Ian frowned, and Hart clearly didn’t know what to make of her.
“I imagine you have snakes, though,” she said, her tongue tripping. “This is the countryside, after all. And field mice and other creatures. I must confess I’m not used to the country. My mother was country born, but I lived in London from an early age and strayed outside the metropolis only when Mrs. Barrington saw fit to go to Brighton and pretend she liked the sea.”
Ian half closed his eyes, taking on the expression he did when he’d stopped hearing her. She knew he wasn’t listening, but a week from now he’d be able to come back to a particular phrase and drill her on it.
She closed her mouth with effort. Hart looked at her as though he’d fetch a lunacy commission up here on the morrow to grill her.
Ian came out of his trance and reached for her. “Tomorrow I will show you everything about Kilmorgan. Tonight we sleep in our chamber.”
“Have we got a chamber?”
“Curry fixed it up while we were at supper.”
“The ten-times-resourceful Curry. Whatever would we do without him?”
Hart looked at Beth sharply, as though she’d said something significant. Ian slid his arm around her waist and turned her around to lead her to the house. His warmth cut the coolness of the evening and blocked her from the wind.
A safe harbor. In the turmoil of her life, she’d known so few of them. Now Ian drew her close, protecting her, but Beth felt the edge of Hart’s gaze on her back all the way to the house.
The house swallowed Beth. Ian led her up the vast, ornate staircase, deeper and deeper into its maw.
There were so many pictures on the walls of the staircase hall that they obscured the wallpaper beneath them. Beth glimpsed the signatures on them as Ian rushed her up the stairs—Stubbs, Ramsay, Reynolds. A few paintings of horses and dogs were by Mac Mackenzie. Dominating the first landing was a portrait of the current duke, Hart, his eyes as golden and formidable in the picture as in person.
On the second landing hung the portrait of an older man who glared as haughtily as Hart did. He fiercely clutched a fold of Mackenzie plaid and sported a full beard, mustache, and side-whiskers.
Beth had noted him on their rush downstairs to dinner, but now she stopped. “Who is that?”
Ian didn’t even glance at the painting. “Our father.”
“Oh. He is quite . . . hairy.”
“Which is why we all like to be clean shaven.” Beth frowned at the man who’d caused Ian so much pain. “If he was so awful, why does he have pride of place? Hide him in the attic and be done with him.”
“It’s tradition. The current duke at the first landing, the previous duke at the second. Grandfather is up there.” He pointed to the top of the next flight. “Great-grandfather after that, and so on. Hart won’t break the rules.”
“So every time you go upstairs, Dukes of Kilmorgan glower at you at every turn.”
Ian led her on up toward Grandfather Mackenzie. “It is one reason we all have our own houses. At Kilmorgan, I have a suite of ten rooms, but we’ll want more privacy.”
“A suite of ten?” Beth asked faintly. “Is that all?” “Each of us has a wing of the house. If we invite guests we put them in our wing and take care of them.” “Do you often have guests?”
“No.” Ian led Beth back to the dressing room in which she’d changed for dinner. She’d thought the little room grand, but Ian now showed her that on its other side lay a bedroom the size of Mrs. Barrington’s entire downstairs. “You are my first.”
Beth gazed at the high ceiling, the enormous bed, the three windows with deep window seats. “If a person must marry you to get an invitation, I’m not surprised you haven’t had more guests.”
Ian’s golden gaze swept over her and back to the bed.
“Are you joking again?”
“Yes. Don’t mind me.”
“I never mind you.”
Beth’s heart thumped. “Is this your bedchamber?”
“It’s our bedchamber.”
She wandered nervously to the heavily carved walnut bedstead. “I’d heard that all aristocratic couples had separate bedrooms. Mrs. Barrington quite disapproved. A frivolous waste of space and money, she said.”
Ian opened another door. “The boudoir in here is yours. But you will sleep with me.”
Beth peered around him into an elegant room with comfortable-looking chairs and a deep window seat. “My. I suppose it will do.”
“Curry will help you fit it out as you like. Just tell him what you want and he will arrange it.”
“I’m beginning to think Curry is a magician.” Beth waited for him to respond, but Ian said nothing, his gaze remote again.
“I think you take an awful risk,” she said. “I read somewhere that sharing a bedroom with a woman is dangerous, because she exhales noxious fumes when she sleeps. Absolute balderdash, Mrs. Barrington said when I told her. Mr. Barrington slept beside her for thirty years and never once took sick.”
Ian slid his arms around her, the warmth of his body distracting her from all other thought. “Quacks will say anything to attract money for their research.”
“Is that what they did at the asylum?”
“They tried all kinds of experiments to cure my madness. I never saw where any of them worked.”
“That was cruel.”
“They thought they were helping.”
Beth put her fists on his arms. “Don’t be so bloody forgiving. Your father locked you away, and those people tortured you in the name of science. I hate them for it. I’d like to go to that asylum and give your doctor, whoever he is, a piece of my mind.”
Ian put his fingers to her lips. “I don’t want you part of that.”
“Like you don’t want me part of the High Holborn murder.”
Coldness crept into his usually warm gaze. “It has nothing to do with you. I want you . . . apart. I want to remember only this, not you with the things of my past.” “You wish to create different memories,” she said, thinking she understood.
“My memory is too damned good. I can’t blot out things. I want to remember you alone here with me, or in that pension in Paris. You and me, not Fellows or Mather or my brother, or High Holborn . . .”
His words died and he began to rub his temple, frustration glinting in his eyes. Beth put her hand over his. “Don’t think of it.”