Moonlight on My Mind Read Online Free

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