“I am sorry, Ian,” Hart said. “You know I am.”
Eye contact was still a bit difficult for Ian with anyone but Beth, but Ian took his gaze from the mirror and directed it at Hart. Hart saw in Ian’s eyes remembered fear, worry, and anguish. They’d almost lost Beth that night.
Hart squeezed Ian’s shoulder. “But Beth’s all right now. She’s at your house in Scotland, safe and sound. With your son and baby daughter.” Isabella Elizabeth Mackenzie had been born late last summer. They called her Belle.
Ian ducked out from under Hart’s hand. “Jamie walks everywhere now. And he talks. He knows so many words. He’s nothing like me.” His voice rang with pride.
“Why aren’t you in Scotland with your beloved wife and children, then?” Hart asked.
Ian’s gaze drifted to the ceiling again. “Beth thought I should come down.”
“Why? Because Eleanor was here?”
“Yes.”
Dear God, this family. “I wager Mac rushed out and sent Beth a wire as soon as Eleanor turned up,” Hart said.
Ian didn’t answer, but Hart knew the truth of it.
“But why have you come here, today?” Hart went on. “To this house, I mean?” Ian was sometimes pulled to places that had frightened or upset him, such as his father’s private study at Kilmorgan, where he’d witnessed their father kill their mother in a fit of rage. After Ian’s release from the asylum, Hart had found him in that room many times, Ian sitting huddled behind the desk where he’d hidden that fateful day.
Ian kept his gaze on the mirror as though it fascinated him. Hart also remembered that, because Ian had trouble with lies, he’d learned to be very good at simply not answering questions.
Oh, bloody hell. “Ian,” Hart said, his rage boiling up with nightmare force. “Tell me you didn’t bring her here.”
Ian finally looked away from the mirror, but he never looked at Hart. He wandered across the room to the window and peered out at the fog, his back firmly to his brother.
Hart swung away and strode into the hall. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Eleanor!”
Chapter 5
The word echoed up and down the staircase, soaring to the painted cherubs that lurked at the very top of the house.
Silence.
Silence meant nothing. Hart took the stairs to the next floor two at a time.
One of the doors on the landing stood ajar. Hart shoved it open with such force that the door banged into the heavy bureau that partially blocked it.
Someone had moved excess furniture up here, and now the chamber was a jumble of bookcases, dressing tables, chests of drawers, and armoires. A velvet sofa, coated with dust, canted at an odd angle in the middle of the room.
Eleanor Ramsay looked up from where she’d been searching the sofa cushions, a cloud of dust around her.
“Good heavens, Hart,” she said. “You do make a lot of noise.”
Hart’s world took on sharp edges. Eleanor Ramsay could not be here, in this place with its horrible memories of anger, greed, jealousy, and fear. Eleanor here was like a daffodil in a quagmire, a fragile blossom all too easily pulled to its doom. He did not want this world, this part of his life, so much as touching her.
“Eleanor,” he said, voice tight with fury, “I told you not to come here.”
Eleanor shook out a cushion and plopped it back onto the sofa. “Yes, I know you did. But I thought I should get on looking for the photographs, and I knew that if I asked you for the key, you’d never give it to me.”
“So you went behind my back and asked Ian?”
“Well, of course. Ian is much more logical than you, and he does not bother me with pesky questions. I did not tell him about the photographs, if you are worried about that. They are quite personal, after all. It did not matter anyway, because Ian never asked me why I wanted to come.”
Hart gave Eleanor a look that had made Angelina Palmer drop her poised courtesan smile and whiten in fear. Eleanor merely stared at him.
On her head perched a pillbox hat with an absurd little veil. She’d pulled the dotted veil up out of her eyes, but not completely—it hung lopsidedly, dangling over her right brow. Her dark brown dress was filmed with dust she’d raised, and dust caught on her damp cheeks. One lock of hair had escaped her coiffure, a red snake dancing down her bodice. She was delightfully mussed, and dear God, he wanted her.
“I told you, I do not want you in this place,” he said. “Not now. Not ever.”
“I know.” Eleanor moved, calm as she pleased, to the bureau that blocked the door and leaned to open the bottom drawer. “I wasn’t silly enough to rush here by myself, if that is what is bothering you. I met my father and Ian at the museum, sent my father and Maigdlin home in your landau, and had Ian walk with me here. I’ve been watched over every step of the way.”
“What is bothering me is that I asked you not to come here at all and you flagrantly disobeyed my wishes.” His voice rang through the room.
“Disobeyed your wishes? Dear, oh, dear, Your High and Mighty Grace. I ought to have mentioned that I’ve always had trouble with obedience, but then, you knew that. If I sat quietly and waited to obey my father, I would long ago have become a dried-up skeleton on a chair. Father is very bad at making any sort of little decision, even including how much sugar he wants in his tea. And he never can remember whether he likes cream. I learned at an early age to not wait upon anyone’s permission, but simply to do.”