Free Moonlight on My Mind by Jennifer McQuiston Page B

today. I am to be charged with murder, it seems.”
    There was a moment of awkward silence. And then David laughed. “Is this about that business with McBride’s horse again? Honestly, someone had to put a bullet in the animal’s head. It had been down for a week. And how much whisky have you had? It’s not like you to start without us.”
    “I am not jesting.” Patrick stared moodily into his glass. He had carefully kept the details of his brother’s death hidden from his friends, but things were already sliding to hell and gathering speed. They would hear about it soon enough, and he preferred to be the one to impart the information, rather than the gossip-prone beauty lounging in her upstairs bath.
    “My brother died this past November.” He raised the glass to his lips and took a hearty swallow. “We’d been hunting—arguing, actually—and a shot went astray.”
    “Eric is . . . dead ?” At Patrick’s nod, James exhaled slowly. “That’s a bit of terrible news. You always spoke of him with such affection when we were at Cambridge. I remember being envious that you actually seemed to get on with your family.”
    David nodded his agreement. “Condolences seem a bit tardy, all things considered.” His gaze turned sharp. “All this time, some eleven months, you’ve been walking around Moraig tending our cattle and sewing up our dogs, and you’ve been the heir to an earldom?”
    Patrick answered with a curt nod, the all-too-natural question scraping at his conscience.
    “Why didn’t you tell us about your brother’s death when you arrived?” David pressed. “We’re friends, Channing. We would have helped.”
    “Because . . .” Patrick shook the cobwebs of regret and hesitation from his head. “It may have been an accident, but mine was the bullet that struck him.”
    There was a long silence as his friends wrapped their heads around his explanation. “Bugger that,” David finally breathed, his knuckles white around the glass in his hand.
    “There were questions, naturally. My father had somehow suppressed much of the talk, probably because of his influence and friendship with the local magistrate, but his recent death has loosened the control he’d kept over the process.”
    His two friends regarded him a long moment, then cast surreptitious glances at each other. David spoke first. “Your father has died too?”
    “He died last week.” Patrick gestured to the letter that still lay open on the table beside him. “I’ve had a letter from home. Now that my father is gone, an inquest has finally been called. I suspect it’s a mere formality until I’m charged with murder.”
    James regarded Patrick a long, studious moment, appearing every inch the solicitor he was trained to be. “But if it was an accident, it seems more appropriate to classify it as manslaughter, not murder.”
    Patrick felt jerked back to the pain of that day. “A witness claimed she saw me aim for my brother. In the eyes of many, there was a logical motive. Eric was the heir. His death left me in line for succession.” Indeed, it seemed few had refused to entertain the possibility of his complicity in a darker plot.
    James drummed a stern finger on the scarred table. “Our first priority is to see you don’t hang. We need to work toward reducing the charge to manslaughter instead of murder.”
    “Are you offering to assist in my defense?” Patrick asked his friend, surprised. MacKenzie was trained as a solicitor, not a barrister.
    James waved a dismissive hand. “You’ve saved my own sorry arse on more than one occasion, and a solicitor’s life in Moraig is so deadly dull as to justify killing someone, just to stir things up. You’ll not deny me the chance, even if I’m relegated to the sidelines.” His green eyes narrowed. “Is there only the one witness? Perhaps we can discredit her testimony.”
    “Aye. Just the one.” Patrick took a cautious sip of his whisky, welcoming the noxious burn. “But