They pulled up to the manor house just as the rain started to slacken and clattered through Summersby’s front door in sodden boots, their coats dripping puddles onto gleaming floor. Gemmy greeted Patrick as if he’d been gone on a three-month sea journey, leaping in wild circles around Patrick, but he sidestepped the dog’s exuberance.
“Julianne!” he shouted, his voice echoing across the marble floor and high ceiling.
Instead of his wife, Mr. Peters appeared from a side hallway, hurrying forward. “My lord,” he said, breathing hard, “you’ve returned without notice?” He caught sight of Mr. Farmington, held fast in Blythe’s grip, and his eyes widened. “And in a far different manner than when you left, I see.”
“Where is Julianne?” Patrick demanded.
Mr. Peters hesitated. “She was not feeling well, my lord. In fact, I am rather concerned about her. She’s gone above stairs—”
“Thank you, Mr. Peters.” A feminine voice rang out. “That will be quite enough.”
Patrick’s attention lifted toward the stairs. Aunt Margaret was descending, one purposeful step at a time. “I saw your arrival from an upstairs window, Haversham. Am I to presume this means you have been released?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said slowly, trying to sort out why his aunt was issuing the staff orders instead of his wife.
Aunt Margaret’s gaze fell questioningly on Farmington as she reached the final step. Patrick’s mind scuttled backward to a conclusion that made sense. He had long struggled to conceive of any motive that would justify his brother’s murder, and drawn a blank for all save one. Love. A desire to protect, to nurture at all costs. Some shade of the same breath-robbing emotion that drove him here, desperate to see Julianne, and willing to kill anyone who might think to stop him. The pieces fell into place with alarming alacrity.
Patrick shoved Farmington into the center of the foyer. As the man fell to his knees, Aunt Margaret’s gasp of dismay rattled his ears. “I should have never been arrested,” Patrick ground out. “As I am sure you know, Aunt Margaret.”
“What are you talking about, Haversham?” Blythe demanded, whirling on Patrick with knotted fists. “Farmington has admitted killing Eric.”
“Aye.” Patrick kept his attention directed toward his aunt. “But he didn’t admit why. Given how reticent he’s been to talk about it, I’ll wager he’s protecting someone. And while he has admitted a role in Eric’s death, he has not confessed to killing my father. It would take someone close to the family to accomplish that. Someone who stayed at Summersby, whom the staff trusted. Someone a bit more bloodthirsty, and with a stronger degree of motivation.” He took a step toward his aunt. “Someone like you, Aunt Margaret.”
Farmington struggled to his feet. “Is Haversham correct, Margaret?” His voice rang thick with emotion. “Did you kill the earl?”
Aunt Margaret’s hand closed over the mourning brooch at her throat. “Do not say another word,” she warned.
Farmington’s throat worked convulsively. “You swore to me—swore—that after Eric, you were content to wait for the order of things to progress. But if you have killed your brother—”
“You are the one who cocked it up to begin with, not killing Patrick when you had the chance. I was only thinking of my son—”
“For God’s sake, Margaret. I do not want to hear about your blessed son!” Farmington straightened, his face blooming red. “I killed a man for you. The least you can do is be honest with me if you have done the same.”
Her reply was only silence.
That is, until the sound of a scuffle broke out behind them. Patrick turned to see MacKenzie and his cousin battling for control of the gun. Though his friend was stronger, Blythe had the advantage of surprise this time, and in less than a second, Blythe had the pistol in his hands. And then he pointed the weapon straight at his own mother, the engaging of the hammer unmistakable. “Answer Mr. Farmington’s question, Mother.”
Aunt Margaret gasped. “You cannot be serious, Jonathon.”
“I assure you, I am deadly so. You see, I can well believe you might have coerced Mr. Farmington into pulling the trigger. I should know—I’ve found myself at the receiving end of your schemes more than once in my life.” The barrel of his pistol did not waver. “I grow impatient for your response.”
“Yes,” she finally hissed. “I knew you would never conceive of doing such a thing for yourself, or agree to the plan. But I did it for you.”
Blythe swayed unsteadily, clearly horrified by his mother’s confession, despite his steel-edged demand for it. “My God.”
Patrick eased closer to his cousin. “She’s admitted it, Blythe,” he said, in what he hoped was a soothing voice. He, of all people, knew the toxic consequences of absorbing guilt that was not yours to take. “This is not your fault.”
Blythe shook his head, his eyes blinking rapidly. “No. It is, you see. She’s my mother. I knew her heart was dark. My entire life, I’ve sought to distance myself from that darkness. Do you recall, that summer, with the dogs?”
“Aye,” Patrick said, trying to sort out whether he could slip the wavering pistol from his cousin’s hands without risking it going off. “ ’Twas the start of the animosity between us.”
“She caused it. You thought I had drowned those puppies to punish you, but it wasn’t my idea, Haversham. We were all of, what, nine years old? She made me drown them. To teach me of duty, she said.” Blythe renewed his grip on the pistol, holding it with both hands now. “I knew then . . . knew there was evil in you, Mother.” His voice cracked. “But to take a human life . . . your own brother’s life. How could you do such a thing?”
Patrick held up a cautious hand. It was far too easy to be riveted by the unfolding drama . . . for once, thankfully, not his own. He could see James sidling closer to Aunt Margaret, and the thought that his friend was stepping closer to the path of a potential bullet made his chest tighten.
“I did not trust my brother would leave this world in time for you to see the title.” Aunt Margaret shook her head. “And he was beginning to ask questions. Beginning to suspect. I could not risk it, not after waiting for so long.”
“Damn it, Mother. I ought to kill you.” Blythe’s voice cracked.
“But you won’t,” she whispered, lifting her chin. “I am your mother.”
“You killed your brother. Who is to say I don’t carry the same lack of morality in my blood? Who is to say I am not like you?”
The moment stretched to silence, long and hard, seconds ticking away.
“Jonathon.” Patrick laid a careful hand on his cousin’s arm. He could feel the tension in the younger man, coiled and ready to strike. “You are in charge of your own decisions, your own life. Family history cannot force you to be someone you are not.”
“That’s a sodding lie, and you know it.” Blythe shook his head, almost desperately. “You are your own worst example, Haversham. Here you are, titled and miserable, forced back to Summersby where you never wanted to be.”
Patrick recognized echoes of his own confused choices in his cousin’s anguished voice, but he knew one clear truth. “No. No one forced this of me. I could have remained in Scotland, hiding from it all. But I chose to take on this responsibility, Jonathon, to return and face a murder charge I did not deserve. This is not your fault, cousin, any more than Eric’s death was mine. And you can choose to not be like her.”
He could see his cousin hesitate, see his words slip through the young man’s confusion. Patrick stepped closer still, and then he was lowering Blythe’s weapon-wielding arm and pulling the pistol from his cousin’s hand. From the corner of his eye, Patrick could see James seize Aunt Margaret by the arm.
And just like that, it was over. The danger was defused. His future was returned.
Patrick stood unsteadily in the middle of Summersby’s foyer, watching as James secured Aunt Margaret with a length of hastily produced rope. He ought to be glad. His life was waiting for him to gather up
the pieces and craft them back into something whole. He couldn’t bring his brother and father back, but he could make damned sure he well honored their memories. But happiness—and relief—were hard to find when his wife was still very much missing.
“Where is Julianne?” he demanded.
“I believe she is in her room, my lord.” Mr. Peters bowed his head. “She has been ill, and Mrs. Blythe insisted on attending her, this hour past.”
Willoughby chose that moment to bumble out of a side hallway, a cold leg of chicken in one hand. “I’ve asked the cook to send up a tray to Julianne’s room, to go with Aunt Margaret’s tea.” His face settled into open surprise as he encountered the group in the foyer. He wiped his mouth with a guilty sleeve. “Oh, I say. What have I missed? And why is Haversham here, instead of gaol? Has Julianne lost the baby after all?”
But Patrick was already off like a shot. He took the stairs two at a time and reached his bedroom door in record time. His hand rattled the latch, confirming its locked state. Beyond the looming barrier, he could hear Constance’s anxious whine, the scratch of the little dog’s nails against the door, but no answering flow of human voice.
Fear speared his gut. Aunt Margaret was unstable—that much was clear. She claimed she would do anything for her son.
But how much harm had she done?
He set his shoulder against the door, splintering the wood around the latch in two hard slams. Constance greeted him on the inside with a ferocious growl, charging at him with her hackles raised. But he sidestepped the danger of the protective little dog and rushed toward the bed, where his wife lay still as death itself.
A thousand thoughts swam through his panic at the sight of Julianne’s pale face, but one thought pushed insistently to the surface of that vortex. Aunt Margaret had poisoned his father. Surely she would not have left Julianne untouched.
He collapsed beside the bed, seizing his wife’s thankfully still-warm hand. Constance leaped up on the bed beside him and nudged her mistress’s arm. Julianne’s lack of response to either touch sent Patrick’s gnarled lungs into ever tighter contortions. He leaned over her, searching for some trace of poison, some odor, that might provide a clue.
“Julianne.” His fingers instinctively searched the base of one slender wrist, seeking evidence she yet lived. “We know about Aunt Margaret. She and Mr. Farmington are in custody. You are safe now.” His voice cracked around the impossible words. “But I need you to wake up and tell me what she has given you, or I am afraid I shall lose you too.”
She remained deathly pale, eyes closed, no discernible response. He could feel her pulse thumping merrily along beneath his fingers, but its steady bump could not reassure him when she remained so still. He sagged against the mattress. He felt jerked backward in time, to a mist-covered glen, his brother’s blood spreading out on the ground. The same feeling of helplessness he’d felt then enveloped him now.
Four years at Turin. Countless medical texts studied. He’d not been able to save Eric.
And now he faced losing Julianne, and quite possibly his unborn child. He had no means of knowing what Aunt Margaret might have slipped in her tea. No way to quickly sort through the hundreds of potential possibilities.
Still, he had to try. There was so much he regretted already.
He did not want losing her to be the worst of it.
Chapter 30
Julianne studied her husband’s profile through barely closed lashes.
The feeling of his fingers on her wrist was a fine thing, but the sight of him proved even better. Her eyes lingered over the curve of his nose, the strong line of his jaw hidden behind a week’s growth of beard. His hair hung in wet clumps, and his mud-splattered clothing was soaking through her own, raising the gooseflesh on her arms. Once upon a time, such a sight as this big, mud-encrusted man looming over her would have sent her scrambling away, calling for a bath, demanding an entire year’s worth of soap.
But the raw emotion on his face kept her still as a statue, lying on the bed.
Hadn’t she dreamed of disrupting this serious, studious man’s composure? Hadn’t she wanted to shatter his calm and yank against the chains of his careful restraint and prove, once and for all, that he was capable of terrible feelings?
Well, apparently feigning death was one way to accomplish it.
Oh, but he was going to be angry with her. But her performance had fooled Aunt Margaret, and likely saved her life. She could not bring herself to regret the subterfuge now.
He lowered his ear to her chest, closing his eyes, listening. She held her breath, enjoying the feel of him pressed there against her breast. Had it really been only a week since he had touched her there last? It felt like an eternity.
But then his eyes cracked open and she was swept up in the suspicious brown warmth of his gaze. “Julianne . . . are you . . . pretending?”
Her eyes fluttered full-on open. “I am merely timing my entrance for maximum effect.”
“Bloody hell, woman.” He pushed away from her. The air between them hummed with his anger, and Constance—her faithful companion through the last hellish half hour—jumped down from the bed to seek calmer quarters.
“Do you know how scared I was?” he demanded. “I’ve lost my brother and father, for God’s sake. I thought . . .”
Julianne struggled to a sitting position, still a bit dizzy from her close brush with Aunt Margaret’s special recipe, though the effects had been muted by lying so still. Her heart did a pathetic little jump in her chest as she watched him glare at her.
“You thought . . . ?” she asked, leadingly.
He offered her a fresh, muttered oath and slicked a hand through his rain-soaked hair, sending clumps of mud and dirt splattering to the floor. “This isn’t a game, Julianne. If you are trying to punish me, you’ve picked a drastic means of achieving that end.”
The sharpness of his words dug under her skin, rooting for a foothold. “I did not do this to punish you, Patrick, or to coerce you into confessing some ill-timed romantic notion of your regard for me.” Although that would have been nice to hear. “When I heard someone crashing through the door, I presumed my performance was still required for survival. Aunt Margaret had already tried to poison me once. I didn’t want her thinking I was ready for another dose.”
He paled beneath the ragged growth of beard. “Another dose?” And then his big, mud-splattered hands were on her face, lifting her eyes wide, turning her head from side to side.
“Patrick—” she protested, trying to squirm free.
“Your pupils are dilated. What did she give you?”
Julianne sighed, well-recognizing the clinical fervor that now had hold of him. “Belladonna.”
He released her face, only to hold three fingers in front of her eyes, tracking them slowly back and forth. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“I did not consume the entire dose she intended for me.”
“Answer me, Julianne.”
She glared at him in response. He ought to be kissing her. Instead he’d devolved into the veterinarian, and she was his latest beast of burden. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Three. And if you bring them any closer, you’ll find yourself missing one.” She tucked a curl behind one ear. “I had no more than a taste of it. Surely too little to effect any lasting damage if I am awake now. I poured the cup out, when she wasn’t looking. Truly, the arsenic she’d been slipping in my tea over the past week affected me far more.”
Patrick paled beneath his scruff of a gaolhouse beard, and Julianne almost found a smile at his distress.
“Her mistake was poisoning my tea. If she’d brought me chocolate instead . . .” She shuddered to think that she might very well have been fooled into consuming the entire dose. “I think it is safe to say I shall not be accepting another cup of tea anytime soon, no matter how desperate my thirst nor how prettily packaged the offer.”
Patrick leaned back, and though he did no more than place a few inches between them, she
felt the loss of contact acutely. “She and Farmington are in custody now,” he told her. “You do not have to worry about them anymore.”
“Mr. Farmington?” Julianne drew in a surprised breath, trying to process it all. “But . . . I thought . . . once it became clear it wasn’t George, perhaps it was Jonathon Blythe.”
He frowned. “Blythe is innocent, as it turns out. Farmington has admitted he killed Eric, although he appears to have done it for Aunt Margaret.” He lifted a hand, his right palm hovering over her abdomen. “Julianne,” he asked, his voice lower now. “I have to ask. Something George Willoughby said, below stairs. Are you pregnant? Because both arsenic and belladonna can have harmful effects on the womb . . .”
Julianne sighed. “No. I am not pregnant. I had my courses the day you were admitted to gaol. Honestly, why does everyone think that?”
“George Willoughby implied you were. And MacKenzie suggested it as a possible explanation for your illness this morning.” His eyes narrowed ominously. “Or have you been pretending to be pregnant too?”
“That,” she snapped, shoving him aside and swinging her legs over the bed, “is less my fault than everyone else’s. My uncertain stomach can be laid at the hands of your aunt and her pharmaceutical skills. Everyone seemed determined to presume the fact of my pregnancy, as though it could be the only possible explanation for our quick marriage. But I am not with child.” She stood up, swaying as her muscles readjusted to their new permission to move. “And that was not the reason we married. There is nothing in that vein that would irrevocably tie you to this marriage. Nothing at all.”
Julianne gathered her courage into a tight ball, and shaped it into the weapon she needed to guard her heart. After the initial rush of euphoria she had felt upon discovering it was Patrick bursting into her room, instead of the frankly terrifying Aunt Margaret, reality and disappointment were once again intruding into her world. This was her husband, and despite all odds, he’d just been handed back his future.
Moonlight on My Mind Page 29
