer who’s been charged with murder,” Blythe replied hotly.
“This is an outrage,” Avery blustered. “He should be permitted to remain here, at Summersby, or returned to London to await trial. You cannot throw him in gaol like a common criminal.”
Blythe demonstrated his apparent disagreement with Lord Avery’s opinion by pulling down on the hammer of his pistol. It seated with an audible click. “I assure you, we can.”
Patrick cursed low under his breath. Worry for Julianne and all the people he counted among his responsibilities sent him stepping quickly in front of the imminent danger of that cocked pistol. He’d lost his brother to a bullet, for God’s sake. He, of all people, knew the mistakes that could be made with a loaded firearm.
“Have a care,” Patrick cautioned, holding out his hands in a move he hoped would pacify his hot-blooded cousin. “I’ll not resist.”
Moonlight on My Mind Page 23
