“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.”

Hart’s brow clouded. “I don’t mind you jabbing at me, but don’t compare me to Father. He was a cruel son of a bitch, and I hope he’s rotting in hell.”

“He had rages, like the ones I get. He never learned to control them.”

“And you have?” Hart asked, his voice quiet.

Ian lightly rubbed his temple. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can ever control it. But I have Curry and Beth and my brothers to help me. Father had no one.”

“You aren’t defending him, are you?”

Even Ian heard the incredulous tone. “Hell, no. But we’re his sons; it stands to reason we’re all somewhat like him. Ruthless, driven. Heartless.”

“I’m supposed to be having a talk with you, not you lecturing me.”

“Beth is perceptive.” Ian lowered his hand. “Where the devil is she?”

“Not here, as I said.”

“What have you done with her?”

“Nothing.” Hart dropped his cheroot into a bowl, and a thin spiral of smoke drifted upward. “I honesty don’t know where she is. Why did you think she’d come here?” “To play detective.”

“Ah, of course.” Hart drank his whiskey in one swift draft and clicked the glass to the table. “She wants you to be innocent. She loves you.”

“No, she loves her husband.”

“Which is you.”

“I meant her first husband. Thomas Ackerley. She loves him, and she always will.”

“I imagine so,” Hart conceded. “But I’ve seen the way she looks at you. She loves you, and she wants to save you.  You told her not to try, but am I right in thinking she didn’t listen?”

Ian nodded. “Tenacious.”

Hart actually smiled. “Like a terrier on the scent. If she uncovers proof of the truth, what will you do?” “Take her away. We can live in Paris or Rome, never return to England or Scotland.”

“Do you think you will be safe in Paris or Rome?” Ian gave him a narrow look. “If you leave us be, I think so.”

Hart rose again, his well-tailored coat like a second skin on his wide shoulders. “I don’t want to see you hurt, Ian. I never wanted that. I’m so sorry.”

Ian clenched the arms of the chair until he feared his fingers would dent the wood. “I’ll not go back to the asylum. Not even for you.”

“And I don’t want you back there. What they did to you—“ Hart broke off. “You take Beth and go far away. To New York, maybe, as far as you want. I want you safe, away from me.”

“Why did you come here tonight?” Ian asked. He couldn’t believe Hart had traveled all the way down from Scotland simply to drink and smoke in a house he used to own. He must have taken the train immediately after Ian’s, the only one that could have gotten him here this quickly.  “Loose ends,” Hart said. “I’m putting everything in order, and then all will be forgotten.”

“Sally shouldn’t be forgotten, or Lily. Beth is right: They died, and we should care.”

Hart’s voice took on an edge. “They were whores.” Ian got to his feet. “You brought me here that night so I could find out what Sally knew that might hurt your political standing. So I could tell you what she whispered to me in bed. To be your spy.”

“And you found out.”

“She was gleeful with it. She wanted to ruin you.” “I know,” Hart said dryly. “I wouldn’t let her, which made her very, very angry.”

“So you did what? Made sure the dirty secrets she knew about you stayed secret?”

Hart shook his head. “If Sally wanted to prattle about me owning the house and what I did in it years before, she was welcome. Everyone knew. It even gained me a certain respect among the more stolid members of the Cabinet, if you can credit it. I did what they always dreamed of doing and didn’t have the courage to do.”

“Sally told me she could ruin you.”

“She was dreaming.”

“And then she was dead.”

Hart stilled. Ian heard Cameron tramping in the rooms overhead. His gravelly baritone boomed out, then the light answers of the maid, another woman giggling.  “Oh, God, Ian,” Hart said in a near whisper. “Is that why you did it?”

Chapter Twenty

The hansom Beth rode in drew to a halt before an incongruous house in High Holborn near Chancery Lane. The neighborhood looked respectable enough, the house in question neat and subdued.

Fellows unlatched the door of the carriage, but before he could open it, the door was ripped from his grasp and a pair of strong hands captured Beth. Beth found herself on the pavement, face-to-face with her husband. Ian’s eyes were dark with rage, and without a word, he began to drag her away.

Beth resisted. “Wait. We must go in.”

“No, you must go home.”

Another carriage waited in the lane, this one lavish. Its curtains were drawn, the coat of arms on the door muffled.  “Whose coach is that?”

“Hart’s.” Ian pulled her along with him as he strode toward it. “His coachman will take you back to Belgrave Square, and you’ll stay there.”

“Like a good wife? Ian, listen.”

Ian yanked open the door to reveal a gold interior, as opulent as any prince’s sitting room. Beth put her hands on the side of the carriage. “If I go home, you must come with me.”

Ian picked Beth up bodily and deposited her onto a soft seat. “Not with Inspector Fellows here.”

“He’s not here to arrest Hart.”

Ian slammed the carriage door, and Beth lunged for it.  “He’s not here to arrest you, either. He’s here to investigate the scene of the crime again and to question Mrs. Palmer.  I asked him to.”