The Madness Of Lord Ian Mackenzie (32 page)

Ian carried Beth to the bedchamber set aside for his use. A doctor came to clean Beth’s wound and sew it closed, but Beth wouldn’t wake up.

Cameron had stayed with Hart and Inspector Fellows at the church while Fellows fetched who he needed to fetch and tried to make sense of what happened. Ian didn’t care what had happened. It was over, Mrs. Palmer was dead, and Beth had nearly died herself trying to put everything right. Fellows could do as he liked.

Beth lay in a stupor, feverish and sweating. No matter how much Ian bathed the cut in her side, it swelled and reddened, and fever set in.

Ian stayed by her all night. He heard the others return, Cameron’s gruff voice and Hart’s quiet replies, the deferential voices of the servants. He pressed a cool cloth to Beth’s forehead, wishing he could bring the fever down by force of will. He heard the door open behind him and Hart’s heavy tread, but Ian wouldn’t look up.

“How is she?” his brother asked in a low voice.

“Dying.”

Hart came around the bed and looked down at Beth, unmoving on the sheets. His face was white, strained. Beth was so hot. She groaned with it, tossing her head from side to side. She whimpered when her wound touched the bed, as if trying to find release from haunting pain. Ian glared at Hart. “You and your fucking women. You made them your tame animals, and now they’ve killed Beth.”

Hart flinched. “Damnation, Ian.”

“You thought Beth wanted my money, our name. Why should she?”

“I did at first. I don’t any longer.”

“Too bloody late. She never wanted anything for herself, never demanded anything from us. You don’t know what to do with people like that.”

“I don’t want to see her die, either.”

Hart put his hand on Ian’s shoulder, but Ian jerked away. “You took me to that house to be your damned spy. You used me, like you’ve use me for every other scheme in your life. You released me from the asylum so I could help you, but you’ve never believed I wasn’t mad. You just needed what I could do.”

“That’s not entirely accurate,” Hart said, tight-lipped.

“It’s close enough. You thought I was insane enough to kill Sally. I did what you said because I was grateful to you, and I wanted to protect
you.
I admired you and worshiped you just like your tame sluts.”

Ian was breathing hard, but he gentled his hand to brush back Beth’s hair.

“For God’s sake, Ian.”

“I’m finished obeying your commands. Your bloody high-handedness has killed my Beth.”

Hart remained still, his eyes fixed. “I know. Let me help her.”

“You can’t help. She’s beyond help.” Ian met Hart’s gaze for a fleeting moment, and for the first time in Ian’s life, Hart couldn’t look back at him.

“Get out,” Ian said. “I don’t want you here if I have to say good-bye to her.”

Hart remained rigid and unmoving for a few moments,’ then turned around and quietly walked from the room.

Over the next week, Ian left the bedroom only to shout for Curry if the man was too slow answering the bell. Beth tossed in the bed, her face pink and sweating, groaning when anything touched her side. Ian slept on the bed next to her, or on the chair beside it when Beth became too restless. Curry tried to get Ian to sleep in the next room, to let a maid or Katie or himself nurse Beth while he rested, but Ian refused. Ian had read every book in Hart’s vast library and plenty of tomes at the private asylum, filing away every modern view of medicine in his head. He put into practice methods of nursing festering wounds, methods of bringing down fever, methods of keeping the patient quiet and fed. The doctor brought leeches, which did help with the swelling a little, but Ian didn’t like his oils and ointments and syringes of suspicious-looking liquids. He wouldn’t let the doctor near Beth with them, which led to the doctor’s loud-voiced complaints to an unsympathetic Hart. Ian washed Beth’s wound every day, wiping away any evils that seeped from it. He bathed her face in cool water, fed her spoonfuls of broth, forcing them into her when she tried to turn her face away. He had Curry bring in ice, which he pressed against the cut to stop the swelling, and used more ice to cool down the water with which he bathed her forehead. Ian wished he could move Beth from London, where coal smoke and soot seeped through every window, but he feared jarring the wound open again. He braided her hair to take the heat off her neck, fearing he’d have to cut off her beautiful tresses if the fever didn’t break.

The doctor clucked his tongue and proposed experimental treatments that involved serum from monkey glands and other such wonders. He was developing them in conjunction with specialists in Switzerland, and if he could save the sister-in-law of the Duke of Kilmorgan, he said, it would make his name.

Ian ran him off with threats of violence.

By the sixth day, the fever still had not come down. Ian sat by Beth’s side, his hand loosely clasping hers, and tasted fear. He was going to lose her.

“Is this what love feels like?” he whispered to her. “I don’t like it, my Beth. It hurts too much.”

Beth didn’t respond. Her eyes were cracked open under swollen lids, a blue glitter that saw nothing. He hadn’t been able to feed her today.

Ian felt sick, his stomach roiling, and he had to leave the room to vomit bile. When he returned, there was no change. Her breathing was hoarse and a struggle, her skin painfully hot.

She’d come into his life so suddenly, only a few short weeks ago, and just as suddenly, she was departing it. The sense of loss terrified him. He’d never felt it before, not even with all the loneliness and fear he’d experienced at the asylum. That fear had been self-preservation; this was an emptiness that hollowed him out from the inside. Sitting in this dark room facing the worst brought memories back to him. Ian’s perfect recall played them all clearly, little dimmed by the seven years between now and his years at the asylum. He remembered early morning baths in cold water, taking supervised walks in the garden, where a man with a long walking stick followed him about. The sheepherder, Ian had always called him, ready to beat patients back indoors if necessary. When other physicians or distinguished guests visited, Dr. Edwards would give grand lectures, while Ian was made to sit on a chair next to the podium. Dr. Edwards would have Ian learn the name of every member of the audience and recite them back, have him listen to a conversation between two volunteers and repeat it perfectly. A blackboard would be brought out, and Ian would solve complex mathematical problems in seconds. Doctor Edwards’s trained seal, Ian called himself.

His is a typical case of haughty resentment which is festering his brain. Notice how he avoids your eyes, which shows declined trust and lack of truthfulness. Note how his attention wanders when he is spoken to, how he interrupts with an inappropriate comment or question that has nothing to do with the topic at It and. This is arrogance taken to the point of hysteria—the patient can no longer connect with people he deems beneath him. Treatment: austere surroundings, cold baths, exercise, electric shock to stimulate healing. Regular beatings to suppress his rages. The treatment is effective, gentlemen. He has calmed considerably since he first came to me.

If Ian had “calmed,” it was because he’d realized that if he suppressed his rages and abrupt speeches, he’d be left alone. He’d learned to become an automaton, a clockwork boy that moved and talked in a certain way. To violate the pattern meant hours locked in a small room, electric shocks through the body, beatings every night. When Ian became the clockwork young man again, his tormentors left him alone. They at least let him read books and take lessons with a tutor. Ian’s mind was restless, absorbing everything put in front of it. He mastered languages in a matter of days. He progressed from simple arithmetic to higher calculus within a year. He read a book every day and could recite huge passages from each one. He found some refuge in music and learned pieces he heard played, but never how to read music. The notes and staffs were so much blackand-white mess to him. Ian also couldn’t master subjects like logic, ethics, and philosophy. He could mouth the phrases from Aristode, Socrates, Plato, but not understand or interpret them.

The arrogance of his class coupled with his resentment toward his family has created a blockage in his brain,
Dr. Edwards would explain to his enthusiastic audiences.
He can read and remember but not understand. He also shows no interest in his father, never asks after him or writes to him even when it is suggested to him. He also makes no sign that he misses his dear, departed mother.

Dr. Edwards never saw the boy Ian sob into his pillow at night, alone, afraid, hating the dark. Knowing that if his father came for him, it would be to kill him for what Ian had seen.

Ian’s only friends were the asylum’s servants, maids who smuggled him sweetmeats from the kitchen and wine from the servants’ hall. They helped him hide the cheroots Mac brought him and the naughty books Cameron gave him when he came to call.
You read these,
Cameron would whisper, with a wink.
You need to know which end of a woman is what, and what each is for.

Ian had learned that at seventeen at the hands of the plump, golden-haired maid who cleaned his hearth every morning. She’d kept their secret liaison for two years, then married the coachman and moved off to a better life. Ian told Hart to make her a wedding present of several hundred guineas, but would never say why. That was a long time ago. Ian swam back to the present, but the present was stark and terrifying. He sat in darkness, curtains cloaking the windows, while Beth struggled to live. If she died, he might as well take himself back to the asylum and lock himself in, because he’d go mad if he had to live without her.

Isabella arrived not long later. She entered the room in a faint rustle of silk, her eyes filling as she took in Beth on the bed.

“Ian, I’m so sorry.”

Ian couldn’t answer. Isabella looked exhausted. She caressed Beth’s hand and lifted it to her lips.

“I saw the doctor downstairs,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “He told me there wasn’t much hope.”

“The doctor is an idiot.”

“She’s burning up.”

“I won’t let her die.”

Isabella sank down on the bed, still holding Beth’s hand. “It happens, usually to the best people. They’re taken away to teach us humility.” Tears streaked down her cheeks.

“Balls.”

Isabella looked up at him, her smile wan. “You’re stubborn, like a Mackenzie.”

“I
am
a Mackenzie.” What a damn fool thing to say. “I won’t let her die. I can’t.” Beth moved listlessly on the bed, soft sounds coming from her mouth.

“She’s delirious,” Isabella whispered.

Ian wet a cloth and dabbed it to Beth’s tongue as she tried to talk, her voice a croak. She lapped the droplets that fell from it, whimpering.

Isabella wiped away tears as she rose from the bed and blindly made her way out. Mac came in not long later, his face haggard.

“Any change?” he asked.

“No.” Ian didn’t look up from pressing a cloth filled with ice to Beth’s forehead. “Did you come with Isabella?”

Mac gave a soft snort. “Hardly. Different trains, different boats, and she changed her hotel as soon as she found out I’d booked in there, too.”

’You’re both fools. You can’t let her go.”

Mac raised his brows. “It’s been three years, and she isn’t exactly racing back to me.”

“You aren’t trying hard enough to get her back,” Ian said, angry. “I never thought you were this bloody stupid.”

Mac looked surprised, then thoughtful. “You might have a point.”

Ian returned his attention to Beth. How anyone could find love and throw it away so carelessly was beyond him.

Mac rubbed his forehead. “Speaking of bloody fools, Hart sacked that quack of a doctor. Good thing, too. I was ready to throttle him.”

“Good.”

Mac put his hand on Ian’s shoulder, fingers squeezing. “I’m sorry. This isn’t right. You of all of us deserve to be happy.”

Ian didn’t answer. It had nothing to do with being happy.

It had everything to do with saving Beth.

Mac remained for a while, watching Beth moodily, then drifted away. He was replaced by other visitors throughout the day and into the night: Cameron, Daniel, Katie. Curry, Isabella again. They all asked the same question. “Is there any change?” Ian had to shake his head, and they went away. In the small hours of the morning, when the house was deathly still, the gilt clock on the mantelpiece apologetically chimed twice. Beth sat straight up in bed.

“Ian!”

Her skin was bright red, her eyes glittering, pupils wide.

Ian came to the bed. “I’m here.”

“Ian, I’m going to die.”

Ian wrapped his arms around her, held her close. “I won’t let you.”

She pulled away. “Ian, tell me you forgive me.” She caught Ian’s gaze, and he couldn’t turn away.

Beth’s eyes were hot blue, swimming with tears. He could look at them for hours, mesmerized by the color. He’d read that eyes were the windows to the soul, and Beth’s soul was pure and sweet.

She was safe, but a monster lurked inside Ian, the same one that had lurked inside his father. He could so easily hurt her, forget himself in a rage. He couldn’t let that happen—ever.

“There is nothing to forgive, love.”

“For going to Inspector Fellows. For raking it all up again. For killing Mrs. Palmer. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“But if I hadn’t come back to London, she’d still be alive.”

“And Fellows would still believe me guilty. Or Hart. There’s no forgiveness needed for finding out the truth, my Beth.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, her voice tight with fever. She put her hand on his chest and buried her face in his shoulder. Ian held her close, his heart thumping. When he lifted her gently to kiss her, he saw that her eyes had closed again and she’d fallen back into her stupor. Ian laid her down on the pillows, tears sliding from his eyes to scatter across her hot skin.

Beth swam to wakefulness. She was soaked in sweat and sore all over, but she somehow felt, deep down inside, that the worst was over.