“A friend,” Beth said quickly, extending her hand. Arden looked as impressed as if he’d been introduced to the queen. “Well met, Mrs. Ackerley. Lord Ian is a fine man, and I’ll never forget him.” His words were glib, but his eyes shone with emotion. He glanced at his glowering friend and laughed. “Don’t worry, Graves. I’m all yours. Shall we?” Graves turned away at once, but Arden lingered. “Excellent to have seen you again, Mackenzie. If you’re ever near Fontainebleau, look us up.” He waved, beamed a final smile, and turned away. “Yes, yes, I’m coming, Graves. Stop a moment, do.”
Ian watched them go without expression. “The card games are much more lucrative,” he said to Beth. “I will teach you how to play.”
“Ian Mackenzie.” Beth set her heels as Ian tried to lead her away. “What did he mean, you saved his life? You cannot simply close up without telling me the story.” “I didn’t save his life.”
“Ian.”
She walked to an empty alcove where chairs had been placed for weary gamers. She plumped down on a chair and folded her arms. “I refuse to move until you tell me.” Ian sat down next to her, his golden eyes unreadable.
“Arden was in the asylum with me.”
“So I gathered. He doesn’t look insane.”
Disgust flickered across Ian’s face. “His father had him committed, wanted the doctors to cure him of his affliction any way possible.”
Beth glanced to where Arden was speaking to Graves by the hazard table. They had their heads together, Arden’s nose almost on Graves’s cheek. Graves clamped a gloved hand on Arden’s elbow, then softened his grip and moved his hand to Arden’s back.
“Mr. Arden prefers the company of gentlemen,” Beth concluded.
“Yes, he’s an unnatural.”
Beth studied the two men with interest. She’d known youths in the slums who sold themselves to men with certain perversions, but she’d never seen two men obviously in love with each other. At least, none who admitted it, she amended. Such things didn’t last long in the rough neighborhoods of the East End.
“So his father sent him to an asylum,” she said. “How awful.”
“Arden shouldn’t have been there. It was hard for him.”
“He is adamant that you saved his life.”
“He means I took a punishment for him.”
Beth dragged her attention from Arden and Graves.
“Punishment?”
“He was caught with a book of erotic drawings. Men with men. I remember how frightened he was. I claimed it was mine.”
Beth’s mouth popped open. “That was brave of you. Why would they believe that?”
“My brother Cam used to smuggle me erotic books. I told the attendants that this one had been in the last bundle Cam had brought me.”
“Quick thinking.” Beth’s eyes narrowed. “Wait a moment, you told me you didn’t know how to lie.” Ian absently stroked his thumb across the back of her hand. “I have trouble saying things that aren’t the truth. I let them ask questions and I nodded at what I wanted them to believe.”
She couldn’t help smiling. “Sly devil.”
“They sent Arden off and had me take the treatment.”
Her smile died. “What sort of treatment?” “An ice bath first. To dull the heat of the perversions, they said. Then electric shocks.” He swirled his fingertip over his temple. “So many of them.”
Beth had a sudden vision of the long-limbed young Ian sitting in ice water, his eyes closed, his lips blue as he shivered. And then stretched on a bed hooked to an infernal machine she’d once seen a picture of in a journal, coils and wires fastened to manacles.
The marvels of modern medicine, the caption had read. Patients treated by new and improved methods of electric current.
They’d have sent shocks through Ian’s body while he tried not to scream. Perhaps that explained why he always massaged his temples, was prone to headaches. Beth squeezed his hands between hers, tears filling her eyes. “Oh, Ian, I can’t bear to think of you like that.” “It was a long time ago.”
She looked at Arden again, angry this time. “The coward. Why on earth did he let you do that for him?” “Arden was frail. The treatment might have killed him. I was strong enough to bear it.”
She squeezed his hand harder. “It still wasn’t right that they should do that to you. It’s horrible.”
Ian caressed her fingertips. “I could bear it. I was used to it.”
She heard the echoes of Ian’s screams in her head. Beth pressed her forehead to his hands, her heart wrenching. Ian’s hands were large, sinews hard under his kid-leather gloves. Yes, he was strong. In the Tuileries Gardens, it had taken both Mac and Curry to pull him away from Fellows. That didn’t mean others could try to tear at that strength, try to defeat him. The doctors in the horrible asylum had done it, and now Fellows was trying to.
I’m falling in love with you, she wanted to say into their clasped hands. Do you mind awfully?
Ian was silent, but she sensed when his attention moved from her. His body tensed; his head turned. She looked up. Ian stared across the room at the door that had admitted them. He rose slowly, like an animal sensing danger. The door burst open, and shouts and screams filled the room. “Hell,” Ian said.
He jerked Beth to her feet and started dragging her toward the back of the room. Beth craned to see what was going on as Ian propelled her at a rapid pace to the rear of the casino. People ran every which way, and the female croupiers scrambled to grab money and stuff it into their corsets. “Wait.” Beth clutched his sleeve. “We can’t leave Isabella.”
“Mac’s here. He’ll see to her.”
Beth scanned the room and saw Mac’s large body breaking through the swarming people. Isabella’s red head stopped when Mac grabbed her arm.
“Why didn’t you tell her he was coming?”
“He made me promise not to.”
“Mac wanted to watch out for her, didn’t he?” Her hopes rose. “He came to protect her.”
“Yes. It’s dangerous.”
“So you said It’s a police raid, isn’t it? Funny how they chose tonight of all nights.”
“Not funny. It was Fellows.”
“Yes, I wondered.. ..”
Beth trailed off as Ian shoved aside a black curtain, yanked open a door that blended into the paneling, and pulled Beth up a narrow staircase that reeked of cigar smoke. The stair led to a dingy back hall and a rickety door that spilled into a tiny yard. The yard was inky black and filthy, and torrents of rain poured down on them.