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 ringers 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.”
Chapter Ten
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?”