The Madness Of Lord Ian Mackenzie

Chapter Three

The giant walked into the box. He was bigger than Ian, and had the same dark red hair and eyes like chips of topaz. His right cheek bore a deep, angry scar, a gash made long ago. It was easy to imagine this man fighting with fists or knives, like a thug.

He had no trouble pinning Beth with his gaze. “Ian, who the devil is she?”

“Lyndon Mather’s fiancee,” Lord Ian answered. The man stared at Beth in amazement, then burst out laughing. The laugh was large, like he was, deep and booming. Some of the audience looked up in annoyance. “Good on you, Ian.” The man clapped his brother on the back. “Absconding with Mather’s fiancee. You do the lass a favor.” He looked Beth over with bold eyes. “You don’t want to marry Mather, love,” he said to Beth. “The man’s disgusting.” “It seems everyone knows that but me,” Beth said faintly.

“He’s a slimy bastard, desperate to get into Hart’s circle. Thinks we’ll like him if he tells us he enjoys reliving his days of schoolboy punishments. You’re well rid of him, lass.” Beth could hardly breathe. She should leave in a huff, not listen to things no ladies should listen to, but Ian’s hand was still laced firmly through hers. Besides, they didn’t try to comfort her with banalities, tell her pretty lies. They could be making up all this to part her from Mather, but why the devil should they?

“Ian will never remember to introduce us,” the giant said. “I’m Cameron. And you are?”

“Mrs. Ackerley” Beth stammered.

“You don’t sound certain of that.”

Beth fanned herself. “I was when I came in here.” “If you’re Mather’s fiancee, why are you in here kissing Ian?”

“I was just asking myself that same question.” “Cam,” Ian said. The quiet word cut through the noise as the crowd waited for the next act. There was no drama on the stage now, but plenty in Ian Mackenzie’s box. “Shut up.” Cameron stared at his brother. Then his brows rose and he dropped into a chair on Beth’s other side. He pulled a cigar from the box next to him and struck a match.

A gentleman should ask a lady’s leave before he smokes. Mrs. Barrington’s tones rang in her head. Neither Cameron nor Ian seemed worried about Mrs. Barrington’s rules. “Didn’t you say someone called Daniel was dicing with coachmen?” Beth asked him.

Cameron touched the flame to the end of the cigar and puffed smoke. “Daniel, my son. He’ll be all right if he doesn’t cheat.”

“I should go home.” Beth started to rise again, but Ian’s hand on her arm stopped her.

“Not with Mather.”

“No. Heavens, no. I never want to see the man again.” Cameron chuckled. “She’s a wise woman, Ian. She can go home in my coach.”

“No,” Beth said quickly. “I’ll have the porter fetch me a hansom cab.”

Ian’s fingers clamped down. “Not in a hansom. Not alone.”

“Me climbing into a coach with the pair of you would be the scandal of the year. Even if you two were the archbishops of Canterbury and York.”

Ian’s gaze fixed on her as though he had no idea what she was talking about. Cameron threw back his head and laughed.

“She’s worth stealing, Ian,” he said around his cigar. “But she’s right. I’ll lend you the coach and my man will take care of you, if I can find him. My own fault for employing a Romany as a manservant. They’re blasted hard to tame.” Ian didn’t want her to go alone; she saw that in his eyes. She thought of how he’d played with her curls—proprietary, possessive, like Mather with his Chinese pottery. She’d check on the information in Ian’s letter. She’d send Mrs. Barrington’s wheezing, gossipy butler around to pry tales out of other gossipy servants. The Mackenzie brothers could be part of some mad and improbable conspiracy to ruin Mather, but she had the awful feeling they told the truth. Below them the next act started with a fanfare. Ian rubbed his temple as though it gave him a headache. Cameron stubbed out his cigar and noisily exited the box. “My lord? Are you all right?”

Ian’s gaze remained remote as he continued to absently rub his forehead. Beth put her hand on his arm. Ian didn’t respond, but he stopped rubbing his temple and rested his large hand on hers.

He didn’t follow the action on the stage, didn’t try to continue his conversation with Beth, didn’t move back to kissing her. It was as though his mind had moved somewhere she couldn’t follow. His body was very much present, though, his hand heavy and strong. She studied the sharp profile of his face, the high cheekbones, the square jaw. A woman would want to run her hands through his thick hair when she held him in bed. It would be warm, damp with sweat as he lay heavy-limbed on top of her. Beth dared to reach up and smooth his hair back from his forehead.

Ian’s gaze snapped to her. For one instant, he pinned her with his stare. Then his eyes slid sideways. Beth stroked his hair again. He sat still under her touch, quivering with tension like a wild animal.

They sat this way, Beth lightly smoothing his hair, Ian’s body tight, until Cameron returned with a dark-complexioned man in tow. Cameron looked at Ian in surprise, and Ian rose in silence, forcing Bern’s hand to slide away. Beth scanned the theatre before Ian led her out, followed by Cameron. In a box across the vast room, Mather sat deep in conversation with Lord and Lady Beresford. He never noticed Beth or saw her leaving the box.

“Mackenzie! I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?” Ian scooped up warm bathwater and sloshed it over his hair and down his neck. He thought of Beth’s hand on his hair, her soothing fingers. Ian didn’t always like to be touched, but with Beth he’d stilled, willing to take her offering. He imagined her stroking his hair while she lay next to him in bed, her warm scent all over him. He wanted Beth’s lush body tangled in his sheets, her hair unwinding from its tight curls, her blue eyes half closed in pleasure. He wanted her with a deep intensity that hadn’t gone away, and even now his organ stiffened under the water.

The annoying voice outside shattered his fantasy. The threats got louder the nearer they came until the bath chamber door burst open to reveal Lyndon Mather struggling against two of Ian’s footmen. They were Scots lads who’d come with Ian to his hired house in London and looked pleased that at last they had someone against whom to strain their muscles.

Ian shifted his gaze over the three of them and returned it to the muscular calf he’d rested on the side of the tub. The footmen released Mather but hovered warily beside him.

“You cheated me out of that bowl, but it wasn’t enough for you, was it, Mackenzie? Beth Ackerley is worth a hundred thousand guineas, man. One hundred thousand” Ian studied the twisting dark hairs that wound down his leg. “She’s worth a damned sight more than that.” “You mean she has more?” the idiot Mather asked. “I’ll sue you. I’ll have you for cheating me out of all that money.” Ian closed his eyes, seeking his visions of Beth. “Write to Hart’s solicitor.”

“Don’t hide behind your brother, you coward. I’ll ruin you. London will be too hot to hold you. You’ll be running back to Inverness with your tail between your legs, you dungeating, sheep-buggering, Scots pig.”

The footmen growled in unison. Mather yanked a small object out of his pocket and hurled it at the bathtub. Something plopped into the water and sank to the bottom with a soft clink.

“I’ll sue you for the price of that, too.”

Ian flicked his fingers at the footmen, sending droplets of water over the marble floor. “Throw him out.” The lads whirled on Mather, but he turned on his heel and stomped away. The two footmen followed, and when they’d gone, Curry slunk into the bathroom and closed the door.

“Whew,” the valet said, wiping his brow. “Thought ‘e would shoot you for certain.”

“Not here. He’d do it in a dark alley, in my back.”

“Maybe you should leave town for a spell then, guv.” Ian didn’t answer. He thought of the short letter from Mrs. Ackerley he’d received this afternoon.

My lord, I thank you for your kind intervention that saved me from a step that would have caused me great regret. As you may no doubt soon read in the newspapers, the betrothal between myself and the other party concerned is at an end.

I also wish to thank you for condescending to propose marriage to me, which I now realize was to keep my reputation from ruin. I know you will understand and not be offended when I say I must I decline your generous offer. I have decided to use the fortune that fate bestowed upon me to travel. By the time you receive this letter, I will have departed for Paris with a companion, where I intend to make a study of painting, a skill I have always wished to leant. Thank you again for your kindness to me and for your advice.

I remain yours sincerely,

Beth Ackerley

“We’re going to Paris,” Ian said to Curry.

Curry blinked. “Are we, guv?”

Ian fished out what Mather had thrown into the bathtub, a narrow gold band with tiny diamonds on it. “Mather is cheap. She should have a wide band filled with sapphires, blue like her eyes.”

He felt the pressure of Curry’s stare. “I’ll take your word, me lord. Shall I pack?”

“We won’t leave for a few days. I have some business to attend to first.”

Curry waited for Ian to indicate what business, but Ian returned to studying the ring in silence. He lost himself contemplating the sparkle of every facet on each tiny diamond until the water turned cold, and Curry worriedly pulled the plug on the drain.

Detective Inspector Lloyd Fellows paused before he rang the bell of the Park Lane home of Sir Lyndon Mather. Detective Inspector, Fellows reminded himself, recently risen from the subordinate gloom of sergeant despite the last chief’s determination to keep Fellows humble. But all good chief inspectors were called to peaceful retirement, and the incoming chief had found it incredible that Fellows had languished so long as a mere sergeant.

So why had Fellows risked all by rushing to Park Lane to Mather’s summons? He’d read the note in rising excitement, burned it, then left the office. He’d grated his teeth at the slowness of hansom cabs until he stood on the doorstep of the palatial house.

Fellows hadn’t bothered to mention the journey to his chief. Anything to do with the Mackenzies was verboten to Detective Fellows, but Fellows reasoned that what his chief didn’t know would not hurt him.

A stiff butler with his nose in the air answered the door and directed Fellows into an equally stiff reception room. Someone had crammed the room with draped tables and costly objects d’art, including photographs in silver frames of stiff people.

The reception room said, We have money, as though living in Park Lane hadn’t already conveyed the same. Fellows knew, however, that Sir Lyndon Mather was a bit up against it. Mather’s investments had been volatile, and he needed a large infusion of cash to help him out. He’d been about to marry a widow of means, which ought to have kept him from bankruptcy. But a couple of days ago, a notice had appeared in the newspaper that the wedding was off. Mather must be feeling the pinch of that.

The butler returned after Fellows had paced for half an hour, and led him to a lavish sitting room across the hall. More draped tables, gilded knickknacks, and people in silver frames.

Mather, a blond and handsome man that the French might call debonair, came forward and stuck out his hand. “Well met, Inspector. I won’t invite you to sit down. I imagine that when you hear what I’ve got to say, you’ll want to hurry out and make arrests.”

Fellows hid his annoyance, hating when other people told him his job. The average man obtained his knowledge of Scotland Yard from fiction or the newspapers, neither of which was very accurate.

“Whatever you say, sir,” Fellows said.

“Lord Ian Mackenzie’s gone to Paris. Early this morning. My butler had it from my footman, who walks out with a girl who worked in Lord Ian’s kitchen. What do you make of that?”

Fellows tried to conceal his impatience. He knew Ian Mackenzie had gone to Paris, because he made it his business to know exactly what Lord Ian Mackenzie was doing at all times. He had no interest in servants’ gossip, but he answered, “Has he indeed?”

“You know about the murder in Covent Garden last night?” Mather watched him carefully.

Of course Fellows knew about the murder. It wasn’t his case, but he’d been briefed on it early this morning. Body of a woman found in her room at a boardinghouse near the church, stabbed to death with her own sewing scissors. “Yes, I heard of it.”

“Do you know who went to that house last night?”

Mather smiled triumphantly. “Ian Mackenzie, that’s who.” Fellows’s heart started to race, his blood tingling as body as when he made love to a woman. “How do you know that, sir?”

“I followed him, didn’t I? Bloody Mackenzies think they can have everything their own way.”

“You were following him? Why was that, sir?” Fellows kept his tone calm, but he found breathing difficult. At last, at long last.

“Why isn’t important. Are you interested in the details?” Fellows removed a small notebook from his coat pocket, opened it, and retrieved a pencil from the same pocket. “Go on.”

“He got into his coach in the wee hours of the morning and went to Covent Garden. He stopped at the corner of a tiny lane, coach too big to go into it. He went down the lane on foot, entered a house, stayed maybe ten minutes, then hurried out again. Then he goes to Victoria Station and takes the first train out. I returned home to hear my butler say that Mackenzie had gone to France, and then I opened my morning paper and read about the murder. I put two and two together, and decided that rather than tell a journalist, I should consult the police.”

Mather beamed like a schoolboy proud to tattle on another schoolboy. Fellows digested the information and put it with what he already knew.

“How do you know Lord Ian entered the same house where the murder was committed?”

Mather reached into his frock coat and pulled out a piece of paper. “I wrote down the address when I followed him. I wondered whom he was visiting. His fancy piece Ithought. I wanted to give the information to Mrs.... to another person.” He handed the paper to Fellows. Number 23 St. Victor Court. The very address at which a former prostitute called Lily Martin had been found dead early this morning. Fellows tried to keep his excitement in check as he slid the paper into his notebook. He’d been trying to land Ian Mackenzie in the dock for five years, and maybe this new development would let him.

He calmed himself. He’d have to pursue this carefully—no mistakes, make certain everything was proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. When he presented the evidence to his chief, it would have to be something that Fellows’s superiors couldn’t dismiss, couldn’t ignore, couldn’t keep quiet, no matter how much weight the duke, Hart Mackenzie, tried to throw around.

“If you don’t mind, sir,” Fellows said. “Please keep this information to yourself. I will act upon it, rest assured, but I don’t want him warned. All right?”

“Of course, of course.” Mather tapped his nose and winked. “I’m your man.”

“Why did you quarrel with him?” Fellows asked, putting away his notebook and pencil.

Mather’s hands balled in his pockets. “That’s rather personal.” “Something to do with breaking your engagement with Mrs. Ackerley?” Who had also gone to Paris, Fellows knew from checking up on Mather.

Mather went scarlet. “Blackguard stole her out from under my nose, telling her some pack of lies. The man is a snake.”

Likely the lady had found out about Mather’s longing for his old school days of corporal punishment. Fellows had learned that Mather kept a house of ladies where he indulged in that sort of thing. Inspector Fellows liked to be thorough.

Mather looked away. “I shouldn’t like that to get about. The newspapers . . .”

“I understand, sir.” Fellows tapped his nose in imitation of Mather. “It will be between us.”

Mather nodded, his face still red. Fellows left the house in great spirits, then returned to Scotland Yard and requested leave.

After five long years, he at last saw a chink in the armor that was the Mackenzie family. He would put his finger in the chink and rip their armor to shreds.

“How very vexing.” Beth carried the newspaper to better light at the window, but the tiny print said the same thing.

“What is, ma’am?” Her newly hired companion, Katie Sullivan, a young Irish girl who’d grown up in Beth’s husband’s parish, looked up from sorting the gloves and ribbons Beth had bought from a Parisian boutique. Beth threw down the newspaper and lifted her satchel of art things. “Nothing important. Shall we go?” Katie fetched wraps and parasols, muttering darkly, “ Tis a long way up that hill to watch you stare at a blank piece of paper.”

“Perhaps today I will be inspired.”

Beth and Katie left the narrow house Beth had hired and climbed into the small buggy her French footman had run to fetch. She could have afforded a large carriage with a coachman to drive her, but Beth was frugal by habit. She saw no reason to keep an extravagant conveyance she didn’t need. Today she drove distractedly, her gloved hands fidgety, much to the horse’s and Katie’s annoyance. The newspaper she’d been reading was the Telegraph from London. She took several Paris newspapers as well, her father having taught her to speak and read French fluently, but she liked to keep up with what was going on at home. What vexed Beth today was a story about how lords Ian and Cameron Mackenzie had nearly come to blows in a restaurant, fighting about a woman. The woman in question was a famous soprano, the very one who’d enchanted Beth at Covent Garden the week before. Many people had witnessed the event and related it to the newspapers with glee.

Beth shook the reins impatiently, and the horse tossed his head. While Beth didn’t regret turning down Lord Ian’s proposal, it was a bit galling to find that he’d been quarreling with his brother over the heavy-bosomed soprano shortly after Beth had refused him. She’d have liked him to feel a little bit sorry.

She tried to forget the story and concentrated on maneuvering through the wide Parisian boulevards that became the jumbled streets of Montmartre. At the top of the hill she found a boy to watch the horse and buggy, and she trekked to the little green she liked, Katie grumbling behind her. Montmartre still had the feeling of a village, with narrow, crooked streets, window boxes bursting with summer flowers, and trees dotting slopes down to the city. It was a far cry from the wide avenues and huge public parks of Paris, which, Beth understood, was why artists and their models had flocked to Montmartre. That and the rents were cheap. Beth set up her easel in her usual place and sat down, pencil poised over a clean piece of paper. Katie plopped onto the bench next to her, listlessly watching the artists, would-be artists, and hangers-on who roamed the streets. This was the third day Beth had sat here studying the vista of Paris, the third day her paper had remained blank. She’d realized after her initial excitement of purchasing pencils, paper, and easel that she had no idea how to draw. Still, she’d come up the hill each afternoon and set out her things. If nothing else, she and Katie were getting plenty of exercise.

“Do you think she’s an artist’s model?” Katie asked. She jerked her chin at a lovely red-haired woman who strolled with several other ladies on the other side of the street. The woman wore a pale gown with a gossamer overskirt pulled back to reveal a beribboned underskirt. Her small hat was tastefully trimmed with flowers and lace and tipped provocatively over her eyes. Her parasol matched her dress, and she carried it at a becoming angle.

She had an air of allure about her that made heads turn when she passed. It wasn’t anything she did on purpose, Beth decided with a touch of envy. Everything about her enticed. She was simply a joy to look at.

“I couldn’t say,” Beth replied after an all-over surveillance.

“But she certainly is very pretty.”

“I wish I were beautiful enough to be a model.” Katie sighed. “Not that I would. Me dear old mother would whip the skin off me. Dreadful wicked ladies they must be, taking off their clothes to be painted.”

“Perhaps.” The woman disappeared around the corner with her cluster of friends, lost to sight.

“And what about him? He looks like an artist.”

Beth glanced to where Katie indicated, and froze. The man didn’t have an easel—he lounged on a bench with one foot on it and moodily watched a twitchy young man glob paint on a canvas. He was a big man, barely fitting on the delicate stone bench. He had dark hair touched with red, a square, hard face, and enticingly broad shoulders. Beth’s breath poured back into her lungs as she realized the man was not, in fact, Lord Ian Mackenzie. He looked very much like Ian, though, the same forbidding face, the same air of power, the same set of jaw. But this man’s hair shone redder in the sunlight, he having set his hat on the bench next to him.

He was definitely another Mackenzie. She’d read that Hart, the Duke of Kilmorgan, had traveled to Rome on some government business, she’d met Lord Cameron in London, so by process of elimination, this must be Lord Mac, the famous artist.

As though he felt her scrutiny, Lord Mac turned his head and looked straight at her.

Beth flushed and snapped her eyes back to her blank paper. Breathing hard, she put her pencil to the page and drew an awkward line. She let herself become absorbed in the line and the next one, until a shadow fell over her paper. “Not like that,” a deep voice rumbled.

Beth jumped and looked up past a watered silk waistcoat and a carelessly tied cravat to harsh eyes very much like Ian’s. The difference was that Mac’s gaze fully met hers instead of shifting away like an elusive sunbeam.

“You’re holding the pencil wrong.” Lord Mac put a large gloved hand over hers and turned her wrist upward.

“That feels awkward.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Mac sat himself down next to her, taking up every spare inch of the bench. “Let me show you.”

He guided her hand over the paper, shading the line she’d already drawn until it looked like a curve of the tree in front of her.

“Amazing,” she said. “I’ve never taken drawing lessons, you see.”

“Then what are you doing out here with an easel?”

“I thought I’d give it a try.”

Mac arched his brows, but he kept his hand on hers and helped her draw another line.

He was flirting with her, she realized. She was alone with only a female companion, she’d been blatantly staring at him, and this was Paris. He must have thought she wanted a liaison. The last thing she needed was to be propositioned by yet another Mackenzie. Perhaps the newspapers would print reports of Ian and Mac fighting over her. But the hand cupping hers didn’t give her the same frisson of warmth that Ian’s had. She dreamed about Ian’s slow, sensual lips on hers every night, and then she’d jump awake, sweating and tangled in the sheets, her body aching. She glanced sideways at Mac. “I met your brother Lord Ian at Covent Garden last week.”

Mac’s gaze snapped to her. His eyes were not quite so golden as Ian’s, more copper-colored with flecks of brown. “You met Ian?”

“Yes, he did me a kindness. I met Lord Cameron as well, but only briefly.”

Mac’s eyes narrowed. “Ian did you a kindness?”

“He saved me from making a grave mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

“Nothing I wish to discuss on top of Montmartre.”

“Why not? Who the devil are you?”

Katie leaned around from Beth’s other side. “Well, that’s a bloody cheek.”

“Hush, Katie. My name is Mrs. Ackerley.” Mac scowled. “I’ve never heard of you. How did you manage to scrape an acquaintance with my brother?” Katie glared at Mac with Irish frankness. “She’s a bloody heiress, that’s who she is. And a kind lady what doesn’t have to take rudeness from the likes of forward gentlemen in a French park.”

“Katie,” Beth admonished her quietly. “I beg your pardon, my lord.”

Mac’s sharp gaze flicked to Katie, then back to Beth. “Are you certain it was Ian?”

“He was introduced to me as Lord Ian Mackenzie,” Beth said. “I suppose he could have been an impostor in an excellent disguise, but that never occurred to me.” Mac didn’t look impressed with her humor. “He never would look directly at me.”

Mac released her hand, tension draining. “That was my brother.”

“Didn’t she just say so?” Katie demanded. Mac looked away, studying the passersby and the would be artists struggling to make sense of what they saw. When he switched his gaze back to Beth, she was startled to see moisture on his lashes.

“Put your terrier on a lead, Mrs. Ackerley. You say you don’t draw. Would you like me to give you lessons?” “As a reward for my rudeness?”

“It would entertain me.”

She stared in surprise. “People demand your paintings left and right. Why would you give a novice like me drawing lessons?”

“For the novelty of it. Paris bores me.”

“I find it quite exciting. If it bores you, why are you here?”

Mac shrugged, the gesture so much like Ian’s. “When one is an artist, one comes to Paris.”

“One does, does one?”

A muscle moved in his jaw. “I find people of true talent here and try to give them a leg up.”

“I have no talent at all.”

“Even so.”

“It will also give you a chance to discover why Lord Ian would bother with someone like me,” she suggested. A smile spread over Mac’s face, one so dazzling Beth imagined most women who saw it fell at his feet. “Would I do such a thing, Mrs. Ackerley?”

“I do believe you would, my lord. Very well, then. I accept.” Mac stood up and retrieved his hat from where he’d set it on the ground. “Be here tomorrow at two o’clock, if it’s not raining.” He tipped the hat to Beth and made a slight bow. “Good day, Mrs. Ackerley. And terrier.” He placed the hat on his head and swung away, his coat moving with his stride. Every female head turned to watch him as he passed.

Katie fanned herself with Beth’s sketchbook. “He’s a good-looking man, no doubt. Even if he is rude.” “I admit he is interesting,” Beth said.

Why the man wanted to find out all about her, she didn’t know, but she intended to use him to learn all about Lord Ian.

You are entirely too curious, Beth my girl, Mrs. Barrington had said to her often. A very unattractive trait in a young lady. Beth agreed with her. She’d vowed to have nothing more to do with the Mackenzie family, and here she was accepting an appointment with Lord Mac in hopes of gaining more knowledge about his younger brother. She smiled to herself, knowing she looked forward to the next afternoon with too much interest.

But when Beth turned up at Montmartre again on the morrow, the sun sailed brightly in the sky, the clocks struck two, and Lord Mac was nowhere to be seen.