Moonlight on My Mind by Jennifer McQuiston Read Free Book Online Page B

back at Miss Baxter. Patrick understood how the dog felt. But neither of them was going to spend any time in this woman’s lap, no matter the temptation of her petite, silk-wrapped curves. The girl was like hives: popping up when least expected, impossible to shake off. Removing her from his house—and preferably from his life—was the first priority of business.
    “We need to fetch your things from the posting station and get you to the Blue Gander where you can take a room. You cannot stay here tonight or tongues will wag. Moraig may be small and isolated, but rumors have a way of spreading here just as fast as they do in London.”
    “Oh. I suppose you are right.” She shifted her feet from under her, and he had to force himself to avert his eyes from the shock of her pale ivory stockings. “I confess, I had not given any thought to where I might stay.”
    Patrick offered Miss Baxter his hand and pulled her to standing, determinedly ignoring how small and alive her palm felt against his own. He released her the moment she was steady. “It occurs to me that you scarcely give much thought to anything of importance before throwing yourself into the fray, Miss Baxter. But given that the hour grows late, and I still need to feed my bloody lamb, perhaps you ought to tell me why you are here.”
    J ulianne glanced down from the distraction of Patrick Channing’s lamp-lit scowl.
    Far from finding refuge in the moiré silk of her skirts, her gaze snagged on the grubby fabric. She felt like a different woman than when she had put this dress on this morning. Then, she had been thinking of nothing more than the pressing need to find this man and tell him the news he must hear. She’d hoped that in the process of finding him, she might find some measure of peace for her role in all of it.
    Now, the dress that had borne those hopes was close to destroyed. The hem had ripped during her fall onto the kitchen floor, and a smear of blood stained the front of the bodice from where she had leaned in to wrap her hands around the dog’s muzzle.
    When she had boarded the train in Leeds, she had not considered how Patrick might feel about the news she carried, so desperate and important had her task seemed. But there was nothing to be done for it now. It would be far worse for all of their futures to withhold this information. She’d waited too long as it was. “I’ve come to find you because you need to go home, Patrick.”
    His jaw hardened. “Do not presume to tell me what I need to do, Miss Baxter. And do not call me Patrick. Our fathers might be good friends, but you are no friend of mine.”
    Julianne steeled her nerve against his scathing retort. “Well then, you need to go home.” She hesitated, this last bit of it painful for her to say, and likely devastating for him to hear. “Lord Haversham.”
    He took a sudden, whiplashed step back. She could almost see him wrestle his thoughts back to center. “What game do you play, Miss Baxter?”
    “The earl . . .” She exhaled, and rubbed her sweating palms against her skirts, wishing the terrier’s soft, reassuring fur was still within reach. “Your father died last week. I am so, so sorry.”
    He paled beneath the sandy fringe of his stubble, but appeared possessed by an almost supernatural calm. “I do not believe you.”
    She had expected his grief. Possibly his anger. But she hadn’t expected doubt.
    “I speak the truth,” she told him, praying he believed her.
    The calm with which he engaged this conversation began to show the faintest of cracks. “The truth .” He stumbled over the word, as if it sliced his tongue to even utter the single syllable. “You, of all people, do not hold the truth in good stead. This is a ruse you have concocted to force my premature return, nothing more. Is there a reward out for my head, then?”
    This time it was Julianne’s turn to jerk backward as if struck. She felt ill, her stomach churning to hear the venom in his voice.