Moonlight on My Mind (22 page)

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

P
atrick 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.”

He tried to shut out the sight of Julianne’s white face as the irons were placed over his wrists. He was boosted onto the back of the third horse, any chance at a proper good-bye or murmured reassurance yanked rudely from his grasp. Not that she would have likely permitted him such an indulgence, given the way things were being left between them.

As his captors mounted, he sought her attention, if only for the scant seconds he had left. “Wait here for MacKenzie to arrive, as we discussed, Julianne.”

She met his request with a mulish silence that made his lungs contract far more efficiently than any thought of what awaited him in gaol. Gemmy whined anxiously and circled his horse’s feet. The mare danced in agitation, and Lord Avery put a firm hand on the dog’s collar and dragged the terrier back toward the house. Patrick hoped the man intended to show the same degree of sense when it came to his daughter, because there was no way in hell Patrick was going to permit Julianne to visit him in a louse-infested gaol cell, especially not with Jonathon Blythe and his too-easily-cocked pistol standing guard.

“Do not let her come to see me,” he warned his father-in-law as his captors pulled his horse roughly into line behind them. “I do not want her involved.”

Lord Avery’s distant snort followed him down the drive. “You know as well as I that no one can bloody well force her to do anything, Haversham. You’ve made her a goddamned countess. There’ll be no stopping her now.”

Chapter 23

J
ulianne felt helpless as she strode back into Summersby’s grand foyer.

The gleaming marble tile and bright, hothouse flowers sitting on the center table seemed madly inappropriate for the turn the morning had taken. Had she once imagined herself here, a grand countess amid such beauty and wealth? The reality—and the responsibility—of it was something far more terrifying.

The desire to strike something, do something,
fix
something proved a roaring counterpoint to her initial blind frustration. He thought she hated him. She’d
made
him think she hated him, when the truth of her emotion was far less black and white. She’d been impetuous and rigid in her attack yesterday, stalking away like a child, believing he deserved a dose of his own poison. But now he was gone and she might never see him again.

A crowd of gawking guests had gathered in the foyer, their hair still mussed from sleep. “Is it true?” one gasped.

“ ’Tis utterly scandalous.”

Aunt Margaret stood at the foot of the stairs, her ridiculous turban left off for once to reveal a head full of gray hair. “I hear they suspect him of the earl’s murder too.”

That piece of it nearly made Julianne’s pulse stutter to a stop.
By the stars.
Could someone really believe that of him? Patrick had been in Scotland these past eleven months, nowhere close to Yorkshire. He
couldn’t
have killed his father.

But that did not mean others did not believe it, or that the motives people wished to pin on him were not shaped by a terrible logic.

“I ask that you all return to your rooms,” she said drawing her fury up tight. “Mr. Peters, I would like breakfast to be moved to eleven this morning. Given the unsettling events of the morning, I think a light repast will be more than sufficient.”

Peters inclined his head. “Of course, my lady. It shall be done.”

Her gaze moved next to Patrick’s mother. Julianne could not immediately tell if the woman’s white face was due to worry over Patrick, or fury over the way Julianne had just assumed control over the household. “You do not look well,” she said, reaching a hand out to squeeze Lady Haversham’s hand. The older woman’s skin was cool, clammy to the touch. In contrast, Julianne felt as though there was a fire kindling beneath her skin. “Is there something I can do for you?”

She half expected Patrick’s mother to scream that she had done enough. After all, this was all her fault, in so many ways. But instead, her mother-in-law’s brown eyes, so much like Patrick’s, rose to meet hers. “No. You have it all in hand, as should be. I know you care for my son, and he cares for you as well. I am grateful to you, for more than you can know. Just help us, please. Help
him
.”

Julianne felt humbled—and shocked—by Lady Haversham’s trust. Clearly, Patrick had not explained his motives in marrying her to his family, any more than he’d explained them to her. It was obvious he loved his family. Their safety and happiness was the most important thing to him. Indeed, he’d married her to save them. No matter how she felt about him, or how he felt about her, she would not rest until she saw the door slammed shut on this tragedy she had kicked open.

“I will,” she promised her mother-in-law. “I swear to you.”

One more face came into focus as Patrick’s mother made her way unsteadily up the stairs. Her father was standing near the front door, and for the first time Julianne realized he had been standing back, watching her bark orders. She flushed, imagining he must be about to chastise her in some way. Instead, he said, “What is your plan, Julianne?”

“My plan?” she echoed.

“I presume you and Patrick spoke of what might be needed in the event of his arrest?”

She hesitated, surprised her father had not inserted his usual authoritative opinion into this mix. She knew how to plan, even if doing so was not always her first inclination. She might have impulsively gone to Scotland to find Patrick on little more than a whim, but she’d also plotted for days how to procure that first initial waltz with him. She had an impulsive nature—a fact she refused to apologize for—but when her attentions and her inclinations were properly harnessed, she’d proven herself well.

She needed some of that same nerve at the moment.

“Aunt Margaret said Patrick was suspected in the earl’s recent death. Is it true?”

At her father’s nod, she swallowed the fear that wanted to sink its claws into her. “He couldn’t have done it, Father. Patrick has been in Scotland these past eleven months. He’s witnesses there who can prove it.”

“He’ll need them, I’m afraid.”

Julianne’s thoughts raced in time with her pulse. “James MacKenzie traveled on to London to take care of legal matters for Patrick. He will have need of his friend’s counsel, and MacKenzie can also serve as a witness. Now that Patrick has been arrested, there is no time to lose.”

“I suppose you think I should go to London to fetch him?” At Julianne’s nod, her father stroked his beard, thinking. “Haversham is important enough to you that you would send me away at a time like this?”

The memory of yesterday’s argument hung like a full moon in her mind. But even with all that had passed between them, the answer that came to her lips was still instantaneous, still sure. “He is.”

Her father nodded. “Then of course, I’ll go immediately.” He smiled grimly as he turned toward the stairs. “I confess, you seem well capable of managing affairs here without me.”

The praise slipped past her as her father left, a welcome surprise. She turned toward the study, determined to pen a letter for her father to carry to London in his quest to find James MacKenzie, only to pull up short when she realized she still had an audience of sorts.

George Willoughby leaned casually against the wall of the nearby hallway, looking as though he’d just been pulled from bed. She raised a startled hand to her chest. “Oh! Mr. Willoughby.” At his raised brow, she corrected herself. “That is,
George
. You startled me.”

He pushed off the wall with a lazy shoulder. “How are you managing, Julianne? I regret Haversham has put us all through this. And did I hear correctly that your father is leaving too? You’ve been abandoned, left here all alone.”

Julianne blinked. “I’m hardly alone. I’ve Mr. Peters and the dowager countess and family to think of, certainly.” She lifted a finger to one temple, wondering if she could rub him out of her way. “Truly, I am fine, George.”

His eyes swept her person, to the floor and back up, as if he did not believe her claim. “We’ve at least three hours until breakfast. I would spend them comforting you.”

Julianne raised a brow. “
Comforting
me?”

He shrugged. “Offering my assistance. You must know I would do anything for you.”

Julianne swallowed her annoyance. Perhaps she could assign him some mindless task. Or demand he put on some clothes. But it occurred to her he would not be easily put off, and that moreover, with his easygoing smile and knowledge of Summersby, perhaps there
was
something useful he could do. “Can you ensure the needs of the guests are met?” She pulled a smile out of her arsenal. Knew it was working when he perked to attention. “Patrick wished them to be permitted to stay as long as they wished, and I confess I lack the capacity to play the doting hostess at the moment.”

“Of course, Julianne.” He breathed her name, almost reverently, and his straight white teeth flashed like a mirror in sunlight. “It is the very least I can do. I am completely at your disposal.”

A ruffle of unease shifted through her, like a change on the wind. She needed to focus on Patrick’s defense, not worry about how to deflect Willoughby’s panting adoration. But there was little she could do at the moment besides smile benignly and hope his “disposal” kept him well out of her path.

“H
ad enough yet, Haversham?”

Jonathon Blythe’s voice reached through the red-rimmed haze and yanked Patrick back to vivid consciousness.

His eyes slowly focused on the gaol’s damp stone walls. The smell of urine clung about the place, a testament to the gaol’s more common use as a place for Shippington’s less cautious souls to sleep off a bender. Hell, Patrick had spent his own sixteenth birthday in this very cell, urged to ill celebratory judgment by Eric and a barkeep who was far too deferential to refuse the earl’s sons anything. But today, the stone walls he remembered had been turned over to a more formidable use.

Patrick spit out a mouthful of blood onto the gaol’s dusty, disused floor, his ears still ringing from the last blow Blythe had delivered. He ought to feel helpless, tied to a wooden chair while his cousin used him as a punching bag. In a fair fight, Patrick could have acquitted himself well. He’d done more than just study at Cambridge.

This, however, was not Cambridge, and this was nothing close to a fair fight.

Still, Patrick did not regret turning himself over to this arrest. His relatively peaceful surrender had pulled his pistol-waving cousin away from Summersby. Patrick could do nothing more now except wait for MacKenzie and pray that Blythe did not become more unhinged.

And for every blow that fell, he’d be glad his cousin was here, swinging at him instead of Julianne.

Blythe circled to the left, and Patrick braced himself for the coming blow which—if he was to reach for any sort of a silver lining—came and went quickly, and ensured the unpleasant ringing in his right ear now had a matched partner in the left.

“
Enough
, Mr. Blythe.” The magistrate’s disapproval rang sharply throughout the cell. Farmington leaned closer, his face white around the edges. “The inquest has already determined the charge of murder. There is no need to continue in this vein.”

Blythe cracked his knuckles. “There is still the matter of the earl’s death to sort out.”

A denial set up in Patrick’s ears, even as he gingerly tested the movement of his jaw. “I did not kill my father or my brother, Blythe. A beating will not change that truth.”

“The truth?” Blythe barked. “What do you know of the
truth
? It’s as plain as Hades you’ve married the only witness to keep her from testifying, and orchestrated the whole thing to subvert justice. Thank goodness the coroner saw fit to see justice served.”

Patrick set his thankfully unbroken jaw against his cousin’s accusation. He might have started out with such an indelicate mission in mind, but so much had changed between Julianne and himself that he could scarcely identify his original reasons for marrying her.

Not that she seemed inclined to listen to him on that front.

“You always thought you were smarter than the lot of us,” his cousin went on, “but this time your bloody arrogance has caught up with you. Because the inquest didn’t need her testimony after all, did it? You murdered your brother, and then poisoned your father, all to acquire the title.” He drew in a ragged breath. “The title you never deserved.”

Anger welled up, hotter than blood. “By the balls, I didn’t kill my brother,
or
my father.”

“You certainly benefited from their deaths, though.” Jonathon Blythe’s voice shook, and for the first time Patrick caught a glimpse of the man’s motivation in moving these charges forward. Grief was etched there, in the lines around his eyes and the tremor of his hands.

“I had no hand in my father’s death, Blythe. I’ve been in Scotland the past eleven months, and have witnesses who can place me there.” Damn, but he needed MacKenzie right now. What in the devil was keeping the man so long?

Farmington leaned in, and Patrick could smell the man’s sour distaste for the proceedings roll off him. “Haversham, I do not like seeing you so ill-used, but Blythe raises a serious accusation. It will go better for you if you simply tell us the truth. Did you have a hand in your father’s death?”

Patrick leaned back, knowing the truth was not what they sought. He’d hoped to be able to reason with the magistrate, but with Blythe’s right hook flying so indiscriminately, it seemed that polite discourse was the furthest thing from either man’s agenda—unless the discourse involved confessing to a crime he hadn’t committed.

“This line of questioning is finished,” he told them, even as he braced himself for another blow. “I will speak no further without my counsel present.”