“For God’s sake.” Ian spun away, unable to stand still. “I’m not your Thomas, your vicar. I never will be. I know you’ll never look at me the way you looked at him.” She stared at him, white-faced. “What do you mean?” He turned back. “You look at me like I’m the Mad Mackenzie. It’s in the back of your mind all the time.” He tapped the side of her head. “You can never forget about my madness, and you pity me for it.”
Beth blinked a few times but remained silent. His Beth, who could chatter on about anything and everything, was robbed of words.
Because Ian spoke the truth. She’d been madly in love with her first husband. Ian understood about love, even if he couldn’t feel it. He’d seen his brothers devastated by love and grief, and he knew Beth had been, too. “I can never give you what he gave you.” lan’s chest hurt. “You loved him, and I know that can never be between us.”
“You’re wrong,” she whispered. “I love you, Ian.” He pressed his clenched fists to his breastbone. “There’s nothing in here to love. Nothing. I am insane. My father knew it. Hart knows it. You can’t nurse me back to health. I have my father’s rages, and you can never be sure what I’ll do—“ He broke off, his headache beating at him. He rubbed his temple furiously, angry at the pain.
“Ian.”
The rest of his body wanted Beth and couldn’t understand why the anger held him back. He wanted to stop this stupid argument and spread her on the bed. Her agitated breath lifted her br**sts high, and her hair straggled across her white shoulders. If he rode her, she’d stop nattering about the murder and love. She’d just be his.
She’s not a whore, something whispered in his head. She’s not a thing to be used. She’s Beth.
Ian grabbed her shoulders and dragged her up to him, slanting his mouth over hers. He forced her lips to part, the kiss raw, brutal. Her fists on his chest softened, but she was shaking.
He hungrily took her mouth, wanting to pull her inside him, or himself inside her. If he could be part of her, everything would be all right. He would be well. The horror he kept secret would go away.
Except he knew it wouldn’t. His damned memory would keep it as fresh as if it happened yesterday. And Beth would still look at him as if he were something pathetic in an East End gutter.
Her heat scalded him like the bathwater from his childhood. No one had believed him when he shrieked that it burned—they’d forced him into the water, and he’d screamed until his throat was raw, his voice broken. Ian shoved Beth from him. She gazed up at him, her lips swollen and red, her eyes wide.
He walked away from her.
The world became very specific, the pattern on the rug pointing almost but not quite to the door. It was agony to move his feet toward the door, but he had to. leave the room, and the anger and pain.
He saw Curry in the hall, no doubt having hurried up here when he heard the shouting. They all worried about him, Curry, Beth, Hart, Cam—so protective, hemming him in, his jailers. He passed Curry without a word and walked out.
“Where are you off to, guv?” Curry called behind him, but Ian didn’t answer.He moved down the hall, placing his feet precisely in line with the carpet’s border. At the landing, he turned at a right angle and followed the line down the stairs.
Curry panted behind him. “I’ll just go with you, then.” Ian ignored him. He walked across the black and white marble tiles below, his feet finding only the white ones, and out the back door to the garden.
Walking, walking, to the steward’s house and inside to the case containing the guns for pheasant shoots and a brace of pistols. He knew where the key was and had two pistols out before Curry, with his shorter stride, could catch up. “Guv.”
“Load these for me.”
Curry raised his hands. “No.”
Ian turned away. He found the bullets himself, shoved the box of them into his pocket, and walked out. On his way through the garden, a young undergardener rose from pruning a rosebush, staring at Ian with his mouth open. Ian grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him along with him.
The young man dropped his shears and trotted obediently alongside Ian. Curry came after them, panting. “Leave it,” he snapped to the gardener. “Get back to work, you.” Ian had no idea to whom Curry was talking. He kept his grip firm on the young gardener’s arm. He was a wiry lad, strong as steel.
At the end of the garden, Ian handed an empty pistol to the gardener. He withdrew the box of bullets and opened it, shoving it in the young man’s open hand. The bullets were shining, their brass casings catching the sun. Ian admired the perfect shape of them, tapered at the top, blunt on the bottom, how they fit precisely into the revolver’s chamber.
“Load that one,” he told the gardener.
The boy began to obey, fingers shaking hard.
“Stop,” Curry commanded. “Don’t do it for him.” Ian guided the young man’s fingers to place the bullet in the revolver’s chamber. The revolvers were Webleys, loaded by breaking the barrel forward on a hinge. “Careful,” Ian said. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Put the pistol down, lad, or you’re for it.”
The young man sent Curry a terrified glance.
“Do as I say,” Ian said.
The young man gulped. “Yes, m’lord.”
Ian clicked the revolver back together, sighted down the barrel, and shot a small rock that had been resting on another rock fifty feet away. He shot again and again until his pistol clicked on an empty chamber.