The Madness Of Lord Ian Mackenzie

Chapter Six

Ian’s vision filmed red with fury. Through it he saw Beth, her hair in the same sleek, complex curls she’d worn this morning, Fellows in his black suit crinkled with wear, and Beth’s blue eyes filled with dismay.

Fellows had told her. Damn him, he’d told her everything. Fellows clawed at Ian’s hands. “Accosting a police officer is an offense.”

“Everything about you is an offense.” Ian shoved the man away. “Get out.”

“Ian.”

Beth’s voice made him turn. She stood like a flower, fragile and vulnerable, the only color in a world of gray. He’d wanted Beth to remain apart from the sordid business at High Holborn and everything Ian had strived to hide the last five years. Beth was unsoiled by it, innocent. Fellows had ruined that. The bloody man ruined everything he touched. Ian didn’t want Beth looking at him and wondering what others did—whether Ian had plunged a knife into the warm body of a courtesan, then smeared the walls with her blood. He wanted Beth to keep looking at him in soft wonder, to smile her little smile when she made a jest Ian didn’t follow.

Ian sometimes wondered himself whether he had, in his rage, killed Sally. He sometimes didn’t remember things he did in his muddles. But he also remembered what he’d seen that night, things he’d never revealed to anyone, not even to Hart.

Fellows fingered his collar, his face red. Ian hoped he’d hurt the man. Fellows’s purpose in life was to turn public opinion against Hart, against Ian, against anything Mackenzie. Fellows had harassed Hart and Ian so much that he’d been pulled off the High Holborn case five years ago and warned that he risked his job pursuing it further. Now Fellows was back. That meant he’d learned something new.

Ian thought of Lily Martin lying in the parlor where he’d found her a week ago, her sewing scissors through her heart. He remembered the anger he’d felt, and the sorrow. He’d meant to protect her, and he’d failed.

“Get out,” he repeated to Fellows. “You aren’t welcome here.”

“This house has been hired by Lady Isabella Mackenzie,” Fellows said. “And I have not been cautioned against speaking to Mrs. Ackerley. She’s not a Mackenzie.” Ian’s gaze slid over Fellows’s self-satisfied face. “Mrs. Ackerley is under my protection.”

“Your protection?” Fellows smirked. “A fine way to phrase it.”

“I certainly don’t like that implication,” Beth broke in. “Please go, Inspector. You’ve said what you need to say, and I’d be obliged if you’d leave.”

Fellows bowed, but his eyes glittered. “Of course, Mrs. Ackerley. Good evening.”

Ian wasn’t satisfied with watching Fellows exit the drawing room—he followed Fellows down to the foyer and instructed the footman to not let him back in under any circumstances. Ian stood in the doorway watching until Fellows walked away down the busy street, whistling.

He turned back to find Beth behind him. She smelled like flowers, faint perfume clinging to her skin. Her face was flushed, her cheeks damp, her breath rapid. Damnation. Her smile was gone, her brow puckered. Ian had difficulty reading people’s expressions, but Beth’s worry and uncertainty screamed at him. Damn it all, if she’d believed Fellows...

Ian took Beth’s elbow and steered her back up the stairs to the drawing room. He slammed the doors behind him, and Beth walked away from him, holding her arms tight across her chest.

“Don’t trust him,” Ian said, voice grating. “He’s been harassing Hart for years. Have nothing to do with him.” “It’s a bit late for that.” Beth made no move to sit down, but she didn’t pace either. She stood very still, save for where her thumbs moved restlessly on her elbows. “I’m afraid the good inspector knows many secrets.”

“He knows far less than he thinks. He hates my family and will do anything to discredit them.”

“Why on earth should he?”

“I don’t know. I never did know.”

Ian scrubbed his hands through his hair, his frustrated rage boiling to the surface. He hated that rage, the one that had so infuriated Ian’s father and had earned young Ian many beatings.

It rose in him when he wanted to explain things but couldn’t find the words, when he couldn’t understand the nonsense everyone around him was babbling. As a child he’d done the only thing he could—lashed out with fists and screaming until two footmen had to hold him down. The screaming would stop only when Hart came. The little boy Ian had worshiped Hart Mackenzie, ten years his senior.

Ian was old enough now to control his impulses, but the anger still came, and he fought the demon of it every day.

He’d fought it the night Sally Tate had been murdered.

“I don’t want you to be part of this,” he repeated. Beth simply looked at him. Her eyes were so blue, her lips lush and red. He wanted to kiss her until she forgot all about Fellows and his revelations, until that look in her eyes was gone.

Ian wanted her under his body, his heat meeting hers, to hear her gasp when he fitted himself inside her. He needed the oblivion of coupling with her until they both dissolved with the passion of it. He’d wanted her as his refuge ever since he’d seen her sitting next to Lyndon Mather at Covent Garden Opera House.

He’d taken her away from Mather by betraying the man’s secrets. Mather had been right that Ian had stolen her, and Ian didn’t care. But now Beth knew lan’s secrets, and she was afraid.

“It should be simple enough to establish that you committed neither crime,” she was saying. “Surely your coachman and valet and so forth can account for your whereabouts.” She thought it was so, so simple.

Ian went to her and cupped her cheek, loving her petal soft skin beneath his palm. “I don’t want you to know about this. It’s base and dirty. It will soil you.”

He wasn’t certain what all Fellows had told her, though he could guess. But Fellows had dug up only the barest part of the incident. The reality went miles deep, secrets so nasty they could ruin all of them.

Beth waited, expecting him to clear it up in a sentence or two, to reassure her. Ian couldn’t, because he knew the stark truth. His damned memory wouldn’t blur, wouldn’t let go of what he’d seen, what he’d done. Both ladies had been involved, and they’d both died. Would Beth?

“No,” he said sharply.

“Ian.”

Her whisper cut him to the heart. Ian released her, the shaking rage pouring to the surface again. “You shouldn’t have anything to do with Mackenzies,” he said harshly. “We break whatever we touch.” “Ian, I believe you.”

Her fingers closed on his sleeve and held tight. He wished he dared stare into her eyes, but that was impossible. Beth spoke rapidly. “You’re afraid that Fellows turned me away from you. He hasn’t. He obviously has a bee in his bonnet. He said himself he had no evidence, and there was never a case against you.”

That was partly true, but would it were that simple. “Let it alone,” he snapped. “Forget.”

Ian wished he could forget, but he forgot nothing in his life. The events were as vivid to him as was sitting here playing the piano with her this morning. As vivid as every “experiment” the quack doctor had performed on him in the private asylum.

“You don’t understand.” Beth let go of his sleeve only to close her hand on his arm. “We are friends, Ian. I don’t hold friendships lightly—goodness knows I’ve had few enough of them in my life.”

Friends. Ian didn’t think he’d ever heard that term applied to him. He had his brothers, no one else. Courtesans liked him and liked him well, but he was under no illusion that they’d like him if he didn’t give them so much money. Beth’s gaze was intense. “What I mean is, I will not flounce off in a huff because Inspector Fellows turned up and made accusations.”

She still wanted him to clear it up, to declare his innocence at the top of his voice. Ian had difficulty with lies, not understanding the point of them, but he also knew that the truth was tricky.

“I didn’t see Sally Tate die,” he said, his gaze fixed on the door frame. “And I didn’t drive the scissors into Lily.” “How did you know it was scissors?”

He darted his gaze over her face, watching her eyes sharpen. “I saw her that night. I went to visit her and found her dead.”

A swallow moved in Beth’s slender throat. “You didn’t report this to the police?”

“No. I left her and caught the train to Dover.” “Inspector Fellows says a witness saw you go to the house.”

“I didn’t notice anyone there, but I didn’t look. I had the train to catch, and I didn’t want to draw a connection between me and Lily and High Holborn.”

“The inspector drew it anyway.”

Ian’s rage began to rise again. “I know. I tried to protect her from him. I failed her.”

“A footpad or a cracksman might have killed her. That can’t be your fault.”

Lily hadn’t struggled. She’d known and trusted whoever had driven the scissors deep into her chest. His own observation and Curry’s confirmed that.

“I couldn’t protect her. I can’t protect you.” Her little smile returned. “You have no need to protect me.”

Lord, could the woman be any more innocent? Beth was associated with Mackenzies now. That marked her in the eyes of the world. “Fellows will use you to get to us. It’s his way.”

“Does he use Isabella?”

“He tried. He failed.” Fellows had thought Isabella would hate all things Mackenzie once she’d walked out on Mac.

He’d assumed she’d tell Fellows all their secrets, but Fellows had been so very wrong. Isabella was the daughter of an earl, blue-blooded through and through, and she refused so even to speak to a mere policeman. Her loyalty remained with Mac’s family.

“There you are, then,” Beth said. “He’ll fail with me as well.”

“If you throw in your lot with us, you’ll regret it.” “I told you, it’s too late for that. I’ve come to know Isabella well, and I know she wouldn’t speak so fondly of you if she thought you capable of murder.”

It was true that Isabella retained affection for Ian, Hart, and Cam, God knew why. Ian had liked Isabella right away when Mac had presented her the day after their elopement. She’d been incredibly innocent, but she’d taken her plunge into their masculine world with aplomb.

“Isabella believes in us.”

Beth’s touch softened. “If she does, I do, too.” He felt his red anger lessening, the despair easing. Beth believed him. She was a fool to, but the fact that she did wormed its way into the empty spaces inside him. “You’d take the word of a madman?” he asked.

“You’re not a madman.”

“I was put into that asylum for a reason. I couldn’t convince the commission that I was sane.”

She smiled. “One of my husband’s parishioners firmly believed she was Queen Victoria. She wore black bombazine and mourning brooches and talked constantly of her poor, deceased Albert I can’t believe you are as eccentric as she.” Ian turned from her, forcing her to let go of his arm. “When I was first released from the asylum I wouldn’t speak for three months.”

He heard her stop behind him. “Oh.”

“I hadn’t forgotten how—I simply didn’t want to. I didn’t know it distressed my brothers until they told me. I can’t read hints from others. A person has to tell me a thing plainly.” She gave him a shaky smile. “Which is why you don’t laugh at my little jokes. I thought I’d lost my knack for it.”

“I learn what to do by watching others, like applauding at the opera when the rest of the audience starts. It’s like learning a foreign language. And I can’t follow a conversation when I’m with a crowd.”

“Is that why you didn’t speak much when you came to Mather’s box at Covent Garden?”

“One-on-one is much easier.” He spoke a fact. He could focus on what one person was saying, but trying to follow several people’s contributions to a conversation led to confusion.

As a youth he’d been punished for not answering at the table or not joining in a discussion. Sullen, his father had labeled him. Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.

Beth’s eyes were tight. “My dear Ian, then we are birds of a feather. Mrs. Barrington had to teach me how to behave in society from the ground up, and I still don’t understand all the rules. For instance, do you know it is considered vulgar to eat ices with a spoon? One must use a fork, which seems rather ridiculous. The most difficult is to leave a few morsels of food on the plate, so as not to seem overzealous in eating. I had so many hungry days in my youth that I consider this beyond perplexing.”

Ian let her words wash over him without bothering to follow them. He liked her voice, smooth and cool, like the mountain stream he fished from in the wilds of Scotland. “You call me Ian now,” he said.

She blinked. “Do I?”

“You’ve said it five times since I arrived.”

“You see? I do consider us friends.”

Friends. He wanted so much more than that.

Beth gave him a glance from under her lashes. “Ian, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

He waited, but she took a step back, toying with the silver ring on her left hand He knew jewels well enough to see that the ring was cheap, the one stone in it the merest chip.

Someone poor had given it to her, but she’d kept it with care. She’d returned Mather’s diamond ring without hesitation, but this one was precious to her.

“Ian, I wonder if perhaps . . .”

Ian focused his attention on her words with difficulty. He’d rather listen to her flowing voice, watch the rise and fall of her breasts, study the movement of her lips. “Since you seem to like me a little,” she said, “I wonder whether you would be interested . . . in having a liaison with me.”

The last words came out in a rush, and lan’s attention snapped to her.

“Have carnal relations, I mean,” Beth continued. “On occasion, when we mutually agree.”