“You are better. You are a hundred times better.”
“But if someone found out… Ian, it could be horrible. Newspapers…”
He wasn’t listening. “We don’t fit in, you and me,” he said. “We’re both oddities no one knows what to do with. But we fit together.” He took her hand, pressed her palm to his, then laced their fingers through each other’s. “We fit.”
He was saying, We are adrift and no one wants us, not the real us. We might as well drift together. Not, Please marry me, Beth. I love you.
Ian had told her that first night at the theatre that he could never love her. She couldn’t expect that. On the other hand, as Mac pointed out, they got on. Beth had learned not to be startled at his abrupt speeches, not to be offended when he looked as though he hadn’t heard a word she said.
“The priest is Catholic,” she said faintly. “I’m C of E.”
“The marriage will be legal. Mac saw to that. We can have another ceremony when we return to Scotland.”
“Scotland,” she repeated. “Not England.”
“We’ll go to Kilmorgan. You’ll be part of it, now.”
“Do stop trying to make me feel better, Ian.”
He frowned, Ian always taking her words literally. She went on. “A lady likes to be wooed a bit before she’s thrust into marriage. Offered a diamond ring and so forth.”
Ian’s grip tightened. “I’ll buy you the largest ring you ever saw, covered with sapphires to match your eyes.” Her heart skipped a beat. His gaze was so intense, even when he couldn’t meet hers directly.
She remembered the breathless moment when he’d actually looked at her when they’d made love. His eyes had been so beautiful, fixed on her as though she were the only person in the world. The only person who mattered. What would she give to have him look at her like that again?
Everything she had.
“Blast you, Ian Mackenzie,” she whispered.
Someone tapped on the door, and Curry stuck his head around it. “The rain’s slackened, and the good inspector’s getting impatient.”
“Beth,” Ian said, his grip crushing.
Beth closed her eyes. She hung onto Ian’s hands as though he were the only thing between her and drowning. “All right, all right,” she said, her voice shaking as much as her. body. “We’d better do it quickly, before the inspector storms the battlements.”
And it was done. Beth’s eyes were heart-wrenchingly blue as she repeated the vows. Then the marriage was sealed by the priest, witnessed by Curry, Mac, and Bellamy. Ian slipped a plain ring he’d instructed Curry to bring onto Beth’s finger, a placeholder until he could buy her the wide sapphire band. When he kissed her, he tasted the heat left over from their lovemaking as well as her nervousness.
They walked out together, Ian holding an umbrella over both himself and Beth. Ian pointedly ignored Fellows and the crowd of Paris police and journalists who waited on the opposite side of the street.
Ian’s carriage pulled forward as they emerged, blocking Fellows’s view. The man strode around the carriage anyway as Ian was handing Beth in.
Fellows’s eyes were grim, his mustache soaked with rain. His stance bore the furious exhaustion of a man who’d stalked his prey all night and now saw it slipping away.
“Ian Mackenzie,” he said heavily. “My friends in the Surete have come to arrest you for abducting Mrs. Beth Ackerley and holding her hostage in this inn.”
Beth gazed out of the carriage, a warm, lighted haven from the rain. “Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, Inspector. He didn’t abduct me.”
“I have witnesses who saw him drag you out of that gambling den and hustle you here.”
Ian slowly folded his umbrella, shook it out, and stowed it inside the carriage. “Mrs. Beth Ackerley is no longer here,” he said, focusing on the pension they’d just left. “Lady Ian Mackenzie is.”
He turned and climbed into the carriage before Fellows could begin to splutter. Mac came out of the pension, a wide grin on his face, followed by Curry with a valise, and Bellamy with a basket of wine and bread Ian had bought from the hotelier.
“You lost that round, Fellows,” Mac said, clapping the inspector on a soggy shoulder. “Better luck next time.” He climbed up into the carriage and thumped down opposite Beth and Ian, smiling broadly at them. Bellamy climbed up with the coachman, but Curry sprang into the coach and slammed the door in Fellows’s face. The inspector’s eyes were hard as agates, and Ian knew he’d thwarted the man only briefly. The battle had been won, but the war would rage on.
They left immediately for Scotland. Beth had only a few hours to pack and say good-bye to Isabella, because Ian was suddenly in a tearing hurry.
“Oh, darling, I’m so happy.” Tears wet Isabella’s lashes as she gathered Beth in a right hug. “I’ve always wanted a sister, and you are the best I can think of.” She held Beth at arm’s length. “Make him happy. Ian deserves to be happy, more than any of them.”
“I’ll try,” Beth promised.
Isabella’s dimples showed. “When I move back to London, you’ll come down and stay with me, and we’ll have scads of fun.”
Beth clung to Isabella’s hands. “Are you certain you won’t come with us now? I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too, darling, but no. You and Ian need to be alone together, and Kilmorgan—“ She broke off, pain in her eyes. “Too many memories for me. Not yet.”
They hugged again. Beth hadn’t realized how fond she’d grown of Isabella, the openhearted young woman who’d taken Beth under her wing and shown her a new and astonishing world.
Isabella hugged Ian as well, expounding upon how happy she was for him. At last Ian and Beth made their way to the train station, with Curry and Katie and another carriage full of boxes and bags. Beth quickly learned how much aristocrats took for granted when Ian guided her into the first-class compartment and left Curry to see to the baggage, the tickets, and Katie. For all Ian’s assertions that he didn’t fit anywhere, he was still a lord, a duke’s brother, rich and lofty enough to ignore the tiny details of life. He had people to pay attention to those details for him.
Mrs. Barrington’s voice in Beth’s head had grown fainter in the last days, and Beth heard it only weakly now. You ‘vent well above yourself, my gel. See that you don’t make a meal of it.
She wondered what Thomas would have said, and found his voice completely gone. Tears blurred the ponderous station that slid past the windows as the train began to move. Ian hadn’t even bothered to wonder whether Curry made it aboard before they went. Beth compared this leaving to her own departure from Victoria Station: Mrs. Barrington’s wheezing, elderly butler trying to help but dropping everything he picked up, Katie convinced their luggage would be stolen and never seen again, and the lady’s maid Beth had hired having hysterics about “foreign parts” and running off at the last minute. Of course, Curry had no such problems. He appeared calmly at the door of their compartment as they glided through Paris to tell them he’d ordered tea and squared the tickets, and asked if they wanted anything else. Very efficient, very calm, as though his master hadn’t just rushed into a marriage and a journey of hundreds of miles on top of it. Beth also discovered, as they left Paris behind and chugged across rain-soaked France, how restless Ian could be. After only half an hour in their private compartment, Ian left to roam the train, walking up and down, up and down. When they reached Calais and boarded the boat for England, he paced the deck above while Beth slept alone in their private cabin.
Finally, during the journey from Dover to Victoria Station, Beth stuck out her foot when Ian again rose to leave the compartment.
“Is anything the matter?” she asked. “Why don’t you want to sit?”
“I don’t like to be confined.” Ian opened the door to the corridor as he spoke, fine beads of sweat on his upper lip. “You don’t mind carriages.”
“I can make carriages stop whenever I like. I can’t step off a train or boat whenever I please.”<
br />
“True.” She touched her lip. “Perhaps we can find something to take your mind from it.”
Ian abruptly closed the door. “I also leave because keeping my hands off you is a strain.”
“We’ll be on the train for a few more hours,” Beth continued.
“And I’m certain Curry will ensure we’re not disturbed.” Ian pulled down the curtains and turned to her. “What did you have in mind?”
Beth hadn’t thought they could do very much in a small railway carriage, but Ian proved to be quite resourceful. She found herself half-undressed with her legs wrapped around him as he knelt in front of her. In that position they were face-to-face, and Beth studied his eyes, hoping he’d look at her fully again. But this time, when climax hit him, Ian closed his eyes and turned his head.
Only a few minutes later, Beth was dressed again and sitting breathlessly on the seat while Ian went out to pace the train.
When Beth had shared a bed with Thomas, they’d been less exuberant and more conventional, but at the end, there had been quiet kisses and whispered I love you’s. Now Ian wandered the train, and Beth sat alone, watching the green countryside of England rush by. She heard the echo of Ian’s matter-of-fact statement from weeks ago: I wouldn’t expect love from you. I can’t love you back.
The luggage made it to the station intact, but when they entered an elegant coach outside—hired by Curry—it took them toward the Strand instead of Euston Station. “Are we stopping in London?” Beth asked in surprise. Ian answered with a brief nod. Beth peered through the window at gloomy, rainy London, which looked grimier and duller now that she’d seen the wide boulevards and parks of Paris. “Is your house near here?”
“My London household was packed and sent to Scotland while I was in France.”
“Where will we stay, then?”
“We are going to visit a dealer.”
Enlightenment came when Ian led her into a narrow shop in the Strand filled floor-toceiling with Oriental curiosities. “Oh, you’re buying more Ming pottery,” she said. “A vase?”
“Bowl. I know nothing about Ming vases.”
“Aren’t they much the same?”
His look told her she’d lost her mind, so Beth closed her mouth and fell silent. The dealer, a portly man with dull yellow hair and a limp mustache, tried to interest Ian in a vase that was ten times the price of the small, rather chipped bowl Ian asked to see, but Ian ignored his maneuverings.
Beth watched in fascination as Ian held the bowl between his fingertips and examined it in minute detail. He missed nothing, not a crack or anomaly. He smelled it, he touched his tongue to it, he closed his eyes and rested the bowl against his cheek.
“Six hundred guineas,” he said.
The burly dealer looked surprised. “Good lord, man, you’ll ruin yourself. I was going to ask three hundred, I must be honest. It’s chipped.”
“It’s rare,” Ian said. “It’s worth six hundred.”
“Well.” The dealer grinned. “Six hundred it is then. I’ve done well for myself. You wouldn’t want to appraise the rest of my collection, would you?”
Ian laid the bowl reverently on the velvet bag the dealer placed on the counter. “I don’t have time. I’m taking my bride to Scotland tonight.”
“Oh.” The good-natured dealer looked at Beth with new interest. “I beg your pardon, my lady. I didn’t realize. My felicitations.”
“It was all rather sudden,” Beth said faintly. The dealer raised his brows and glanced at Ian, who had returned his broad fingertips lovingly to the bowl. “I am pleased you had time to stop and look at my offering.”
“Rather lucky we found you in,” Beth said. “And the bowl still here.”
The dealer looked surprised. “Not luck, my lady. Lord Ian wired me from Paris and told me to hold it for him.”
“Oh.” Beth’s face grew warm. “Yes, of course he would have.”
Beth had been with Ian constantly since their hasty marriage, except when he paced the trains and boat. The all efficient Curry must have sent the wire from some station along the way. More details Ian didn’t have to worry about. The dealer’s assistant packed the bowl under Ian’s watchful eye. Ian said that his man of business would be along with the money, and the dealer bowed. “Of course, my lord. Congratulations again. My lady.”
The assistant held the door for them, but before they could take two steps, Lyndon Mather stepped out of a carriage in front of them. The blond, handsome man stopped dead in his tracks and went a peculiar shade of green. Beth had her hand in the crook of Ian’s arm, and Ian pulled her so abruptly against him that she fell into his side. Mather glared at the box under Ian’s arm. “Damnation, man, is that my bowl?”
“The price would have been too high for you,” Ian returned. Mather’s mouth hung open. He stared at Beth, who wanted very much to leap headfirst into the closest hansom cab and flee. She lifted her chin instead, standing her ground.
“Mrs. Ackerley,” Mather said stiffly. “Have a care for your reputation. People might put it about that you’re his mistress.”
By people, Mather likely meant himself.
Before Beth could answer, Ian said quietly, “Beth is my wife.”
“No.” Mather’s face started to go purple. “Oh, you bastard. I’ll sue you both. Breach of contract and all that.” Beth imagined the humiliation of court, solicitors digging into her past, revealing what a horrible misalliance was her marriage with Ian.
“You came to sell,” Ian interrupted Mather.
“Eh?” Mather clenched his fists. “What do you mean?”
“The proprietor said he expected a bowl to come in as well as go out. You wanted to exchange yours for this one.”
“What of it? This is a collector’s shop.”
“Let me see it.”
Mather’s dithering was almost comical. He opened and shut his mouth a few times, but Beth watched greed and desperation take over indignation. Mather snapped his fingers and his manservant handed him a satchel from the carriage. Ian jerked his head toward the shop, and they all went back inside.
The proprietor looked surprised to see them return, but he had his assistant fetch another square of black velvet, and Mather removed the bowl from the satchel. This one was different, with red camellia blossoms dancing around the outside. It was not as chipped as the other, and the glaze shone in the lamplight.
Ian lifted it, examining it as carefully as he had the first one. “It’s worth twelve hundred,” he announced. Mather’s mouth became a round O. “Yes,” he spluttered.
“Of course it is.”
Beth swallowed. If she understood aright, Mather had been about to exchange a twelve-hundred-guinea bowl for one worth six hundred. No wonder Ian derided him. That Ian’s assessment was the correct one, Beth had no doubt. “I’ll buy it from you,” Ian said. He nodded at the proprietor.
“Will you handle the sale?”
“Ian,” Beth whispered. “Isn’t that an awful lot of money?” Ian didn’t answer. Beth pressed her lips together and watched Ian coolly transact a twelve-hundred-guinea sale, with another hundred pounds to the proprietor for doing nothing but standing next to them. Beth had lived with frugality for so long that to watch someone who didn’t know what frugality meant left her shaky. Ian didn’t even break a sweat. Mather did, though, when he clutched Ian’s note in his hand. No doubt he’d rush to the bank right away. Ian left the shop without telling Mather good day, and helped Beth into the carriage. Curry handed in both boxes with a cheeky grin on his face.
“Well, that was an adventure,” Beth said. “You just gave Lyndon Mather twelve hundred pounds.”
“I wanted the bowl.”
“How the devil did you even know the first bowl was there? Or that Mather was bringing the other? You’ve been in Paris for weeks.”
Ian looked out the window. “I have a man in London who keeps an eye out for pieces for me. He wired me the evening we went to the casino that there was a bowl here that
Lyndon Mather had his eye on.”
Beth stared at him, feeling her life spinning out of control. “That means you would have left Paris the next morning, whether you married me or not.”
Ian looked at her briefly, then returned his gaze to the passing streets. “I would have brought you with me, no matter what. I’d not have left you alone. Marrying you was the best way of thwarting Fellows.”
“I see.” She felt cold. “Thwarting Mather was a bonus, was it?”
“I intend to thwart Mather out of everything.”
Beth studied him, his strong profile turned away, his large hand resting easily on the box next to him. “I’m not a porcelain bowl, Ian,” she said softly.
He looked at her with a frown. “Are you joking?”
“You didn’t want Mather to have the bowls, and you didn’t want him to have me.”
He stared a moment. Then he leaned to her, suddenly fierce. “When I saw you, I knew I had to take you away from him. He had no idea what you were worth, just like he can’t price the damn bowls. He’s a philistine.”
“I think I feel marginally better.”
Ian’s gaze wandered back to the window, as though the conversation were over. She studied his broad chest, the long legs that filled up the carriage. Her thoughts strayed to what it felt like to have his legs stretched next to hers in bed. “I suppose it will be good to stay a few nights in London,” she said. “I’ll have to buy things for Scotland—I imagine the weather is quite a bit cooler.”
“We’re not staying a few nights in London. We’re taking the night train out. Curry has arranged the tickets.”
Beth blinked. “I thought when you said ‘stopping in London’ you meant stopping for a night or two. Not whizzing in and out.”
“We need to get to Kilmorgan.”
“I see.” A cold knot formed in her chest. “What will we do once we get to Kilmorgan?”
“Wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“Time to pass.”
Beth stilled, but there was no more forthcoming. “You are maddening, Ian.”
Ian said nothing.