He pounded on the front door with gloved fists, not waiting for Curry to ring the bell. He pounded until an ancient specimen of a butler opened the door a crack and creakily asked his business.
Ian shoved the door open and strode inside. “Where is she?”
The butler shrank back. “Out. May I inquire who is calling?” Cameron caught the door before the butler could shut it, and Curry followed with the bags.
“This is her husband,” Cameron said. “Where is she out?” The old man had to crank his head back to gaze up at them. “I heard her say the East End. There’s thieves and murderers there, my lord, and she only took the lad with her.” “Daniel?” Cameron barked a laugh. “Poor woman. We’d best find her.”
Ian had already left the house. Another hansom pulled up behind the one that had brought him, and before it stopped, Daniel’s long body slid out of it. His narrow face took on a look of dismay when he saw Ian.
Ian pushed past him and reached into the cab for Beth. He heard her words, saying something about paying the fare, but Curry could do that. He lifted Beth out, not liking how the fog tried to snake its way around her. “Ian,” she began. “What will the neighbors say?” Ian didn’t give a damn what the neighbors said. He clamped one arm around her waist and took her inside. Mrs. Barrington’s house smelled old and musty and airless. The close odors tried to swallow Beth’s lavender like scent, as though the house wanted to squeeze her back into the drudgery from which she’d come.
“If you are dragging me off to my bedroom,” Beth said as they reached the top of the stairs, “perhaps you should ask me which one it is.”
Ian didn’t care which was hers, but he let her lead him. The bedchamber she took him to was small and papered in a hideous print of gigantic pansies. It had a large four-poster bed, a dresser near the window, and a wooden chair.. The drapes hid any light the London day might produce. The hiss of gas lamps and their fusty odor completed the drab picture. “This is a servant’s room,” Ian growled.
“I was a servant. A companion occupies a gray area, like a governess. Not quite a menial, not quite one of the family.” Ian lost the thread of her words. He turned the key beneath the porcelain doorknob and came to her. “The butler said you went to the East End.”
“I did. I was making inquiries.”
“About what?”
“About what do you think, my dear Ian?” Beth unwound the silk scarf she’d worn against the fog and stripped off her gloves.
“You sent a telegram to Fellows.”
Her color rose. “Yes, I—“
“I told you to leave it. He can’t be trusted.”
“I wanted to know everything he knew. Perhaps he’d found something out you hadn’t.”
Ian’s rage tasted like dust. “So you saw him. You met him.”
“Yes, he came here.”
“He came here.”
“You refused to tell me anything. What could I do?” “Don’t you understand? If you find out too much, I can’t protect you. You could be transported, or hanged, if you know too much.”
“Why on earth would I be transported because your brother’s friend Stephenson or his mistress Mrs. Palmer murdered a . . . “ She trailed off, her face going still.
Ian never knew what went on behind people’s expressions. Everyone else instinctively knew the signs of rage and - fear, happiness or sadness in others. Ian had no idea why people burst into laughter or into tears. He had to watch, to learn to do as they did.
He seized Beth by the shoulders and shook her. “What are you thinking? Tell me. I don’t know.”
She looked up at him with wide blue eyes. “Oh, Ian.” Instead of fearing his strength, she rested her hands gently on his arms. “You think Hart did this, don’t you?” Ian shook his head. He closed his eyes and kept shaking his head, but he held on to Beth as though he’d be torn away if he didn’t. “No.” The word echoed through the room, and he said it again. And again. And again.
“Ian.”
With effort, Ian stopped, but he kept his eyes shut tight. “Why do you think so?” Beth’s voice wrapped around him like eiderdown. “Tell me.”
Ian opened his eyes, the anguish of five years trying to drown him. Sally had boasted that she knew secrets that would ruin Hart, cut him out of politics altogether. Hart loved politics, God knew why. In the middle of coitus with Sally, she’d enraged Ian so much, going on and on how she’d blackmail Hart, that Ian had withdrawn, snatched up his clothes, and left the room. He’d felt the rage coming on, knew he had to go.
He’d walked the house, searching for whiskey, searching for Hart and not finding him, trying to calm down. Once he could think coherently again, he’d returned to Sally’s room. “I opened the door and saw Hart in the bedroom. I saw him with Sally on the sofa at the end of the bed.” The images rose before Ian could stop them, every single one as coldly clear as it had been that day. Hart with Sally, her naked limbs wrapped around him. Her soft cry of joy turning to fear.
“Hart took a knife away from her—I don’t know why she had it. She swore at him. He tossed the knife away. Then he pressed her throat until she quieted, and she laughed. I don’t want you to know these things.”
“But. . .” Beth frowned. “Sally wasn’t strangled, too, was she? No one has mentioned bruises on her throat.” Ian shook his head. “Hart, he used to be . . . You wouldn’t understand the terms. He owned the house. Mrs. Palmer and her women belonged to him.”
“He can’t own women. This is England.”
For some reason, Ian wanted to laugh. “They obeyed him. They wanted to. He was everything to them, their lord and master.”
Beth frowned a little longer, and then her brow cleared.
“Oh.” The syllable was short, pregnant with meaning. “He did it before he married, then stopped. After his wife died he started again. He was very discreet, but we knew. He was grieving. He needed them.”
“Goodness, most people make do with crepe and mourning brooches,” Beth said faintly. “But why would he try to strangle Sally Tate?”
Ian placed his hand at the base of Beth’s windpipe.
“When you cut off the air, the climax is deeper, more intense. That is why he had his hands on her throat.”
Beth’s eyes widened. “How very . .. interesting.”