Moonlight on My Mind Read Online Free Page B

heard used on frightened horses and recalcitrant toddlers. “ ’Tis a sad sight, I know, especially for a lady like yourself. But it’s common enough ’round Moraig. Why don’t you take yourself back inside the coach so you dinna see it? We’ll only be a moment to get the last of these boxes back up.”
    Her thoughts flew around the driver’s words. It. So uncaring as to not even assign the poor victim a gender. This could not be happening. Good heavens . . . it was her coach. Her hurry. Her fault. Hadn’t she asked the driver to cut short their time at the last posting house, going so far as to press a sovereign into the man’s palm? She had come to Moraig find a murderer, not to turn into one herself. She gestured fiercely toward the form lying so still on the street. “A body’s been struck down beneath your wheels,” she hissed, “and you are worried only about the state of the luggage ?”
    The coachman paled. “I . . . I can’t do anything for it myself, miss.”
    A new voice rubbed close to Julianne’s ear. “Might as well take the coach on to the posting house, Mr. Jeffers. I know your pay is docked for every quarter hour’s delay.”
    Julianne’s hand flew up to stifle her gasp of surprise, and she whirled around so fast the earth quite tilted beneath her. She couldn’t breathe, could only stare up, and then up some more. An awful sureness settled over her, a sense that someone, somewhere, was having a hearty laugh at her expense. In fact, they probably had a stitch in their side.
    Because Julianne had found Patrick Channing—the accused killer she had traveled three days to find—within minutes, not hours. And it was a little too late to find a chemist’s shop.
    “Very good, sir.” The coachman’s voice echoed his relief to have the situation turned so squarely over to someone else. “I’ve a letter for you as well. Would you like to take it now?”
    There was a beat of hesitation before Channing shook his head. “No, I’ll retrieve it later. After I see to the dog.”
    Dog? The word bounced about in Julianne’s skull for three long seconds before settling into something coherent. She eyed the still form lying in the street again. The body was not human then. Embarrassment washed over her for such a mistake. Behind her she could hear the crack of the driver’s reins and the creak of the wheels, but she scarcely registered the fact that her bonnet and bag were rolling away with the coach.
    Instead, she suffered an almost painful awareness of the man towering over her.
    He didn’t much resemble the man she had once waltzed with at a Yorkshire house party. He looked common, she supposed. And thin. She could see the angular edge of his jaw, the wisp of stubble marring the surface of his gaunt cheeks. He was as tall as ever—some things, a body couldn’t hide. But his coat hung loosely from his frame, and his sandy hair, once so neatly trimmed as to nearly be flush against his scalp, brushed the lower edge of his neck.
    Did they lack barbers in Moraig?
    Or was this part of his disguise, a diabolically clever way of hiding in plain sight?
    Channing was studying her too, but the inspection felt clinical, imparting none of the wolfish appreciation offered by either her earlier traveling companion or the driver. And when he spoke, it was with a flat, disinterested baritone that made Julianne blink in surprise.
    “Are you injured in some manner I cannot see beyond the state of your hair, miss?”
    Julianne’s hand flew to tuck an unruly curl behind one ear, as surprised by his lack of acknowledgment as the mention that her hair might be in need of intervention. “I . . . no . . . I mean, I struck my head. On the coach door.”
    He peered at her as if she was a specimen for dissection, rather than the woman who had once accused him of murder. “There is no visible blood. Your pupils are dilated, but no more so than might be expected after suffering a fright.”
    Julianne fought a