Moonlight on My Mind (28 page)

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

J
ulianne 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.

If she did not do this, she risked having him hate her every day for the rest of their lives.

She was a woman used to pursuing and acquiring what she wanted, whether it be the latest fashion from Paris or a husband whose kiss made her heart fling itself against the walls of her chest. She had married Patrick because she had wanted to. She had wanted
him
. Her body was even now leaning toward him, wanting the reassurance of his touch.

But now that she knew she loved him, she faced a far more difficult choice.

She drew herself up, though she leaned against the bedpost for support. “You only married me to ensure I could not be compelled to testify against you.”

“Julianne, you cannot know—”

“Don’t.” She threw up her hand, shielding herself from the sting of his certain protest. “Do not try to spare my feelings on this matter. I will not have another falsehood between us, now that we are finally being truthful with each other. You have been freed of the murder charge. You are home, with your family, your title returned to you. You no longer
need
me. It would not be fair to hold you to the vows you made.”

He flinched backward. “What are you saying?”

A half hour of feigning death with Aunt Margaret watching over her had given her a long time to consider the future. She had reacted harshly to his confession, that day by the lake. She was shallow and selfish and spoiled, things she had never regretted in her life, and had always understood. She feared she was selfish enough to keep him.

But those were not things a man like Patrick would want in a wife. He deserved a wife he wanted, one he chose without the press of a noose about his neck.

He deserved a chance to find his happiness.

And so she faced her dripping, disheveled, muddied husband and lifted her chin with a courage she did not feel. “Given that you are safe now, I suppose we ought to discuss the possibility of an annulment.”

S
urely she was pretending this bit of it too.

Any moment now, her mouth would curve upward into a real, heartfelt smile, and Patrick would be able to sort out what she was actually thinking.

Except, damn her flashing eyes, he had a sinking feeling she was all too serious.

He tried to school his lungs to breathe normally, tried to force his hands to unclench.

All his efforts failed.

“You would end it?” He was startled to hear the hoarse tenor of his voice, wrapping itself around those terrible words. “After all we have been through, you would simply walk away?”

Her lips stretched the merest fraction of an inch. “I don’t blame you for marrying me, Patrick, truly, I don’t. You were desperate, and I was willing, if a bit naïve. There was no coercion, no outright lie on that front. But the circumstances that drew us together no longer matter. We’ve spent scarcely a few weeks in each other’s company. There is no child to be affected by the decision, no reason to delay the inevitable. Everything has changed. And because of it, I would not force you to honor our original arrangement.”

By the devil’s balls.
It sounded as though
she
didn’t want to honor their original arrangement.

Patrick drew a deep breath, feeling his way through this unexpected quagmire of emotion. “I don’t think an annulment is possible,” he told her. “At least, MacKenzie warned me it wasn’t.”

She inhaled sharply. “So you’ve discussed the option with your solicitor?”

He stood stock-still. Damn it, this was her idea. Why did she sound so irritated?

“You’ve been poisoned, Julianne. Perhaps the belladonna has confused your thoughts. Give it some time—”

“I do not need time to know what is right, Patrick,” she interrupted. “If we are truly tied to each other, I suppose we could deal with an unwanted marriage the same way everyone else in the
ton
does. ’Tis no small matter for me to live in London. I know your heart would keep you at Summersby. And your mother and sisters, certainly, need you here.”

Her words slid into him like a freshly sharpened knife.
An unwanted marriage
, she called it. He had thought it so himself, once upon a time. Had envisioned just this means of escape, handed to him on a silver platter. But for Patrick this had ceased to be an unwanted marriage almost from the start. All through his time in the gaol, through the endless press of day into night, he’d thought of her. Of the stunning gift of her love, and the promise that awaited him when finally he fought his way free of the charges.

Of how he had hurt her with his silence, and how he could make it right.

He’d come through hell, dreaming of this opportunity to prove himself to her, only to find that what waited him on the other side was infinitely worse.

“You may think that an admirable solution, but what of my need for an heir?” Patrick took a step toward her, reaching for her, sure that if he could only take her in his arms, he could prove why this was a poor idea.

But she flinched as his hand brushed her cheek. He could feel her muscles tense, ready for flight. Imagined he could see the revulsion floating beneath her skin.

“You’ve cousins who could fill that role,” she told him, her voice shattering the last of his hope. “And apparently, though it strains the imagination to consider it, they are both of the innocent variety.”

Patrick’s hand fell away. She didn’t want him. Her eyes had been opened, and her heart had been closed.

And it was no less than he deserved.

Chapter 31

P
atrick slammed into his father’s study, still stunned by Julianne’s ruthless request and his own reaction to it. She had stood in front of him, still swaying unsteadily from the effects of her near-poisoning, and told him she wanted a goddamned annulment. There was naught for it but whisky and the solitude of his father’s chair.

Or, more correctly,
his
chair.

But neither solitude nor whisky were to be found in that chair, because James MacKenzie was sitting in it, his muddy boots propped up on the desk, the ever-present decanter of brandy uncorked in one hand.

“The whisky bottle was empty, so I sought my sins elsewhere.” His friend eyed him a long, studious moment, then held the decanter out. “You look as though you could use a drink. I presume this means your wife has awakened to torment you anew?”

Patrick snatched the decanter from his friend’s hand. “I thought you were heading back to Shippington, with Blythe and the prisoners.”

“Your butler dispatched an entire army of footmen to see them on their way. And your cousin Blythe seemed more than willing to see his mother to gaol. Bloodthirsty fellow, that.”

“Righteous, I would say. He was always so. Only now it seems he had reason to be.” Patrick shook his head. “I have misjudged him somewhat, I’m afraid.”

“Well, it seems with your poor, wee, misjudged cousin so eager to guard his mother I was  . . .” James paused and waved his hand about. “Superfluous.”

“I understand the feeling.” Patrick shoved his friend’s boots to the side and perched on the edge of the desk. “Only it turns out the person who considers me
most
unessential is my wife.” He obviated the search for a glass in favor of more immediate salvation, and tipped the decanter up to his lips. The long, sweet draught of brandy ought to have calmed him.

Instead, it sharpened his pain like a damned whetstone.

“She wants an annulment,” he said, as much to the wall as anything.

“Pregnant women can be a touch unpredictable.” James shrugged. “Georgette told me she wanted me to grow my beard back, just last month. And then turned around the day after and said I needed to shave.” His lips twitched. “There is naught for it but to let it blow over.”

“She is not pregnant,” Patrick said, realizing that the admission hurt. “She was ill because Aunt Margaret was trying to poison her, although she seems well on her way to recovery now. And I do not believe this is going to blow over.”

James leaned back, his dark brows bunching. “Well, she can’t bloody well have an annulment. Tight as a drum, that contract is. I ought to know. I orchestrated the thing.”

Patrick glared at his friend. “You’ve made that perfectly clear. And I was willing to accept that ours might not be a happy union, at the start. Only . . . and here’s the rub . . . I didn’t expect to feel this way about her.”

“Driving you crazy, is she?”

“Crazy seems a euphemism, at best. My brain goes to rot around her. It’s like I cease to be the person I thought I was the moment I see her. Think on it. Have you ever seen me this way? More or less breaking out of gaol, wrestling pistols out of people’s hands? It is as though I cannot remember who I’m meant to be because of her.”

“Perhaps she has turned you
into
who you are supposed to be,” James unexpectedly countered. “She is a challenge, to be sure, but in my experience, one needs a little challenge to grow in life. Do
you
want an annulment?”

“For shite’s sake, no.” Patrick waved the decanter about, trying to express how she made him feel. “She’s maddening and unpredictable and a little bit vain, but the damnable thing is, every one of those . . . flaws, if you will . . . contribute to something more than just their sum. I enjoy her, MacKenzie. She makes me want to stick around to discover what unexpected, brilliant thing she might do next.”

“Ah.” A knowing grin claimed his friend’s face, even as his head shook in the universal gesture of sympathetic friendship. “Shouldn’t you be telling her these things, instead of me?”

Patrick glared down at him. “You aren’t helping matters. I am not someone who finds it easy to express my feelings.”

“If you want my advice—”

“Which I don’t.”

James’s brow winged up. “But if I were to give it anyway—”

“Which, of course, you will.”

“Then I would say you need to find a way to tell her everything you just told me.” James’s mouth pulled down into a frown. “Unless you
want
to give her an annulment.”

“I’ve already said I don’t want an annulment,” Patrick snarled into his decanter, before slugging down another throat full of regret. He wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve, the incongruity of the motion with the expectations of his new title be damned. “But I don’t want her to be unhappy either.”

“You would grant it to her? Even if it made you miserable?”

Patrick floated a moment on the terrible thought. When he thought he had lost her, his world had razored into focus. His future had ceased to exist for that frightening slice of time.

And he knew. Knew in his gut. Knew in his heart. He loved her.

He would do anything to make her happy, and the sacrifice of his own happiness in pursuit of hers barely scratched the surface of it. If Julianne told him the key to her happiness was in his recusal, he would give it to her. Because he didn’t just enjoy her. That implied pleasure over pain. This thing he felt for her . . . by God, it
hurt
.

But it was the kind of hurt that made him happy to suffer it.

“I would,” Patrick told his friend, cold with the truth of it. “If it was within my power, and I could not convince her otherwise.”

James lifted a dubious brow. “You would accept her right to leave you and seek another husband? You can be sure your cousin George Willoughby would be first in line, slavering for a chance at her.”

The very thought clawed at Patrick’s conscience. “If she wanted him, I could not deny it of her,” he said, more slowly this time. Truthfully, this was a bit of a stretch. He could accept that Julianne could not be happy with him. But he was not at all sure he could accept her being happy with George Willoughby.

James sat back in the chair, rubbing a hand across his chin. “Bugger it all, you’re well and truly smitten.” His friend eyed him with something approaching respect. “All right then. You should give her one.”

Damn it all to hell.
What was MacKenzie about here?

“I don’t see how,” Patrick protested. “From the start, you told me the only way to do this was to be sure she could not press for an annulment. I followed your instructions to the letter, down to the requisite, awkward wedding night. The deed is sealed in blood.”

“She cannot press for an annulment. But
you
can. On the grounds of fraud.”

Patrick grappled with a growing unease. Damn MacKenzie’s black soul, he looked deadly serious, no matter that his words completely contradicted his earlier position on the matter. “How can I accuse her of fraud, when
I
am the one who lied to her about my motives in marrying her?”

“I was your witness, and managed the settlement papers, if you recall. I was not sure, when all was said and done, you would want to stay married to her. She’d ruined your life once, already.” He smiled in a self-deprecating manner. “But she was also far too trusting, signing whatever I slid in front of her. She misrepresented her age.”

“Her . . .
age
?”

James cleared his throat. “The papers she signed may have indicated she was born in the year 1802.”

Patrick’s imagination kicked at the absurdity of it. “No one will believe she is forty years old. She’s just come off her third Season. The whole of London knows she’s just shy of her majority.”

“No one needs to believe she is forty, Patrick. They just need to believe
you
believed it. The chit signed the papers without looking at them. She’s as culpable as anyone. It is a petty thing, I know, but enough to take before the Commissary Courts to request an annulment.”

“I thought you prided yourself on your honesty,” Patrick protested, still trying to wrap his head around it.

“Do not mistake me—I do not recommend this course. It rubbed me wrong to do it then, and it rubs me wrong to tell you of it now. But if you are serious—and by God, you’d better be if you decide to pursue it—you can claim you did not realize she was under age. If Julianne is the one who so desperately wants this annulment, she could claim she willingly lied. Or, if you would rather offer some version closer to the truth, you could claim that I was the fraudulent party.”

Patrick fixated on the last of his friend’s offer. As a solicitor in Moraig, James MacKenzie was well known for his fair dealings, and his sense of social justice. But now he was offering to destroy that reputation, all to help a friend. “That’s a big risk to take, MacKenzie. What about your reputation you are always harping about?”

James shrugged, damnably unrepentant for his sleight of hand. “My reputation seems a small sacrifice if it saves your miserable arse. It was my decision to orchestrate it, and is my consequence to face, if it comes to it. I only envisioned this means of escape employed as a matter of last resort, and had hoped to never need to tell you. Truly, I see much potential between you and Julianne.”

Patrick swiveled a disbelieving eye on his friend. “I thought you said you engineered this entire bit of lunacy on the basis that we might not suit.”

“I didn’t know her when I penned that settlement. But traveling with you both down from Moraig, I saw a different side of her. She is funny and smart, and yes, maddening if you don’t take the time to sort out that beneath that fashionable exterior lies a sharp, loyal mind.”

“You told me this morning I ought not to trust her.”

“I was testing you. Anyone with a pair of eyes can see you each care for the other. She is fierce in her desire to help you, and puts your needs above her own comfort. That is an admirable prelude to love.”

“So you
don’t
think I should grant her an annulment?”

“I think you need to
think
, Haversham.”

Patrick studied his friend a long, tense moment. “I suppose you think I should thank you for this. You’ll forgive me if I am not feeling all that gracious.”

James slipped the decanter bottle from Patrick’s hand. “It remains to be seen whether you will thank me or hate me later. But regardless of how you feel toward me, you have the means to grant your wife the annulment she wants.” He shook his head and refilled his glass. “But I’ll be damned if I can see why you’d want to.”