Julianne laughed. It was necessary to cover the shards of uncertainty jumping beneath her skin. She was nervous. She was never nervous in such matters. But there was no denying that this conversation was sending thoughts of green waistcoats and other prey tumbling to a far more distant place. Her father would not like their disappearance from the ballroom, she knew, but surely a moment or two alone with their host’s son in an open and accessible foyer could be no cause to sound the alarm of impropriety yet.
“Are you chasing me, Mr. Channing?” She tossed a quick look over her shoulder. “And more importantly, is your brother watching you?” She could see little beyond the smear of colorful gowns as the next set started. “I can’t see anything in this crush.”
He leaned in close. Too close. She could smell the earthy fragrance of horse and sweet hay on his clothing, underlain by the sharper bite of something that smelled medicinal. His breath, where it tickled the edge of her ear, sent her stomach into a swirling state of confusion. “Eric is just there, near the edge of the line. Can you see? He’s watching us now. Quite intently.”
Julianne’s skin thrummed with a curious anticipation. “Then why have we left the dance?” she whispered.
He stepped closer, until his trousers brushed her skirts and she could smell the heated linen of his shirt. “Because I imagine my brother’s interest will be captured more fully now that he suspects I am going to kiss you.”
Julianne’s throat tightened around the thought. The relative indecency of the waltz fell away, forgotten in the face of this tempting new impropriety. She lifted her chin. “Are you going to kiss me, Mr. Channing?”
“Oh, of a certainty.” He smiled down at her, and her knees locked up at the sight of his mouth, transformed from that stern slash of line into something shattering. His was not the sudden, sharp grin so preferred by the rakes of the ton. No, his lips stretched wide in a slow, seductive slide of promise, and it heated her from the inside out.
How had she not seen it? The man was far more attractive than she had first thought, with his lean lines and fathomless brown eyes. Why, if he took the time to bathe, he might even be handsome.
He moved closer still, and she felt the press of a welcome wall at her back. When had he maneuvered her into a corner? She blinked in delicious expectation. They were deeper in the foyer now, out of sight of his brother or any reasonable chaperone. Oh, he was far better at flirtation than she had first credited him.
And she was far more susceptible than she had first imagined.
Her gaze lodged on a smudge of dirt on Channing’s right cheek. At least, she hoped it was dirt. After all, he did smell of horses. What was the matter with her, to be not only considering but welcoming the idea of such a thing, and from such a man? This would not do. He was neither strapping nor classically handsome. In truth, he was a little lean for her tastes. Worse, he was the second son.
An unhygienic second son.
And yet . . . as his lips lowered toward hers, she felt herself rising to meet him.
Because while the scandal sheets had certainly implied otherwise, she’d never kissed a gentleman in all her nineteen years. If she was going to be credited with having had the experience, she might as well see it done. So she tipped her head up and met him halfway, no matter the shocking impropriety of kissing an almost-stranger in an almost-public foyer, and no matter her original intention to merely use him to snare larger, more promising prey.
Not that she could recall such a thing now.
She could only press her lips against his and try to convince herself that Mr. Patrick Channing was not at all whom she wanted.
From the first touch of his lips, she felt as though the floor had been kicked out from under her. He might have dirt on his cheek, but he didn’t taste like dirt. He tasted like sin, and it was a sin she wanted to lose herself in. He was a sharp surprise, wicked heat and barely restrained control, and his tongue teased the edges of her lips until she was gasping against his mouth. She might be inexperienced, but she was quite sure this was not the sort of kiss that should be shared between new acquaintances, or offered by a man seeking to declare his intentions to properly court a lady. This was an attack on her emotions, and it ripped the breath from her.
She made a small gasping sound that sounded painful to her own ears, and that was when he eased away, though his own chest rose and fell in a rhythm that matched her own. The fragility of their situation intruded back in, slow and unwelcome. The sounds of the music danced in her ears, and the laughter from the ballroom felt perforating in its nearness. She looked around, blinking, grateful to see they appeared to still be alone.
This had not been wise, in any sense of the word.
“Well.” She swallowed, suddenly unsure of herself, and unable to keep a smile from claiming the lips he had so recently plundered. “I cannot decide if you are trying to help me or hurt your brother, Mr. Channing.”
“Does it matter which?” The rumble of his voice worked her thoughts into a complicated knot, one she had no prayer of unraveling. “You’ll have to try a bit harder, whichever of us you choose to pursue.”
His words scraped against her already tender emotions. Did he think she walked around dispensing kisses like wishes? And worse, did he think the only reason she had kissed him had been to snare his brother? “I beg your pardon?”
“I am but a second son, and I doubt I can afford to do more than steal a kiss or two, however sweet your lips. And I suppose it would be ungentlemanly of me not to warn you. Eric has always preferred brunettes.”
It was ungentlemanly of him not to have warned her of that before he took the liberty of a kiss, but Julianne discovered she could not bring herself to regret the oversight now, not with the taste of him still a melting surprise on her tongue. “I thought he preferred what you preferred,” she countered tartly.
“I doubt it is the sort of thing he would call me out over, if that is part of your plan.” Channing lifted a brow. “Now, if those curls were brown,” he added, his eyes flashing with wicked warmth, “it might be another story.”
She fought a moment’s irritation. She’d just experienced her first glorious kiss in this man’s arms, and now they were talking about her hair? It wasn’t as if she didn’t expect people to notice—after all, her vibrant tresses were either her loveliest feature or the bane of her existence, depending on her mood and the vagaries of fate. But to hear that his brother might dismiss her outright, merely on account of her hair, made her see . . . well, red.
“I’ll wager I could change his mind,” she retorted, though what she really wanted to do was change Mr. Channing’s.
He studied her a moment, and his mouth returned to that straight line he’d worn at the start of their evening. “Well, it seems you may yet have a chance.” He inclined his head toward the open door and stepped aside. “Congratulations, Miss Baxter. Your plan appears to have worked.”
She turned in the direction he indicated. Her eyes found a green waistcoat, moving steadily toward them. “I . . .” She hesitated. “That is, I do not think—”
“My brother is officially intrigued, and I am off to bed. I’ve an appointment with dawn, and I’d hate to disappoint the grouse.”
Julianne struggled to form anything close to a coherent thought in the face of his obvious dismissal. “Yes, I supposed they would be quite disappointed if you were not able to blow them to bits tomorrow.”
The strain around his mouth eased, ever so slightly. Not quite a return to his earlier smile, but better than the frown, at any rate. He offered her a courteous nod, as if the entire length of his body had not just been pressed against her in so delicious and indecorous a fashion. “It has been a pleasure plotting with you, Miss Baxter.”
Julianne brought a gloved hand to her still-swollen lips and stared after him as he strode away, leaving her open and vulnerable, standing in the foyer. Surely he didn’t mean to turn her over to his brother, not when she was still reeling from the unexpected and unpl
anned heat of their encounter. For heaven’s sake. She liked him.
What a terrible thing to discover about a man who was leaving.
“Miss Baxter?” The owner of that blasted green waistcoat settled in her line of vision, a charming, handsome, and now utterly unwanted heir. “I wonder if you might do me the honor of being my partner for the next dance?”
“Yes.” Julianne sighed, risking one last wistful look toward the stairs. “I suppose I shall.”
Later, when she looked back on that night and imagined what she might have done differently in her dealings with Mr. Channing, she would have immediately settled on the obvious: she should not have gone on to dance with his brother.
But hindsight often carries that blinding sort of clarity. If someone had told her then she would accuse Channing of murdering his brother on the morrow, she would have tapped her fan against his shoulder and laughed at such a jolly good joke. She had no way of knowing that the man who was now offering her his arm would lie dead before noon, or that her version of events—recounted through a shocked haze of tears—would expand so quickly to fill the void hewn by Mr. Channing’s damning silence.
All she could think about was how attractive Mr. Channing looked, his thighs flexing with purpose beneath his riding breeches as he took the stairs two at a time.
And that perhaps there was more to hunt in Yorkshire than grouse.
Chapter 1
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 sought out a man wanted for murder. A good instinct to have before she arrived in Scotland, but there was no helping it now.
It had been a hellish trip, first by train, 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 a smear of shop-lined streets, her mind twisted in this new—if belated—direction. Three long days spent sitting in trains and coaches, buttoned to the neck and hiding behind the brim of her bonnet, was enough to make even the kindest of souls cross. Julianne was admittedly not the kindest of souls.
Nor, regrettably, the cleanest.
The pretty green silk of her gown was now closer to a dull gray from the day’s accumulated dirt, much of it from the interior of this squalid little coach. She yearned for a bath full of steaming water, and a feather bed on which to collapse in a well-earned stupor. But while Julianne was indeed bordering on a stupor from lack of proper sleep, she doubted a bath was something she would see this side of the next sunrise. She had things to accomplish in this nowhere Scottish town before her toes touched a bath or her head hit a pillow.
But at the moment, the thought of even five more seconds spent in the chokehold of her bonnet was too much.
Julianne eyed the coach’s only other occupant, a portly man who had thankfully spent most of the eight-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. 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 hair with predictable tedium. 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. I see you are traveling alone, lass. I’d be happy to show you around Moraig, personal-like.”
Julianne withheld the curt reply hammering against her lips. She was on a clandestine mission, after all, 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 last week—from Lord Haversham’s death and funeral to his family’s desperate circumstances, the latter of which she feared could be laid firmly at her own feet—had forced her hand. Still, she did not relish the thought of discovery. 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. Her father had ordered her home immediately after the earl’s funeral, but instead of going on to London as she was meant to do, she’d dismissed her maid—a flighty girl on loan from Summersby’s staff—and boarded the opposite train. And here she was. Alone and filthy, trying to avoid detection. 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. That 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 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 anyone injured?” The voice of the coachman pushed through the thin glass.
“All is well.” The portly gentleman settled his bulk more squarely on the seat and calmly 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 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?”
Julianne’s 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. Still, she hesitated. The dust-covered coachman leaned farther in and his eyes lodged somewhere amid the strands of her hair, which, judging by the 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.<
br />
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.
The contents of her stomach—a dubious shepherd’s pie from the posting house in Ullapool—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. For a moment she swayed, 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 greens, 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. A small, still form lay in the street, perhaps thirty feet away. Behind her, strangers were 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 picked that unfortunate moment to approach her. “I’ll ask you to step back inside, lass. We’re running late.”
Julianne glared at the man. Surely he didn’t expect her to just climb back on board, leaving the body in the street? “We have had an accident, sir.”
The coachman nodded. “Aye. Happens all the time. Poor little thing darted right out under the wheels. Back in you go, now. The posting house is but a few blocks away.”
Julianne took two deep breaths, praying for patience and calm—both of which she suspected would require divine intervention. “I am not getting back on that coach,” she ground out, “until someone calls for help.”
Moonlight on My Mind Page 2