Summer Is for Lovers

by Jennifer McQuiston

  “Well, they shall learn to love you as much as I do. Given that we shall be staying with them until we find a place you like well enough to purchase, I imagine you shall get to know each other very well.”

  Caroline fit her lips around a smile. “It’s not that either.” She focused her nervous fingers on a loose thread along the edge of his collar. “I’ve never spent any time away from the ocean,” she admitted, embarrassed to admit it out loud. “In fact, I’ve never traveled farther than an occasional day trip to Lewes. I am worried I shall miss it.”

  This time, it was David’s turn to laugh. “Why should that be what is bothering you?”

  Irritation flared, and she wiggled around to face him. She grabbed on to the edges of his open jacket and tugged. “ ’Tis not funny, David.” It had taken courage to admit her fear.

  He merely smiled, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “I suppose I didn’t explain very well, did I?”

  “Explain what?” she said, more crossly now.

  He peered out the window, craning his head. “I think it shall be evident all too soon. Ah . . . yes. There it is.” He spread his hands. “Behold, mermaid. Your kingdom awaits.”

  Caroline peered distrustfully in the direction he indicated, and then her breath tangled in her throat. As they rounded the crest of the hill, the endless forest seemed to fall away in front of them. A sparkling azure vista rose up to take its place. Her stomach turned over, pushing her thoughts tumbling along with it. Everywhere she looked she saw water. Brilliant, sky-reflecting blue, framed by dark rock cliffs. And farther on, almost a whimsical notion on the horizon, a thin, dark line where the freshwater merged with the ocean.

  “Loch Moraig.” David grinned at her. “And farther on, the Atlantic. The very same waters that touch Brighton, albeit much, much colder. You shall not miss the ocean, Caroline. I promise.”

  She blinked, scarcely able to believe what a ninny she had been. She hadn’t even thought to ask. Then again, this man near robbed the very logic from her brain.

  Using the edges of his coat still gripped in her hands, she pulled him toward her and buried her nose in the fabric of his shirt. She breathed in once, twice. “Will anyone think it odd if I swim in that lovely loch?” she murmured against the solid rock of his chest.

  His big body shook with suppressed laughter. “Only when it snows, love. Only when it snows.”

  And then he was tilting her chin up with a gentle finger. The last thing she saw before her lashes fluttered shut was the brilliant blue of her husband’s eyes, searching her own. She welcomed his kiss with a grateful sigh. His lips coaxed her own apart, and then he was breaching her fears and worries with a calm assurance that sent her squirming on his lap.

  After that, it was but the work of a moment to shatter her preconceived notions regarding coach rides. Caroline quickly discovered that for consenting adults, the tight four walls and roll-down shades offered some hidden pleasures. The heady sandalwood scent to be found around the edge of David’s collar banished the malodorous cabin to a state of nonexistence. And the rocking of the springs beneath the carriage floor and occasional ruts in the road made sitting on her new husband’s lap interesting, to say the least.

  With his busy fingers, he kept her so distracted she scarcely had time to dwell on the rest of the ride. In fact, she would not have minded if the coach traveled on forever, heading for that thin blue line where freshwater met the ocean. It was true she did not know what the future might bring, or what manner of pleasures awaited her in Scotland.

  But with this man beside her, and the promise of summers spent in her beloved Brighton, she discovered she was very much looking forward to the journey.

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  MOONLIGHT ON MY MIND

  Scotland, October, 1842

  THOUGH IT WAS a thought she should have entertained far earlier, Julianne Baxter wondered if she ought to become a brunette before she became an accessory to murder.

  It had been a hellish trip, first by train from London to Glasgow, then by four-horse coach with stops in Perth and Inverness. Now she was rattling into the little town of Moraig via a poorly sprung two-horse mail coach that was far better suited for hauling parcels than passengers. As the scenery outside her coach window shifted from pine forests to blurry, shop-lined streets, her mind twisted in this new—if belated—direction. Three long days spent hiding beneath the brim of a hat designed for fashion over comfort was enough to make even the kindest of souls cautious, if not cross.

  And Julianne was admittedly not the kindest of souls.

  Or, regrettably, the cleanest. The pretty green silk of her traveling gown was now a dull grey from the journey’s accumulated dirt, much of it from the interior of this squalid little coach and the unhygienic Highlanders who used it for transport. She yearned for a hip bath full of steaming water, and a maid to brush her hair until she collapsed in a stupor on her feather mattress. But her comb was packed in her travelling bag, and that was loaded on the top of the coach. Her ladies’ maid and her feather bed were in London, where she was supposed to be. And while she was indeed bordering on a stupor from lack of sleep, she doubted a proper bath was something she would see this side of the next sunrise.

  Julianne eyed the coach’s only other occupant, a portly man of middling years who had thankfully spent most of the five hour trip from Inverness sleeping. When he gave a reassuring snore, she plucked at the ribbons holding her bonnet in place and pulled it from her head, intending to let her scalp breathe.

  According to her well-placed inquiries in Inverness, Moraig was a small fishing village of perhaps two thousand people. She hoped the town’s negligible size would mean her business here would take no more than a few hours, but at the moment, the thought of even five more seconds spent in the chokehold of her bonnet was too much.

  She enjoyed two heavenly minutes of freedom before the man sitting across from her sputtered awake. He blinked a slow moment, his eyes settling on her like an arrow centering home. And then he grinned, revealing teeth stained yellow by age and things best left unconsidered.

  “Well, there’s a pretty sight,” he leered with a sleep-filled voice, filling the narrow space inside the coach with breath that suggested one or more of those teeth might be in need of professional care. “I dinna often see hair that bright, bonny color. Are you traveling alone, lass? I’d be happy to show you around Moraig, personal-like.”

  Julianne narrowly withheld the curt reply hammering against her lips, choosing instead to let silence speak for her. She was on a clandestine mission, after all. She was seeking one of England’s most wanted fugitives, though she had little more than snatched bits of rumor to guide her. She was risking a great deal by coming here and following this lead without first contacting the authorities, but the shocking circumstances of the past week demanded it.

  Still, she did not relish the thought of discovery, or the potential damage to her reputation should word get out. No sense giving this stranger a voice by which to recognize her, on top of the copper-colored curls from which he seemed unable to detach his eyes.

  When the passenger continued to ogle her, she determinedly settled the hated bit of straw and silk back on her head, this time leaving the ribbons untied. Deprived of his entertainment, the man finally looked away and turned his attention to a newspaper he pulled from a coat pocket, but the implications of his bald interest were not so easily defused. She hadn’t given her hair much thought upon setting off on this journey—although, to be fair, she hadn’t given any part of this journey a proper degree of forethought. She couldn’t jolly well depend on a bonnet to keep her safe from recognition for the length of this trip.

  But she didn’t have to have red hair.

  Indeed, for the purposes of this mission, it might be better if she didn’t. Tha
t the man she sought—truly, the man half of England sought—was rumored to have disappeared into the farthest reaches of Scotland suggested he didn’t want to be found. If he was warily watching over his shoulder, determined to avoid the gallows, the sight of her familiar red hair—the hair he had once declared robbed him of all decent thought—would give him a running head start toward escape.

  Which meant her first stop in Moraig really ought to be a chemist’s shop.

  As the idea firmed up in her mind, Julianne cleared her throat. Her traveling companion looked up from his rumpled newspaper. “Excuse me,” she said, remembering almost too late she was trying to avoid recognition. She readjusted her voice to a lower pitch and leaned in conspiratorially. “Perhaps I could use your help after all—”

  A piercing blast from the outside horn cut her words short.

  A sickening thud soon followed.

  The coach lurched sideways, tilting Julianne along with it. Her head knocked against the latch to the door, making her teeth ache with the force of the blow. The vehicle hung in awkward indecision a long, slow moment, and then swung back to center before rolling several more feet to a stop. For a moment there was only the sound of her panicked breathing, but then a quick rap at the window sent both occupants jumping.

  “Is everyone all right?” The voice of the coachman pushed through the thin glass.

  “Yes, I think so.” The gentleman folded his newspaper, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. “Struck another one, have we, Mr. Jeffers?”

  Julianne rubbed her throbbing head, realizing with dismay that her untied bonnet was now lying in a disgraceful heap on the filthy coach floor. Her eyes reached for it, but her fingers refused to follow. She could not imagine placing it back on her head. It bothered her to even set her boots upon those sticky floorboards.

  The coachman opened the door and peered in, his eyes owlish in concern. “Are you injured, lass?”

  She drew a breath, unsure of her response. Her head ached liked the very devil and her stomach felt tossed by gale force winds, but she could feel no pain in her limbs suggesting an injury of grave magnitude. The dust-covered coachman leaned further in and his eyes fell on her hair, which, judging by the disruptive curls that swung wildly across her field of vision, had lost several hairpins in addition to the bonnet. Predictably, the driver’s lips tipped up in empty fascination.

  Suddenly, she was not all right. The strain of the three-day journey, her fear of being recognized, and the past few pulse-churning seconds coalesced into a spiraling panic.

  Dear lord . . . no one knew where she was. If she had died here today, her head dashed against the Scottish dirt, her body crushed beneath the wheels of this fetid little coach, her father would have . . . well . . . her father would have killed her.

  Her stomach clawed for a foothold up her throat. She shoved past the driver, not even caring that she was abandoning all decorum along with her bonnet. She tumbled out into late afternoon sunshine, dodging the boxes that had come loose from the top of the coach. She swayed a moment, breathing in the fresher air, willing her roiling stomach to settle. All around her, the town moved in an indistinct smear of browns and blues and green, storefronts and awnings and people swirling in the maelstrom of the moment.

  She almost missed it. In the end, it was the lack of movement that pulled her attention back for a second look. She squinted at the image, trying to make it out. A small, still form lay in the street, perhaps twenty feet away. Her imagination filled in the gaps left by her regrettably poor eyesight, and her lungs promptly funneled shut.

  They had struck someone.

  She clapped a hand to her mouth, willing the cold beef pie she’d eaten at the last posting house to stay put. A few feet to her right, she could make out the hands of strangers already helping to heft the scattered boxes and trunks back onto the coach. She caught snatches of conversation on street corners, and the sound of clattering dishes and laughter trickling out of the open door of a nearby public house. No one seemed to care the afternoon coach had just mowed down one of their citizens, or that the body lay broken and unclaimed in the street.

  The coachman approached. “If you dinna injure anything, I’ll ask you to step back aboard, lass. We’re running late.”

  Julianne lowered her shaking hand and glared at the man, who, despite his kindly face and high, perspiring forehead was showing a frightful lack of regard for whomever he had just struck. “I am not getting back on that coach,” she enunciated, “until someone calls the doctor.”

  “Help will be here soon enough.” The man lowered his voice to a more soothing tone, the sort she often heard used on frightened horses and recalcitrant toddlers. “No sense getting overwrought.”

  He thought she was overwrought? Perhaps she was. Someone ought to be. The apathy of the coachman—and indeed, of Moraig’s citizens, who seemed to just be going about the business of their day—made her want to strike someone.

  As if sensing the threat of imminent violence, the driver twisted his hands in supplication. “ ’Tis a sad sight, I know, especially for a lady like yourself. But it’s common enough round Moraig. Why don’t you take yourself back inside the coach? We’ll only be a moment to get the last of these boxes back up.”

  Julianne blinked away an angry haze of tears, and gestured fiercely toward the blurry form lying so still on the street. “A body’s been struck down beneath your wheels,” she hissed, “and you are worried only about the state of the luggage?”

  The coachman drew back, his broad brow wrinkled. “Can’t do anything for it myself.”

  Her thoughts flew around the driver’s words. It. So uncaring as to not even assign the poor victim a gender. The panic she had held at bay surged forward, toppling the thin dam of reason she had hastily erected in the aftermath of the accident.

  Dear God in heaven . . . it was her coach. Her hurry. Her fault.

  Hadn’t she asked the driver to cut short their time at the last posting house, going so far as to press a sovereign into the man’s palm?

  This could not be happening. She had come to Moraig find a murderer, not to turn into one herself.

  “Might as well take the coach on to the posting house, Mr. Jeffers.” A new voice, startling in its familiarity, rubbed close to Julianne’s ear. Her hand, which had come up earlier to catch the threatened return of her breakfast, now stifled her gasp of surprise.

  She whirled around. She couldn’t breathe, could only stare up, and then up some more. An awful sense of sureness settled over her, a sense that someone, somewhere, was having a hearty laugh at her expense. In fact, they probably had a stitch in their side.

  Because Julianne had discovered Patrick Channing—the accused killer she had traveled three days to find—within minutes, not hours.

  And it was a little too late to find a chemist’s shop.

  “No sense waiting when your pay is docked for every quarter hour’s delay,” Channing continued to the coachman, as if they were old friends who might occasionally share a pint.

  “Very good, sir.” The coachman’s voice echoed his relief. “I’ve a letter for you as well. Would you like to take it now?”

  “No, I’ll retrieve it later. After I see to the dog.”

  Dog? The word bounced about in Julianne’s skull for three long seconds before settling into something coherent. She eyed the still form lying in the street again, and this time caught the flash of blood—hard, red, and unforgiving.

  The body was not human then. Embarrassment washed over her, though it was tempered by sadness. That the coach had injured an animal was still hurtful, even if it explained the town’s disinterested reaction and the coachman’s rapidly retr
eating figure a bit better.

  Behind her she could hear the crack of the driver’s reins and the creak of the wheels, but she scarcely registered the fact that her bonnet and bag were rolling away with the coach. Instead, she suffered an almost painful awareness of the man towering over her.

  He didn’t much resemble the charming rogue she had once waltzed with at a Yorkshire house party. He looked . . . common, she supposed. And thin. She could see the angular edge of his jaw, the wisp of stubble marring the surface of his gaunt cheeks. He was as tall as ever—some things, a body couldn’t hide. But his coat hung loosely from his frame, and his sandy hair, once so neatly trimmed as to nearly be flush against his scalp, brushed the lower edge of his neck. Did they lack barbers in Moraig?

  Or was this part of his disguise, a diabolically clever way of hiding in plain sight?

  Channing was studying her, too, but the inspection felt clinical, imparting none of the wolfish appreciation offered by either her earlier traveling companion or the driver. He wore the same dispassionate look he had given her across his father’s study that cold November day, when she had tearfully related all she had seen—and some she had not—to the local Summersby magistrate.

  When he spoke, it was with a flat baritone that made Julianne blink in surprise. “Are you injured in some manner I cannot see beyond the state of your coiffure, miss?”

  She shook her head, even as her hand flew instinctively to tuck an unruly curl behind one ear. “I . . . no . . . I mean, I struck my head. On the coach door.”

  He leaned in for a closer look. “There is no visible blood.” He peered at her as if she was a specimen for dissection, rather than the woman who had once accused him of murder.

  Julianne fought a building impatience. How could he be so . . . impersonal? Day or night, this man had occupied a central place in her thoughts for eleven long months. She wanted to scream at him. Shake him to awareness. Make him look at her as more than just a patient.