“We’ll go carefully,” he said into Ian’s ear. “Then if they don’t help us, we’ll take the place apart.”
Ian nodded, sweat trickling down his spine. He’d had a strange feeling of being watched as soon as he entered the house, which only grew as the maid led them up the stairs. The maid swung the parlor door inward, and Ian walked in. He stopped so abruptly that Cameron ran into the back of him.
Hart Mackenzie sat in a plush armchair with a cheroot in one hand and a cut-crystal glass of whiskey in the other. Angelina Palmer, Hart’s mistress, a dark-haired woman still beautiful in her late forties, perched on the arm of Hart’s chair, one hand resting fondly on his shoulder. “Ian,” Hart said calmly. “I thought you’d arrive soon. Sit down. I want to talk to you.”
Beth balled her gloved hands in her lap as the carriage wound slowly from Whitehall up to High Holborn. Lloyd Fellows glared at Beth across the cramped interior, and Katie huddled on the seat next to Beth, highly uncomfortable. “What makes you think I didn’t go through that house with a fine-toothed comb five years ago?” Fellows asked. “You might have missed something. It’s reasonable. You were in a flutter because the Mackenzies were involved.”
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.