The Madness Of Lord Ian Mackenzie (22 page)

“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.”

“It plays over and over and over again, like a melody that won’t stop.”

Beth softly rubbed his temple, his hard fingers beneath hers. He pulled her close. “Your being with me makes it stop. It’s like the Ming bowls—when I touch them and feel them, everything stops. Nothing matters. You are the same. That is why I brought you here, to keep you with me, where you can please make… everything… stop.”

Beth stared up at him, her blue eyes wet. “Tell me how.” He held her face between his hands, her beautiful face that had jolted through the clamor in his head at the Covent Garden Opera House. She’d been the only thing real to him in Lyndon Mather’s box; everything else had been shadowy and wrong.

“Stay with me.”

“We’re married,” she whispered. “Of course I’ll stay.”

“You could decide to leave me.”

He leaned his forehead to hers, remembering the horrible day that he’d gone to Mac’s house with the farewell letter Isabella had written. Ian had never forgotten Mac’s devastation when he’d realized that Isabella was gone.

“I won’t.”

“Promise me.”

“I have promised. I do promise.”

Her voice rang with sincerity, her eyes wide and lovely. He kissed her lips so she wouldn’t keep giving him reassuring lies. Isabella had loved Mac desperately, and yet she’d left him.

“Stay with me,” he repeated.

She nodded into his kiss. He drew her body against his, fingers finding the buttons of her bodice. Her chest came into view, and he leaned down and kissed it. She made a soft noise, and he suckled her skin, branding her yet again.

He felt her hands parting his clothes, burrowing past the layers of fabric to find him. She put her mouth to his chest just below the hollow of his throat, and he inhaled sharply. The scent of her hair filled his nostrils, driving him a little bit mad. Ian pulled her up to him and kissed her, parting her lips, pressing his thumbs to the corners of her mouth. She was his wife, and he wanted her. For now, for always. He swiftly unbuttoned the rest of her bodice, then untied her stays in little jerks. He pushed them from her body, then unfastened her chemise, catching her bare breasts as they tumbled out. She arched back as he kissed her again, pressing her nipples tight against his palms.

Unlacing and pushing away her skirts and bustle and petticoats took some time, and he became impatient, tearing fabric while she squeaked a protest. He lifted her and carried her to the bed, then pulled off his own clothes with the same impatience. He climbed up with her, not bothering to pull back the bedclothes. When she started to speak, he silenced her with a deep kiss.

He pushed her legs apart and entered her, finding her plenty wet for him. Beth lifted her hips and met him thrust for thrust, already used to what felt best to her. He rode her quickly, then slowly, his arms braced on either side of her. He kissed her with swollen lips, put love bites on her neck, licked her sweating skin.

Once his initial frenzy was over, he became gentler, more playful. He draped her long hair over his body, stroking it, fisting it, kissing it.

He kissed her and loved her in utter silence. Nothing else existed but this twilit room with Beth under him—not Hart, not Fellows, not the murders.

He sensed her trying to make him look straight into her eyes, but he evaded her. If Ian looked directly at her, he’d get lost, and he didn’t want to distract himself from the physical reality of thrusting into her.

He loved her until the sky brightened, the short night rushing past. She smiled sleepily at him as he withdrew the final time, and he kissed her before dropping onto the bed beside her.

He slid his arm around her warm abdomen and spooned her back against him. Her shapely backside fit nicely against his hips, giving him ideas for the next round of loving. He looked at his large, strong hand covering her slim waist, his arm brown against her white skin. Ian would keep her safe with him here, so safe she’d never, ever want to leave. When Beth woke, she found the covers pulled around her and Ian still with her. Before she could ask about breakfast, his smile turned predatory. He pressed her back into the pillows and made love to her again, swift and hard, until she was breathless with it.

“We should get up now,” she whispered when he lay still again, on top of her, idly kissing her neck. “Why?”

“Won’t your brother expect us for breakfast?”

“I told Curry to serve us in here.”

Beth stroked his cheek. “I certainly hope you pay Curry high wages.”

“He doesn’t complain.”

“He stayed in the asylum with you?”

“Cameron sent him to look after me when I was fifteen. Cam decided I needed someone to shave me and look after my clothes. He was right. I was a mess.”

Curry came in at that moment bearing a tray heavy with silver and porcelain. Ian didn’t get up, but made sure Beth was covered while Curry pulled a table to the bed and set the tray on it.

As he had in Paris, Curry pretended he couldn’t see Beth as he set out the breakfast and poured fragrant tea into the waiting cups. He’d even brought newspapers from both London and Edinburgh, which he folded beside the plates.

He also deposited a few letters.

Beth felt like a decadent lady, lolling about in bed while a servant brought her food and drink. Mrs. Barrington never held with breakfast in bed, even in her last, weak days. Curry left them with a quick grin at Ian, and Ian decided he’d rather feed Beth in bed than have them rise and sit at the table.

He was quite good at it, giving her bits of bread and butter and feeding her eggs from a fork. She tried to take the fork from him and started laughing when he refused to give it to her.

Ian smiled, too, and then let Beth feed him. He liked her straddling his lap while she did it.

The whole day was like this—Ian making love to her, then the two of them lounging in the bed reading the newspapers while Curry brought them meals and drink and took away the remains.

“I like being an aristocratic lady,” Beth said as the afternoon wore on. “I’m still getting used to not having to rise at dawn and wait on someone else.”

“My servants will wait on you now.”

“They seem very cheerful about it.” The red-haired maids who’d come in to lay a fire and straighten the room had smiled broadly when Beth thanked them. Sunny, happy smiles, not sneering ones.

“They like you,” Ian said.

“They don’t know anything about me. I might be a termagant and scold them all hours of the day and night.”

“Would you?”

“Of course not, but how do they know? Unless Curry has read them my dossier.”

“They trust Curry’s opinion.”

“Everyone does, it seems.”

“The family has served the Mackenzies forever. They’re clan Mackenzie themselves and have always worked on our land. Fought beside us and looked after us for generations.”

“There is so much I must get used to.”

Ian said nothing, distracting her from chatter by sliding his hands under her breasts and kissing her.

Later that afternoon, Ian took her to his collection room. Beth had the feeling of being ushered into a shrine. Shallow shelves with glass fronts had been built around the walls of the huge room, and more glass-shielded shelves ran through the middle. Ming bowls of all sizes and colors rested on small pedestals on the shelves, all labeled as to approximate year, maker, and other details. Some of the shelves were empty, waiting for the collection to grow.

“It’s like a museum.” Beth wandered the room in wonder.

“Where are the ones you bought in London?”

The shelves all looked the same to her, but Ian walked unerringly to one and extracted the red-painted bowl he’d bought from Mather.

She thought all the bowls pretty, but she wasn’t quite sure what it was about them that made Ian want to have a hundred. And he kept them so lovingly. Ian replaced the piece, walked to another seemingly random shelf, and removed another bowl. This one was flushed jade green and had three green-gray dragons around the outside. Beth clasped her hands. “How lovely.”

“It is yours.”

She stilled. “What?”

His gaze moved away, though his hands were rock steady.

“I give it to you. A wedding present.”

Beth stared at the bowl, a fragile piece of the past, such a delicate object in Ian’s large, blunt fingers. “Are you certain?”

“Of course I’m certain.” His frown returned. “Do you not want it?”

“I do want it,” Beth said hastily. She held her hands out for it. “I’m honored.”

The frown faded, to be replaced by a slight quirk of his lips. “Is it better than a new carriage and horses and a dozen frocks?”

“What are you talking about? It’s a hundred times better.”

“It’s only a bowl.”

“It’s special to you, and you gave it to me.” Beth took it carefully and smiled at the dragons chasing one another in eternal determination. “It’s the best gift in the world.” Ian took it gently back from her and replaced it in its slot.

That made sense; in here it would stay safe and unbroken.

But the kiss Ian gave her after that was anything but sensible. It was wicked and bruising, and she had no idea why he smiled so triumphantly.

“Cam is here.”

Ian saw his brother out of the window a few days later as he buttoned the shirt he’d just shrugged on. Behind him, Curry prepared the rest of Ian’s clothes, while Beth, looking pretty bundled in a red silk wrapper, drank her morning tea at the little table. Three days he and Beth had been here, and they’d spent all three days in Ian’s apartments making love. They’d made forays through the house or garden so he could show them to Beth, but mostly they’d stayed in the bedroom. Ian knew they had to leave his wing eventually and return to Hart and the real world, but he’d never forget the joy of this cocoon. Whenever times got bad, and he had no doubt they would, he could remember this.

Cameron had brought a new filly, the horse about a year old; and Ian took Beth down to greet them both. Cam was watching the unloading of the horse from its special cart as they approached. He cursed the handlers soundly, and then waded in and did the job himself.

“I’ve never seen a horse in its own carriage before,” Beth said as the spirited filly emerged. “Being pulled instead of pulling.”

The horse’s conformation was dainty, the pink edges of her nostrils sharp. She was a bay, and her black mane and tail flowed in falls of sable. She turned an interested brown eye to Beth.

“She’s not a cart horse,” Cameron said, his gruff voice even more gravelly from the dust on the road. “She’s a fine beauty and will win dozens of races, won’t you, love? Then she’ll breed more racers.” Cameron fondly stroked her nose. “Why don’t you marry her, Father?” Daniel asked, leaning against the van. “He’s been crooning to the damn beastie all the way up. It’s disgusting.”

Cameron ignored his son and went to Beth. He leaned to kiss her cheek, then clapped Ian on the shoulder, the scents of horse and sweat clinging to him. “Welcome to the family, Beth. Cuff my son when he’s rude. He’s had no upbringing.”