Moonlight on My Mind (26 page)

He offered his arm, though his face screwed up in thought. “Miss Smith, you said? She dresses like a servant. Was she once employed at Summersby?”

“Oh,” Julianne moaned. “I am feeling so faint.”

As George helped her back inside the house, she peeked out from lowered lashes to judge the impact of her subterfuge. Aunt Margaret was watching her with a frown, and the worried faces of Patrick’s mother and sisters swam into view. Julianne was reminded, in that moment, of what she stood to lose if she failed at this most basic task of distracting the gentleman. If Willoughby felt he was threatened, there was no telling what he might do, or whom he might hurt. Patrick would want his family protected, above all else.

“Why was Miss Smith here?” George pressed, handing his dripping umbrella to Mr. Peters.

“She has just started working with Dr. Merial,” Julianne said, desperately stretching for an answer that avoided suspicion but circled Willoughby’s attention squarely back around to her. She needed to give Prudence every chance at a firm head start, before George’s suspicions caught up with him. “She was here about my . . .
condition
.” She splayed a hand across her abdomen. “Perhaps . . . perhaps I should lie down.”

Gemmy immediately—and uncharacteristically—dropped to the floor, his muzzle quivering between his two front paws. Constance, however, knew her mistress better. She cocked her head as if to acknowledge the fine bit of acting unfolding before her eyes.

Surprisingly, it was Aunt Margaret who clucked into action. “George, be a dear, and help the poor girl back up to her room, before she pitches over. She should not have left her bed today, feeling as poorly as she has. Lady Haversham, perhaps you ought to take those girls right upstairs and get them out of their wet shoes. Possibly even call for a bath.”

“A bath?” exclaimed Mary.

“We’ve just
had
a bath. Last night,” echoed Eleanor indignantly.

“Your new sister is ill,” Aunt Margaret chided. “Do you want to contract something terrible?” She shooed them on, and then added, “I’ll summon the housekeeper to make a hot tisane. I know that always makes me feel better when I am out of sorts.”

Julianne watched it all unfold like a runaway carriage, unable to even insert her own opinion into the mix because she was
supposed
to be wretchedly ill. The dowager countess herded the whispering children up the stairs, presumably to put as much distance between them and a source of possible contagion as possible.

Aunt Margaret’s plan was brilliant in at least one respect. If George was busy helping
her
, perhaps he would be too occupied to think about Prudence. But halfway up the stairs, George leaned in low to murmur in her ear, “Are you sure Miss Smith was not the ladies’ maid who helped you during the November house party? I recall someone who looked just like her—”

Julianne promptly wilted, praying he was naïve enough to catch her, if not believe her.

George scooped her up. The feel of his hands on her body was close to agonizing. This was, after all, the man who had killed Eric and possibly the old earl. The man who had stood by and let Patrick be blamed for a murder he hadn’t committed, all to save his own sorry hide.

Instinct told her to bite. Kick. Scream.

Instead, she summoned every bit of theatrical skill she had obtained at the hands of the
ton
, forcing herself to stay limp as George Willoughby carried her to her room. She could hear Constance’s nails, following steadily on the floor beneath her, and swallowed the urge to send the little dog to safety with a sharp word.

If she spoke now, it would give her away.

As George settled her atop the coverlet on her bed, she felt him smooth a hand down one arm, coming dangerously close to one breast in the process.

Clearly, this was not a man a woman ought to faint around.

“Where am I?” she asked, injecting her voice with just the right amount of grogginess. Time to rouse herself before Willoughby took it upon himself to loosen her corset.

“I’ve taken you to your room. Are you . . .” George leaned in, and the motion seemed somehow all the more ominous for the fact he looked concerned. “Is there a chance you could be losing the baby?”

She tried to affect a distraught look. “Please . . .” she croaked in what she hoped was a pitiful voice. “I should like some water.”

“I think tea is better called for in a situation like this.” Aunt Margaret bustled into the doorway, blurry but unmistakable in her turban. She came closer, slipping into Julianne’s grateful line of vision bearing a tray and tea set. “George, I imagine Lady Haversham would prefer the company of another woman at the moment.”

“But—”

“
Now
, George.”

Still, he hesitated.

Julianne added her agreement through artfully lowered lashes. “I confess, I would prefer if Aunt Margaret stayed with me, if you do not mind. But please, stay close, if you would.” She offered him a tremulous smile, praying her request would hold him to Summersby long enough for Prudence to be safely away. “In case I need you.”

George’s eyes searched hers. “Of course, Julianne. You know I would do anything for you.”

Aunt Margaret locked the door behind him with a deft turn of her hand, and slipped the key into a pocket in her skirts. “There,” she muttered to the door. “Now that beef-witted boy will not bother us.”

Julianne exhaled in relief as Constance jumped up on the bed and nudged at Julianne’s hand. She could not imagine how Aunt Margaret understood to do it, but she was relieved at the woman’s astuteness. George could not reach her through a locked door. The girls were safe with their mother, she hoped, being scrubbed down from whatever miasmas to which they were feared to have been exposed.

And Aunt Margaret’s reassuring presence was blotting Willoughby from the room, at least for the moment.

She dutifully tried to sip the tea Aunt Margaret brought her, but after the first bare taste, she found herself unable to stomach it and surreptitiously tossed it into a nearby vase of flowers. She continued to pretend to sip it, wanting to ensure she did not hurt her aunt’s feelings, and needing her to remain as a buffer against Willoughby’s return.

Now began a waiting game: waiting for Prudence to reach the magistrate, and for the magistrate to reach Summersby. She prayed Mr. Farmington believed the girl.

Because she had no plan for managing Willoughby beyond a few hours’ delay.

Chapter 28

P
atrick had believed he was used to rain. He’d presumed the sorts of showers he’d become accustomed to in Scotland, storms that bore in from the coast and anchored themselves in the hills above Moraig, would have immured him to the drudgery of a dour English drizzle.

But as they began the last push toward Summersby in Farmington’s unfortunately open-topped carriage, Patrick was forced to acknowledge that the storm battering them was no typical English rainstorm. It poured down from a dark slash of sky, obscuring their vision and roaring in their ears. It slowed them down, but with Blythe at the reins, the carriage continued to lurch across the mud-soaked ruts with a vigor just short of reckless.

Patrick could feel the knot of worry tightening in his chest as they turned onto Summersby’s long, muddy drive and Blythe pushed the horses harder, faster. Far ahead, rising up through the trees, the manor house could be seen, a Gothic nightmare come to life. Slate-tipped turrets watched their progress like great, mythical eyes, and even from this distance, the gray stone walls gleamed slick with rain and moss.

With such a spurious welcome, it seemed easy to question the wisdom of their rushed approach. No one with an ounce of sense in his head would be out in weather such as this. But Julianne was somewhere inside those damp walls, and he would not be able to rest until he reassured himself she was well.

As fate would have it, they weren’t the only ones lacking good sense. Less than a quarter of the way up Summersby’s rambling drive, they came across a single-horse carriage mired in mud. The driver—a lone figure in a soaked-through dress—waved at them from atop the dangerously tilted curricle, and Blythe pulled their team to a stop a safe distance from the muddied dip of the road, where a nearby creek had overflowed its bank.

Patrick warred with two competing, animalistic instincts. To pass the stranded woman by and leave her to the elements was a thought so cruel as to be villainous. But to add even a moment’s delay to their push toward Summersby was untenable.

“She’s stuck, all right.” Blythe raised his voice to be heard above the rain. “If she’d a proper team she might have been all right.”

“She’s in a hired livery,” Farmington said. “I recognize the horse from Shippington.”

“Right then,” James said, leaping down with a formidable splash. “We need to get her out if we’ve a hope of getting our carriage past in this weather. Patrick, let’s see if we can get our shoulders behind helping this poor woman out.”

Patrick climbed down, cursing fate, the rain, the day. Julianne was in danger, and Willoughby was an unpredictable fool. He didn’t just want to get to Summersby. He
needed
to be there, to protect his family and the woman he cared for enough to charge through an autumn downpour.

“Oh, I am so glad to see you,” the stranded woman gasped, blinking through the pelting rain. “I’m in ever so much of a hurry.”

“You shouldn’t be out in a storm like this,” Patrick told her gruffly.

The driver was a slip of a girl, dark hair plastered against her head. She looked vaguely familiar, but then again, most of Shippington’s residents were people he had seen in one form or another over the course of his life. The woman shrank against his curt observation, pulling her arms close around her, as if she could ward off his glower with the rain.

Neither was even a remote possibility.

James climbed up onto the cart seat and took over the reins, while Patrick put his shoulder to the rear of the carriage—little more than a curricle, really, and infinitely inappropriate for the weather. He dug his boots into the muck, pushing with all his might, rocking and cajoling until the wheel came free.

As the mud finally gave way with a loud groan and James urged the horse to take over, Patrick went down to his knees in the filthy water. “The devil take it,” he cursed, clambering heavily to his feet, his boots squelching through the mud.

James hauled back on the reins and grinned down at him. “A fine sight we’ll be, descending on Summersby like this. This Willoughby fellow’s likely to laugh himself to death and save us the trouble of a trial.”

The woman stared at James, her eyes flashing through the rain. “Did . . . did you say George Willoughby?”

Patrick tensed, suddenly more alert to hear his cousin’s name on this young woman’s lips. “Aye. Do you know him?”

The girl paled beneath the curtain of rain that enveloped them all. “I . . . I have a message about George Willoughby. I must deliver it to the magistrate. ’Tis an emergency, and the only reason I am out in this terrible weather.”

Patrick swiped a hand across his face, although the water ran back into his eyes almost immediately. “What is your name, miss?”

“Prudence Smith.”

Patrick stood frozen as he realized he was speaking with the second witness, the girl who—thank God—had not disappeared into the teeming cesspool of Leeds. She was the key to everything. And she was here, in front of him, the magistrate only steps away.

“What is the message?” he asked, forcing himself to remain calm.

“I’ve strict instructions from Lady Haversham to deliver it only to the magistrate, sir.”

“I am the lady’s husband,” he told her, impatience sinking its teeth into him. “I assure you, it will be fine to share it with me.”

The girl’s lip trembled in indecision. “I . . . I am sorry, my lord. But I would prefer to speak directly with the magistrate.”

Patrick bit back a snarl of frustration. Beside him, James climbed down from the cart and beckoned to the cowering Miss Smith. “Well, despite the inauspicious start to your drive, you are in luck, Miss Smith. We’ve the magistrate with us, in our carriage just over there. If you’ve a message for him regarding Willoughby, you need go no further.”

“Oh.” She blinked and then jerked to awareness.
“Oh.”

But as they slogged their way through the mud toward Farmington’s carriage and the two men waiting inside came into clearer view, the young woman suddenly planted her feet and looked wildly between Patrick and James. “What sort of trap is this?”

Patrick bit the inside of his cheek at what appeared to be yet
another
delay. The girl was clearly frightened, though of what he could not tell. “You wanted to speak with the magistrate,” he growled, anxious to be done with this. “He’s just there. Mr. Farmington. The older gentleman, to the right.”

“But . . . that is George Willoughby,” Prudence gasped. “Isn’t it?”

Patrick and James glanced at each other over the young woman’s head. “Er . . . no. Do you recognize him?”

Prudence closed her eyes and nodded. “I saw him this morning, at church.”

Patrick offered James a telling look, then slowly chose his words, feeling his way toward the truth the way a blind man would find his bed. “I believe you might be confused, Miss Smith. The older gentleman you have pointed out is not Mr. Willoughby. That is Mr. Farmington, Shippington’s magistrate.”

She turned deathly white, then whirled in a shower of rain-soaked skirts and splashed back to her carriage, scrambling back up into the seat like a cat with a singed tail.

They plunged after her. “What in the devil has you so spooked?” Patrick demanded. “You cannot leave, Miss Smith. We need your testimony.”

“I cannot deliver it to
him
,” she moaned.

“Why ever not?” Patrick grabbed hold of the girl’s reins, trying desperately to slow her panicked flight. Damn it, she couldn’t leave. Miss Prudence Smith—hysterical or not—was the key to this whole damnable puzzle.

The carriage whip sliced down on Patrick, and the unexpected pain on his arm loosened his hold. The carriage lurched forward and then it was pulling away.

But the girl’s voice wavered, faint and ominous against the steady clap of rain. “Because
he’s
the one who killed Lord Haversham’s heir.”

J
ulianne leaned back into her pillows, rubbing the silky fur of Constance’s ears absently between two fingers. Aunt Margaret seemed in no hurry to leave, floating around the room, straightening, shifting, touching.

Julianne would have preferred to be alone with her thoughts, but she also knew that as long as Patrick’s aunt remained, George Willoughby would be held at bay. Aunt Margaret hummed an indiscernible tune as she rearranged the service. Straightened the teaspoons.

Repositioned the sugar dish.

“Have you finished your tea?” the older woman called absently over her shoulder.

“Er . . . yes. Your kindness is appreciated.” Julianne held out her empty cup. She realized, then, with the degree of difficulty that accompanied the simple motion, that her head felt strange, as though it were stuffed with wet cotton.

“Did you enjoy it, dear?”

Julianne squinted at her aunt. Usually, at this close proximity, she could see people quite clearly, but Aunt Margaret’s round face was out of focus. Or perhaps it was that Julianne’s eyes would not be still. Whatever the cause, she felt quite odd. “I think I would have preferred chocolate,” she murmured distractedly.

Aunt Margaret placed the cup on the tray. “Tsk, tsk, child. I can’t think such a rich drink would be good for you, given your condition.”

“My condition?” Julianne tried to raise a brow, but the motion felt disastrously slow.

Aunt Margaret peered closely at her. Whatever she saw in Julianne’s face seemed to cheer her immensely. “Yes, your condition. Rather inconvenient, Haversham reappearing to face his murder charge with a pregnant wife in tow. I scarcely think any of us is looking forward to another heir to stumble over.”

Julianne blinked her way back into focus. “Aunt Margaret . . . I think . . . I think George must have put something in my tea.”

The older woman smiled patiently. “George would never be so pragmatic. Why, the very idea you might be expecting has sent the poor young man into a veritable paroxysm of panic. How could he manage something requiring actual planning?”

Julianne struggled to wrap her head around her flying, disjointed thoughts. Why did Aunt Margaret have cause to dislike Willoughby?

It scarcely signified that Julianne no longer liked him either.

“Willoughby is—for want of a better term—a short-sighted simpleton,” Aunt Margaret continued. “Ask yourself, why would he want to ensure your comfort, when the very child causing your illness is a threat to his own future? It would be a shame if the earldom was given to a man like that, when my son is so much more deserving of the title. And when the time comes, I am confident Willoughby’s lack of ambition and mental acuity will ensure the Crown views my own son’s petition more favorably.”

Julianne recoiled against the woman’s words. Her leap to understanding was slower than usual, but it carried the horror of perfect clarity. Her nausea this morning had not been the result of the clotted cream. She could feel the remnants of that same illness now, churning back to vicious life. “Oh dear God,” she swore, not even caring that she had uttered the unladylike curse out loud. “
You’ve
put something in my tea.”

Aunt Margaret’s atrocious turban bobbed agreeably. “I’ve put something in your tea much of the last week. A touch of arsenic. Yet another advantage of poor George Willoughby’s oblivious nature. I was originally hoping for a slow erosion of your health. The poor, new wife, wasting away while her husband was tried for murder. I learned with the earl that too sudden a decline could raise undue suspicion. But your pregnancy has now given me the perfect excuse for action. You shall lose the child, and die yourself from complications.”

“
You
killed the earl?” Julianne gasped. “Did you kill Eric too?”

Only that couldn’t be right. Her brain was befuddled, but she was
quite
sure Prudence had said the killer she had seen was a man.

Aunt Margaret leaned in, so close Julianne could see the fine lines radiating out from the woman’s narrowed eyes. “We’ve made too many mistakes, but I
will
salvage it now. Your husband is next—whether by noose or deceit, I care not a whit. He should have been killed back in November, had the deed been properly finished. But if you think I will sit placidly by while you poke your nose about Summersby, stirring up trouble, you are mistaken in the extreme. The cup of tea you just finished had enough belladonna in it to fell an ox. I probably ought to apologize for that.” She shrugged. “I could not take any chances.”

Julianne swallowed the bile that pricked the back of her throat. How much of the poison had she consumed? Not the entirety of the cup—not that Aunt Margaret knew any better.

Certainly enough to affect her.

But enough to kill her?

“Why are you telling me this now?” she rasped, wondering if Prudence had any hope at all of reaching help before the poison took its full effect.

“Why should I not? The older woman smiled, and the sight of it sent a chill through Julianne. “It is not as though you will be able to tell a soul. Of course, I shall be sure to claim I did everything I could to help you, short of fetching your chocolate. How about some more tea, instead?”

Julianne thrashed her head mutely.

“No? Well, you’re in no position to negotiate, dear. In fact, I quite insist on it.”