“Certainly,” she amended. “I shall be delighted.”
“So, Ian, who is this Mrs. Ackerley?”
Mac leaned across the table and spoke over the strains of the orchestra scraping out a raucous tune. On the stage above Ian and Mac, two women in corsets and petticoats showed their knickers and patted each other’s bottoms to the lively music. Ian drew a long drag of his cigar and followed it with a sip of brandy, enjoying the acrid bite of smoke and the smoothness of the liquor. Mac had a brandy as well, but he only pretended to drink it. Since the day Isabella had left him, Mac hadn’t touched a drop of spirits.
“Widow of an East End parish vicar,” Ian answered. Mac stared at him, his coppercolored eyes still. “You’re joking.”
“No.”
Mac watched him a moment longer before he shook his head and took a pull of his cigar.
“She certainly seems interested in you. I’m giving her drawing lessons—or I will be once I finish with this damned painting. My model finally turned up out of the blue this morning, gushing about some artist she’s been holed up with. I’d use someone eke, but Cybele is perfect.”
Ian didn’t answer. He could easily contrive to be in the studio when Beth’s drawing lessons commenced. He would sit next to her and breathe her scent, watch the pulse flutter in her throat and perspiration dampen her skin. “I asked her to marry me,” he said. Mac choked on cigar smoke. He pulled the cheroot out of his mouth. “Damn it, Ian.”
“She refused.”
“Good Lord.” Mac blinked. “Hart would have apoplexy.” Ian thought of Beth’s quick smile and bright way of speaking. Her voice was like music. “Hart will like her.”
Mac gave him a dark look. “You recall what happened when I married without Hart’s royal blessing? He’d thrash you within an inch of your life.”
Ian took another sip of brandy. “Why should he care if I marry?”
“How can you ask that? Thank God he’s in Italy.” Mac’s eyes narrowed. “I am surprised he didn’t take you with him.”
“He didn’t need me.”
Hart often took Ian on his expeditions to Rome or Spain, because Ian was not only a genius at languages, but he could remember every single word of every single conversation that went on during negotiations. If there were any dispute, Ian could recall the transaction word for word. “That means he’s gone to see a woman,” Mac predicted.
“Or on some political venture he doesn’t want the rest of us to know about.”
“Possibly.” Ian never pried too closely into Hart’s affairs, knowing he might not be comfortable with what he found. Ian’s thoughts strayed to Lily lying dead in her sitting room, her scissors through her heart. Curry had remained in London at Ian’s request, and Ian expected his report any moment.
“You get yourself to Paris, guv,” Curry had said as he’d shoved Ian’s valise onto the seat of the first-class carriage. “Anyone asks, you left by an earlier train.”
Ian had looked away, and Curry slammed the door, exasperated. “Damn it, me lord, one of these days you’re going to have to learn to lie.”
Mac broke into Ian’s thoughts. “So, you followed Mrs. Ackerley to Paris? That speaks of a man who won’t take no for an answer.”
The words of the letter Beth had sent him ran through his brain once more, overlaid with the taste of her lips. “I intend to use persuasion.”
Mac burst out laughing. Heads craned at the noise, but the girls danced on, oblivious, palms firmly on each other’s backside.
“Damn it all, Ian, I must know this woman. I’ll have her start her lessons—you wouldn’t know where I can send word to her, do you?”
“Bellamy says she’s staying with Isabella.”
Mac sat upright, dropping his cigar. Ian rescued it before it could catch the tablecloth on fire and dropped it into a bowl.
“She’s in Paris?”
For the last three years, since Isabella had departed Mac’s house while he lay in a drunken stupor, Mac had not spoken Isabella’s name. Nor had he used the words my wife.
“Isabella came to Paris four weeks ago,” Ian said. “Or so your valet says.”
“Hell. Bellamy never told me. I’ll wring his neck.” Mac looked off into the distance, planning his valet’s execution. Bellamy was a former pugilist, so it was doubtful Mac’s rage would have any impact. “Damnation,” Mac said, very softly. Ian left him alone and watched the dancers. The women had progressed to prancing around without corsets, their breasts small, their nipples the size of pennies. Gentlemen around Ian laughed and applauded.
Ian wondered what Beth’s breasts looked like. He remembered the rather plain opera gown she’d worn, dark gray taffeta that covered her to her shoulders.
She’d worn a corset, because all respectable women did, but Ian imagined what a pleasure it would be to unlace it with slow hands. Her corset would be a functional garment, plain linen over whalebone, and she’d blush as it fell away to bare her natural beauty.
Ian felt himself harden, and he lounged back in his seat and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to sully the image of Beth with the half-naked dancers, but his thoughts did not allow his erection to go down for quite some time.
“The things I do for you, guv.” Curry dropped his valise on the floor of Ian’s hotel bedroom the next morning and collapsed in a chair.
Ian stared into the fire, a cigar in his sweating fingers. He’d had a bad night after he’d left Mac, the nightmares returning to pull at his brain until he awoke, screaming in the dark.
The French servants had tumbled in, clutching candles and babbling in fear as Ian rocked on the bed, his head in his hands as it throbbed with hideous pain. The pinpoints of light had stabbed in through his eyes, and he’d shouted at them to take the candles away. He needed Curry and the concoctions he mixed to soothe the headaches and let Ian drift back to sleep. But Curry had been on a train heading through the night toward Paris, and Ian had lain back, sweating and nauseous and alone.
He’d heard what the French servants whispered about him: Sweet Mary, help us, he’s a madman. What if he murders us in our beds?
He’d got through the rest of last night by thinking erotic thoughts about Beth Ackerley. He thought some now as he closed his eyes and waited for Curry to recover himself. Beth at the opera, her lips under his. The flick of her tongue in his mouth, the press of her fingers against his cheek. The curve of her sweet bottom swaying as he’d helped her into Cameron’s coach.
Ian looked up at Curry, whose face was gray with exhaustion.
“Well? Did you find out who killed Lily?”
“Oh, certainly, guv. The culprit gave himself up to me, and I dragged him off to the magistrate. And daisies arc growing in the streets and London will never see fog again.” Ian let Curry’s words go by, not bothering to understand them. “What did you find out?”
Curry heaved a sigh and hoisted himself out of the chair.
“You expect miracles, you know that? So do your bleeding brothers, begging your pardon. I know that when Lord Cameron sent me off to tend you in that joke of an asylum, he expected me to cure you and bring you home.” Ian waited, aware that Curry liked to run on before he got to the point.
Curry snatched up Ian’s frock coat from the back of a chair and started brushing it off.
“Gawd, what will you have done to your suits while I was gone?”
“The hotel man looked after them,” Ian said, knowing Curry could wail about Ian’s clothes for hours. For a man born in the gutters of the East End, Curry was extremely snobbish about Ian’s state of dress.
“Well, I hope he hasn’t had you wandering the streets in lavender with spotted waistcoats. These frogs have no sense of taste.”
“What did you find out?” Ian prompted.
“I’m coming to it. I did just like you said and got into the house like I was common trash looking for a souvenir. There wasn’t nothing to find. All ordinary as could be.”
“Lily was stabbed to death with
her own scissors. That isn’t ordinary.”
“She didn’t fight. I got the constable on watch to tell me that. Looked surprised, not scared.”
Ian had thought the same thing. “She knew who it was. Let him in like a regular customer.”
“Exactly.” Curry rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a paper. “I drew the room like you asked and wrote down everything in it. It was quite a job, trying to do it with the Old Bill following me about.”
Ian glanced at Curry’s drawing and the lists. “Is this all?”
“Is it all?” Curry demanded of the air. “I drag myself across the continent of Europe, traveling in trains and musty cabs to be his eyes and ears, and he says, ‘Is this all’?”
“What else did you find out?”
“A little sympathy wouldn’t be amiss, guv. What I put up with, working for you. Any rate, I went all the way to Rome. He’s there, has been there for a month, never left.”
“He didn’t see you?” Ian asked sharply.
“No. I made sure of it. He almost did, but I managed to slip away. That wouldn’t have done, would it?” Ian gazed at the fire, rubbing his temple. Damn headache. He knew bloody well that a man could stay in the Italian states and pay someone to do things for him back in London, just as Ian had done with Curry.
Ian wanted to know the truth, but truth was so dangerous.
He rubbed his temple until the tight pain lessened.
Thinking of Beth’s eyes helped.
“Beth thought you were a detective,” Ian remembered.
“Beth?” Curry said sharply.
“Mrs. Ackerley.”
“Ah, yes, her. Fiancée of Sir Lyndon Mather. Former fiancée, I should say, after your timely intervention. You call her Beth, now, do you? What does she call you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah.” Curry nodded sagely. “A bit of advice, guv. Stick with fancy ladies—Paris has dozens of ‘em, as you know. You always know where you are with tarts.”
Curry was right, and Ian knew it. Courtesans loved Ian, and he never had to worry about being without female companionship. But all the charms of Parisian courtesans couldn’t pull him away from his desire for Beth. He thought again of Beth’s lips under his, the soft sound she’d made in her throat when he’d kissed her. If he could feel Beth’s warmth beside him every night, he wouldn’t have the nightmares and the migraines. He was sure of it.
He’d have her in his bed if he had to recruit Curry, Isabella, Mac, and every other person in Paris to get her there.
Five mornings after Beth had agreed to share lodgings with Lady Isabella Mackenzie, she was writing letters in her bedchamber when she heard the strains of music below. Isabella never rose before one—darling, it’s impossible to open one’s eyes before that hour. No one had come up to tell Beth that a visitor had arrived, but she couldn’t imagine a thief breaking in to belt out a Chopin sonata in the drawing room. Beth slid her half-written letter into a drawer and made her way downstairs, liking how the shutters and curtains had been thrown open to let sunshine stream in. Mrs. Barrington had kept the drapes shut tight and the gaslights low, so Beth and the servants had groped their way through the dark, day and night alike.
The double doors to the drawing room stood ajar, and pure, sweet Chopin floated out through the crack. Beth pushed the doors open and paused on the threshold. Ian Mackenzie sat at Isabella’s polished piano, staring at the empty music stand in front of him. His wide shoulders moved as his hands found and played notes, and his booted foot flexed as he worked the damper pedal. Sunlight caught on his dark hair, burning it red. I can play this piece note for note, he’d said at the opera house. But I cannot capture its soul. He might not think he could capture the soul of this piece either, but the music wove around Beth and drew her to him. She walked across the room to the piano as the notes floated around her, loud and sweet. She could bathe in them. The music made a little run high on the keyboard, then ended with a low chord that used all of Ian’s fingers. He let his hands stay in place, sinews stretching, as the last undulations died away. Beth pressed her hands together. “That was splendid.”
Ian snatched his fingers from the keys. He looked quickly up at Beth and away, then placed his hands back on the keyboard, as though he drew comfort from the feel of the ivory.
“I learned it when I was. eleven,” he said.
“Quite a prodigy. I don’t think I’d even seen a piano when I was eleven.”
Ian didn’t do all the things a gentleman ought to do: rise when she entered the room, shake hands with her, make sure she sat somewhere comfortable. He should ask after her family, seat himself, and chat about the weather or something equally banal until a quiet and efficient servant brought in a tray of tea. But he remained on the bench, frowning as though trying to remember something.
Beth leaned on the piano and smiled at him. “I’m certain your teachers were impressed.”
“No. I was beaten for it.”
Beth’s smile died. “You were punished for learning a piece perfectly? Rather a strange reaction, isn’t it?”
“My father called me a liar because I said I’d only heard it once. I told him I didn’t know how to lie, so he said, ‘Better be thought a liar, because what you’ve done is unnatural. I’ll teach you never to do it again.’”
A gruff note entered Ian’s voice as he echoed the man’s timbre as well as his words. Beth’s throat tightened. “That’s horrible.”
“I was often beaten. I was disrespectful, evasive, difficult to control.”
Beth imagined Ian as a boy, his frightened gold eyes looking everywhere but straight at his father while the man shouted at him. Then closing his eyes in pain and fear as the cane came down.
Ian began another piece, this one slow and sonorous. He kept his head half bent, his strong face still as he focused on the keys. His thigh moved as he worked the pedal, his entire body playing the music.
Beth recognized the piece as a piano concerto by Beethoven, one the tutor Mrs. Barrington had hired for Beth had liked. Beth had been a mediocre player, her hands too work-worn and stiff to learn the skill. The tutor had been haughty and mocking of her, but at least he’d never beaten her.
Ian’s large fingers skimmed the keyboard, and slow notes filled the room, the sound rich and round. Ian might claim he couldn’t find the music’s soul, but the strains of it called too vividly to mind the dark days Beth had suffered after her mother’s death. She remembered sitting in a corner in the hospital ward, her arms around her knees, watching as her mother’s consumption stole her last breaths. Her beautiful mother, always so frail and frightened, who’d clung to Beth for strength, was now ripped from the life that had terrified her. The hospital had turned Beth out after they laid her mother in a pauper’s grave. Beth had not wanted to return to the parish workhouse, but her feet had taken her there. She’d known she had nowhere else to go. They at least had given her a job, since she could speak well and had a modicum of manners. She’d taught younger children and tried to comfort herself by comforting them, but all too often they fled the workhouse to return to the more lucrative life of crime.
It was only the in-between people like Beth who were trapped. She didn’t want to resort to selling her body to survive, feeling nothing but disgust for men who could lust after fifteen-year-old girls. Nor could she find respectable employment as, a governess or nanny. She had little education, and middle-class women didn’t want someone from a Bethnal Green workhouse taking care of their precious tots. She’d finally persuaded one of the parish women to find her a typing machine. The woman had eventually produced a third-hand one whose B and Y keys stuck, and Beth had practiced and practiced on it. When she got a little older, she reasoned, she could hire herself out as a typist. Perhaps people wouldn’t mind her background as long as she worked quickly and efficiently. Or she might write little stories or articles and try to persuade newspapers to buy them. She had no idea how this was done, but it was worth a try.
br /> And then one day, while she was pounding away at the machine, the new vicar of the parish came to call. Beth had been soundly cursing the B key, and Thomas Ackerley had looked at her and laughed.
A tear rolled swiftly down her cheek. She put a quick hand on Ian’s, and the piece stumbled to a halt. “You don’t like it,” he said, his voice flat.
“I do—only, could you play something a little happier?” Ian’s gaze skimmed past her like a beam of sunlight. “I don’t know whether a piece is happy or sad. I just know the notes.”
Beth’s throat squeezed. If she wasn’t careful, she’d start blubbering all over him. She whirled to the music cabinet and dug through sheets until she found something that made her smile.
“How about this?” She brought it back to the piano and spread the music across the stand.
“Mrs. Barrington hated the opera—she couldn’t understand why anyone wanted to listen to people bellow for hours in a foreign tongue. But she loved Gilbert and Sullivan. They at least speak plain English.” Beth opened the music to the ditty that had made Mrs. Barrington laugh the most. She’d made Beth learn it and play it over and over. Beth had tired of the bouncy rhythms and the absurd words, but now she was grateful to Mrs. Barrington’s tastes.
Ian looked at the paper without changing expression. “I can’t read music.”
Beth had leaned over him without thinking, and now the rosette at her bosom was level with his nose. “No?”
Ian studied the rosette, his eyes taking in every facet of it. “I have to hear it. Play it through for me.” He shifted slightly, giving her about five inches of space on the bench. Beth sat down, her heart hammering. He wasn’t about to move, and his body was like a solid wall. This close she felt the hard muscle of his biceps, the length of his thigh against hers.
His amber eyes glittered behind thick lashes as he half turned his head to watch her. Beth drew a breath. She stretched her arm across his abdomen to reach the lower notes, clumsily played through the intro, and then sang in a shaky voice.