The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie(70)

Hart came to her, lips tight, and gripped her shoulders. He was abominably strong. “Mrs. Ackerley—“ “My name is Beth.”

The door banged open, and Ian stormed inside. He caught Hart and shoved him away from Beth. “Don’t touch her.”

Hart shook him off. “What is the matter with you?”

“Beth, get away from him.”

Beth’s heart thumped. “Ian, I’m sorry, I was just—“ Ian swung his head to her but wouldn’t look at her.

“Now!”

Beth stood for one more stunned instant, then sped out of the room.

Cameron looked startled as she passed him in the hall, then he said, “Hell,” and marched to Hart’s study. The slam of the door thundered down the passage.

Beth made it to the main stairs before she collapsed, lungs burning. She could barely breathe, her dratted corset too tight.

Someone thumped down next to her. “You all right, Auntie Beth? Want a drink or something?” She wanted to laugh hysterically at “Auntie Beth,” but she held herself together. “Yes, thank you, Daniel, a drink would be lovely.”

“Oy,” Daniel shouted over the banisters. “Angus. Bring a dram o’ whiskey.”

The burly footman who’d been passing through the hall turned on his heel and went back into the dining room. “Are they always like this?” Beth asked, breathing carefully. “At each other’s throats? Oh, aye. Always shouting about something. You’ll get used to it.”

“Will I?”

“You’ll have to, won’t you? But they’ve been unhappy.” Beth blinked away the moisture in her eyes. “What about you? Are you unhappy?”

Daniel shrugged his lanky shoulders. “You mean because my mum tried to murder me and my dad and then offed herself? I never knew her, and Dad’s done his best.” His matter-of-fact acceptance of his mother’s violence twisted Beth’s heart. It had been the same in the East End, ten-year-old girls whose prostitute mothers had been beaten by their men shrugged shoulders and said tightly, “She were a whore. What’d she expect?”

Unaware of her pity, Daniel took the cut-crystal glass that Angus brought and thrust it into her hand. Beth sipped, the smooth taste of whiskey curling pleasantly on her tongue. Ladies don’t drink spirits, she heard Mrs. Barrington say. This despite the secret brandy bottle stashed in Mrs. Barrington’s bedside table.

“Tell me something, Daniel,” Beth said tiredly. “In the dining room, when Ian laughed at me, you all stared like the ceiling had come down. Why?”

Daniel wrinkled his forehead. “Why? ‘Twas because Ian laughed. I don’t think any of us have ever heard Uncle Ian laugh out loud before. At least not since he got sprung from the asylum.”



Beth progressed on her riding lessons until, by the end of the week, she could ride unassisted as long as Cameron or Ian rode alongside her. She learned to use her legs to guide the horse and not flail or grab the reins to keep her balance. The soreness began to slacken as her muscles became accustomed to the exercise. By the beginning of her second week of lessons, she could climb into bed with only a soft moan of pain. Ian proved amazingly capable at massaging the stiffness out of her.

Beth became fond of the old horse she rode. The mare had a mile-long pedigree name, but her nickname among the stable lads was Emmie. While Beth and Emmie plodded across the vast lands of Kilmorgan, Ian and Cameron raced or put their horses over fences. Ian was an excellent rider, but Cameron seemed to become part of his horse. When he wasn’t giving Beth lessons, he worked at training the filly he’d brought, letting her run on a long line he held in competent hands.

“It’s his gift,” Ian said to Beth as they watched him one morning. “He can do anything with horses. They love him.” With people Cameron was harsh and often rude, and his language colored the air. At first he apologized to Beth, but after a while he forgot to. Beth remembered what Isabella had told her, that the Mackenzies had lived as bachelors for so long, they didn’t think to soften their manners around ladies. Beth, used to East End toughs, decided she could bear it. As she’d told Inspector Fellows, she was not a wilting weed.

She learned to treasure Ian’s conversations with her, like this one about Cameron, because she never saw him much outside of bed. Over the next two weeks, he closeted himself with Hart, or the two went riding alone, and neither would say where.

Cameron kept on with Beth’s lessons without indicating that anything was unusual. Beth tried to ask Ian once what he and Hart were doing, and Ian answered laconically, “Business,” before looking off into the distance. It maddened her to not understand, but she hated to poke and pry. Hart had been right; she barely knew Ian, and perhaps this was what they always did.