He scowled. “I never get into a flutter. And I didn’t know the Mackenzies were involved until well after I got there, did I? I wouldn’t have known at all if the nervous maid hadn’t let it slip.”
“It seems convenient to me that she let it slip and made you focus all your efforts on Hart and Ian. I think it blurred your judgment.”
Fellows’s hazel eyes narrowed. “It was much more complicated than that.”
“Not really. You were so pleased to have the chance to wreck the life of Hart Mackenzie that you didn’t feel the need to look beyond him and Ian. I had started to feel sympathy for you, Mr. Fellows, but I’ve changed my mind.” Fellows spoke to the ceiling. “Dear God, where does that family find such women? Termagants, the lot of you.” “I’m not certain Lady Isabella would be flattered by that remark,” Beth said. “Besides, I’ve heard that Hart’s wife was soft-spoken and meek.”
“And you see where it got her?”
“Exactly, Inspector. Therefore Isabella and I will remain outspoken.”
Fellows looked out the window. “You can’t save them, you know. They’re beyond redemption. If they’re not guilty of this murder, they’re guilty of so many other things. The Mackenzies move through the world leaving wreckage behind them.”
We break everything we touch.
“Perhaps I can’t save them from themselves,” Beth answered.
“But I will try to save them from you.”
Fellows pressed his lips together and looked out the window again. “Bloody women,” he muttered.
Ian stared at Hart and Mrs. Palmer for a few seconds.
“Where is Beth?” he demanded.
Hart raised his brows. “Not here.”
Ian headed for the door. “Then I’m too busy to talk to you.”
“It’s Beth I want to talk to you about.”
Ian stopped abruptly and turned back. Mrs. Palmer had risen and moved behind the sofa to pour a measure of whiskey into a clean glass, the sound like rain trickling through a gutter. Hart watched her a moment, a man comfortably studying a woman he’d bedded many times.
“Beth doesn’t understand,” Ian said.
“I wonder about that,” Hart said. “You married a very perceptive and, if I may say it, tenacious woman. I don’t know if that’s good for this family or bad for it.” “Damn good, I’d say,” Cameron said behind Ian. “I’ll look for her,” he added, then faded out the door. Ian itched to go with him, but he knew Cameron would be thorough. Cameron could be even more terrifying than Hart when he wanted to be.
Ian gave Hart a fleering glance and fixed his gaze on Mrs. Palmer pouring whiskey. “Whatever you think of her, Beth is my wife. That means I protect her from you.” “But who protects her from you, Ian?”
Ian’s jaw hardened. Mrs. Palmer brought the glass of whiskey to Ian, the facets of crystal catching the light. The heart of the glass held a glint of blue, like Beth’s eyes, a color never seen in the crystal unless the light was right. Ian followed the changing colors of the whiskey’s amber and gold down to the blue facets. The best crystal caught light and refracted it into every color of the rainbow, but the blue always seemed to be trapped deep inside. “Ian.”
Ian jerked his gaze from the glass. Mrs. Palmer had moved back to Hart. She leaned over the back of the chair and ran her hands down the lapels of Hart’s black evening coat. “What?” Ian asked.
“I said I want to talk.” Hart stretched out his long legs. His hair was the darkest red of all the brothers’, and rolled back from his forehead in a thick wave.
People called Hart Mackenzie handsome, but Ian had never thought so. He’d known that his brother’s eyes could turn ice-cold, his face harden like granite. Their father had been much the same.
Hart had been the only person in the world who could calm the boy Ian’s panicked reactions. When Ian had been confused, or in a thick crowd, or couldn’t understand a word being babbled around him, his first instinct had been to bolt. He’d run from the family dining room table, from the schoolrooms his father tried to send him to, from the family pew in a crowded church. Hart had always found him, had always sat with him, either talking around his panic, or just sitting in silence until Ian calmed.
Ian now wanted to run through the house shouting Beth’s name, but Hart’s gaze told him it would be useless. Ian sat down. He glanced uncomfortably at Mrs. Palmer. “Leave us, love,” Hart said to her. Angelina Palmer nodded, her smile practiced. She kissed Hart on his upturned lips.
“Of course,” she said. “You know you only have to call if you need me.”
Hart caught her hand briefly as she stood, then let his fingers drift from hers. They’d been a couple a long time, through the ups and downs of Hart’s life;—his brief but unhappy marriage, his inheritance of the dukedom, his rise to political power. When Hart had decided to distance himself from her, Mrs. Palmer had seemed to accept his decision without fuss.
Mrs. Palmer glanced at Ian before she left the room. Ian kept his eyes averted, but he sensed the ice-coldness of her stare and felt her .. . fear?
She turned away and was gone.
“We’ve never talked about this, have we?” Hart asked once the door closed softly.
Here, five years ago, four men had laughed and talked around a card table near the fireplace, while Ian had lounged in an armchair by the door, reading a newspaper. The men at the table had ignored him, which had been fine with him. And then Sally had pulled a chair next to his, leaned over the arm, and begun whispering to him.
Hart cut through Ian’s thoughts. “Best to keep quiet about it, I always said.”
Ian nodded. “I agreed.”
“But you told Beth all about it.”
Ian wondered how Hart knew that. Did he find Beth and make her tell him? Or did he have spies in Beth’s house? “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”
“I’d never hurt her, Ian. I promise you that.”
“You like to hurt. To control. You like to see people at your feet, fighting for a chance to lick your boots.” Hart’s gaze flickered. “You’re not pulling your punches tonight, are you?”
“I always did what you told me because you took care of me.”
“And I always will take care of you, Ian.”
“Because it suits you to. You always do what suits you, like Father did.”