The Madness Of Lord Ian Mackenzie (13 page)

The sneer left Bellamy’s thug like face when Beth said who she was. Looking almost polite, he directed her up three flights of stairs to the door at the top. The studio covered the entire floor, with two huge skylights letting in the gray Paris sky. The view, on the other hand, was breathtaking. Beth saw across rooftops down the steep hill to the flat plain of Paris and cloud-bedecked hills in the distance. Mac was perched on a ladder in front of an enormous canvas, his hair covered by a red kerchief that made him look like a Gypsy. He held a long paintbrush in his hand and scowled bleakly at his canvas. Paint splattered his hands, face, painter’s smock, and the floor around him.

On the eight-foot canvas that reared in front of him, the figures of a pillar and a plump naked woman had been roughed in. Mac was concentrating on the folds of a drape that just missed the woman’s intimate parts, but the model kept twitching.

“Stay still, can’t you?”

The model saw Beth and stopped wriggling. Mac glanced over his shoulder and also went still.

Ian moved out of the shadows. His hair was rumpled, as though he’d been scraping his hands through it, perhaps massaging one of his temples, as he often did. His gold gaze darted over Beth, and then he deliberately turned to look out the window. Beth cleared her throat. “The porter at your hotel said you’d come here,” she told Ian’s back.

Ian didn’t turn.

“Cybele,” Mac snapped, “go downstairs and tell Bellamy to give you tea.”

Cybele squeaked, then spoke in a heavy accent. “I’ll not go near Bellamy. He frightens me so much. He looks at me like he wishes to lock his hands around my throat.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Mac muttered, but Beth broke in.

“It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. I only came here to apologize. To both of you.”

“What the devil do you have to apologize for?” Mac said. “Fellows is to blame, blast the man. He was told to stay away from us.”

Beth walked to the window, her gloved fingers closing tightly on the handle of her satchel. She looked up at Ian reflected in the glass, his face utterly still.

“You were quite right, Ian,” she said softly. “I should have sent the inspector away with a flea in his ear. I didn’t because I was curious about things that were none of my business. Mrs. Barrington always said curiosity was my besetting sin, and she was right. I had no call to pry into your family’s history, and for that I soundly apologize.”

“Very pretty,” Cybele sneered.

Mac leapt from his stepladder, threw a dressing gown at Cybele, took her by the ear, and pulled her with him out of the room. Cybele shrieked and swore in French. The slam of the door shook the walls, and then everything went silent Beth studied the unfinished painting as she gathered her wits. The painted woman gazed at the bowl of water at her feet. Patches of wetness suggested she’d just stepped out of it. She held a thin scarf across her back as though she’d been drying off.

It was a sensual painting, like the one Isabella had shown her, but Beth understood the difference right away. The woman in this picture was a thing, a curve of colored flesh. She was no more a person than was the bath at her feet or the pillar behind her. The woman in Isabella’s picture had been Isabella. Mac had painted his
wife,
every stroke lovingly placed, every shadow carefully laid. Any woman could have modeled for this bather—only Isabella could have been the woman in her painting. Beth turned from the easel and faced the solid upright that was Ian. “I bought you a present” He still didn’t move. Beth unlocked her satchel and pulled out a small box.

“I saw it while I was shopping with Isabella. I wanted you to have it.”

Ian continued to stare sightlessly away from her, the shape of his broad shoulders reflected in the grimy window. Beth laid the box on the windowsill and turned away. If he didn’t want to speak to her, there was nothing she could do. Ian pressed his hand flat against the windowpane, still not looking at her. “How can you be to blame?” Beth dropped the skirt she’d caught up in preparation for leaving.

“Because if I’d refused to speak to Inspector Fellows yesterday in the park, you’d never have seen him. I should have had him thrown out when he came to Isabella’s house and began those awful accusations, but I’m too curious for my own good. Both times, I wanted to hear what he had to say.”

Ian finally turned his face to her, keeping his hand on the window. “Don’t protect me. They all try to protect me.” Beth went to him. “How can I possibly protect you? It was wrong of me to poke and pry, but I fully admit I wanted to speak to Fellows to find out all about you. Even his lies.”

“They aren’t lies. We were there.”

“Fellows’s interpretation of the truth, then.” One hand fisted on the windowsill. “Tell me what he said to you. Everything.” His gaze rested on her mouth as he waited for her words.

She told him what Fellows had told her, including the man’s abrupt proposal of marriage. She did keep Fellows’s speculations about her father to herself, something she’d have to explain to Ian someday, but not now.

When Beth got to the proposal, Ian pivoted to the window again. “Did you accept?”

“Of course not. Why on earth should I want to marry Inspector Fellows?”

“Because he’ll ruin you if you don’t.”

“Let him try.” Beth glared. “I’m not a hothouse flower to be sheltered; I know a thing or two of the world. My new fortune and Mrs. Barrington’s approval have done much for my standing—I’m no longer the girl from the workhouse, or even the poor vicar’s widow. The wealthy get away with much. It’s disgusting, really.”

She realized, when she ran out of breath, that Ian hadn’t registered a word. “I beg your pardon. I do run on sometimes, especially when I’m rattled. Mrs. Barrington often remarked on it.”

“And why the devil do you drag Mrs. Barrington into every conversation?”

Beth blinked. He sounded more himself. “I don’t know. I suppose she had great influence on me. And opinions. Many, many opinions.”

Ian didn’t answer. He reached to the windowsill and picked up the package, his strong fingers making short work of the paper. He opened a wooden box and stared into it, then lifted out a flat gold pin embossed with stylized curlicues.

“For your lapel,” Beth said. “I’m sure you have dozens of them, but I thought it was pretty.”

Ian continued to stare at it as though he’d never seen such a thing.

“I had it engraved, on the back.”

Ian turned the pin over, his eyes flickering as he read the inscription Beth had mulled over for so long in the shop.

To Ian, In friendship. B.

“Put it on me,” he said.

Beth slid the pin through the cashmere with a trembling hand. His body was hard beneath his coat, and she let her fingers rest a moment on his chest.

“Do you forgive me?” she asked.

“No.”

Her heart beat faster. “I suppose I shouldn’t expect too much.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” Ian caught her hand in a crushing grip. “I thought you would leave Paris after you saw me in the park.”

“I can’t possibly. Your brother hasn’t given me drawing lessons yet.”

A line appeared between his brows. Beth amended quickly, “I was joking.”

His frown deepened. “Why did you stay?”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Ian’s gaze flicked past hers. “You saw.”

Beth remembered his nearly purple face, his hoarse curses, his hands in hard fists, his brother and Curry dragging him away.

“It stays away most of the time. But when I saw him touch you, my Beth, it rose like a fire. I frightened you.”

“You did, rather.” But not in the way he meant. Beth’s father had been prone to violent rages when drunk. She’d run from him and cowered behind whatever would hide her small body until he’d slammed out of the house. With Ian, she’d not wanted to flee. That he could have hurt Fellows she had no doubt, but she hadn’t been afraid Ian would hurt her. She’d known he wouldn’t. She’d been more afraid that he’d hurt himself or that a passing policeman would decide to arrest him. Beth rested her cheek against the stiff white fabric of his shirtfront. “You told me not to protect you, but I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I don’t want you to lie for me.” His voice rumbled under her ear, overshadowing the strong beat of his heart. “Hart lies for me. Mac and Cam lie; Curry lies.”

“Sounds like verbal conjugation. I lie; you lie; he, she, it lies…”

Ian fell silent, and she looked up. “I’m a very truthful person, Ian. I promise.”

He ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek. Beth felt an insane need to keep talking.

“Those clouds are thick. It might rain.”

“Good. Then it will be too dark to paint, and Mac will send that bloody girl home.”

“He isn’t her lover, is he?” Beth put her fingers over her lips. “Oh, dear, I can’t stop asking questions. You don’t have to answer.”

“She’s not his lover.”

“Good.” She hesitated. “Are
we
lovers?”

“The pin says ‘in friendship.’”

“Only because I was too put off by the shopkeeper to have him engrave ‘to my love.’ Besides, Isabella was standing right next to me.”

Ian went silent for a long time, looking at her and avoiding her gaze at the same time. She saw his eyes flicker back and forth, restless, never wanting to settle. “I told you I can’t fall in love,” he said. “But you have.”

Her heart thumped. “Have I?”

“With your husband.”

So many people wanted to talk about Thomas Ackerley.

“I did. I loved him very much.”

“What was it like?” His words were so low she barely caught them. “Explain to me what loving feels like, Beth. I want to understand.”

Ian waited, his golden eyes burning, for her to explain the mysteries of the world. “It is the most divine thing imaginable,” she tried.

“I don’t want to hear about divinity. I want to hear about flesh and bone. Is love like desire?”

“Some people think so.”

“But you don’t.”

Sweat trickled down Beth’s back, despite the clouds cutting the sun’s heat. The trouble with Ian Mackenzie’s questions was that he asked the unanswerable. And yet she should know how to answer—everyone should. But they couldn’t, because everyone simply
knew.
Everyone except Ian. “Desire is part of it,” she said slowly. “The love for another’s body. But also love for their heart and their mind, and for all the silly things they do, no matter how absurd. Your world brightens when they walk into a room, dims when they leave it again. You want to be with the beloved so you can see him and touch him and hear his voice, but you want his happiness as well. It’s selfish, but not entirely so.”

“I can feel desire and wanting. I find you beautiful, and I want you.”

She warmed. “I must say, you are quite good for my pride. But when you don’t desire a woman, you feel nothing for her?”

“Nothing at all.”

Beth heaved a sigh. “And that, Ian Mackenzie, is why I said you’ll break my heart.”

His gaze strayed out the window to cloud-strewn Paris. “Wanting is not enough? Desire so strong you’ll do anything to fulfill it?”

“It’s lovely in the moment, but in the long view, I think, no.”

“In the asylum, I learned to take the short view.” She imagined a younger Ian, lanky and not yet grown into his man’s body, bewildered and alone. The bewildered boy reminded her of the girl who found herself abandoned at fifteen with predators roaming, waiting for her to become their victim. Even now, with a respectable name and a fortune, Beth never felt entirely safe.

“I admit that I, too, have learned to take the short view,” she said.

“You feel the wanting.” Ian took her fingers between his, pressing their palms together.

“You felt it at the duchesse’s.” Her face heated. “Of course I felt it. You had me in that sitting room with my skirts up to my ears. How could I not?”

“Do you want to feel it again?”

Excitement whispered through her. “If I were a lady, I’d protest that of course I don’t want to feel like that ever again. But I do, actually. Very much.”

“Good, because I want to see your body.” Beth swallowed. “You’ve already seen a good portion of it.”

He sent her a dark smile. “And it was fine. I wish to see the rest. Right now.”

Beth darted a glance to the door. “Mac might return any minute.”

“He’ll stay away until we leave.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know Mac.”

“The window…”

“Too high for anyone to see in.”

Beth had to admit that he’d answered her most basic objections. She knew she should have other objections, but she couldn’t remember them right now.

“And if I decide I’d rather run away?”

“Then we’ll wait.”

Beth hesitated, her legs feeling like water, but at the same time, she knew nothing would induce her to leave this room short of a fire. A very large fire.

“I’ll need help with the buttons,” she said.

Beth’s clothes came off layer by layer, like a complicated wrapping peeling back to reveal simple beauty. One by one, her garments fell across the studio’s sofa in a multicolored layer: rich blue bodice and overskirt, a brighter blue underskirt, the fabric light for summer. Two silk petticoats, both white, then her corset cover, until at last Ian unlaced the linen corset himself.

Ian’s arousal throbbed, and he knew he wouldn’t be happy until he saw her bared in her entirety. He untied her lacy pantalets, then unbuttoned the chemise. The silk garments floated gracefully to the floor, and Beth stepped out of them, nude for him. She reached for him, but Ian stepped away, and Beth stopped, confused.

Her hair was mussed from undressing, little ringlets falling from the mass of curls on top of her head. Her arms were soft and round, her thighs also, her waist nipped in by years of wearing a corset.

From her waist her hips softly flared to smooth and firm buttocks. He’d seen her vee of dark hair when he lifted her skirts in the little gilded room, but it was even more beautiful now touched by daylight.

Under his close scrutiny, she blushed and folded her arms over her breasts. Ian leaned against the back of a chair and basked in her beauty. “You don’t need to hide from me.” Beth hesitated, then gave a little laugh and spun around, arms outstretched. She was so beautiful, with her curls every which way, her mouth laughing, her blue eyes flashing in the fading sunlight. The clouds thickened and rain began to fall, but that didn’t dampen the glow inside the room. Beth laughed again. “How strange is life?” she asked.