brothers. “After all these years of taunting me, of rubbing my face in your wealth and privilege? You even almost cost me my job, damn your eyes, my only way of making a living. But you didn’t care about that Why should you care that I’m the only one that looks after ray mother?”
“They truly don’t know, Inspector,” Beth interrupted. She wrapped up the false beard and handed the package to a smug-looking Katie. “Men often can’t see what’s beyond the tips of their noses.”
“I’m an artist,” Mac interjected. “I am supposed to be a brilliant observer, and I never saw it.”
“But you paint women,” Beth said. “I’ve seen your paintings, and if a man is in them, they’re vague and in the background.”
Mac conceded. “The fairer sex is much more interesting.” “When I saw the portrait of your father at Kilmorgan, the resemblance struck me.” She smiled. “Inspector Fellows is your half brother.”
Hart’s sitting room filled with Mackenzies. Curry bustled in with them, and the other three manservants hovered in the doorway, looking worried and curious at the same time. Beth was breathing hard, shaky from her trip down the stairs, and Ian made her sit next to him on the sofa. Why he believed he could keep Beth out of trouble, he didn’t know. She was headstrong and had a will of steel. His own mother had been a victim of his father, terrified of him. Beth’s mother had been a victim as well, but Beth had somehow managed to transcend the horrors of her childhood. Her troubles had made her courageous and unflinching, characteristics that had been lost on the idiotic Mather. Beth was worth saving, worth protecting, like the rarest of porcelains. Hart entered last, his eagle gaze taking in his brothers, Beth, and Fellows. Fellows was on his feet, facing them all under the room’s high ceiling.
“Who is your mother?” Hart asked him in his cool ducal voice.
Beth answered for the inspector. “Her name is Catherine Fellows, and they take rooms in a house near St. Paul’s Churchyard.”
Hart transferred his gaze to Fellows, looking the man up and down as though seeing him for the first time. “She’ll have to be moved to better accommodation.” Fellows blustered. “Why the devil should she? Because you couldn’t abide the shame if someone found out?”
“No,” Hart answered. “Because she deserves better. If my father used her and abandoned her, she deserves to live in a palace.”
“We should have all of it. Your houses, your carriages, your damned Kilmorgan Castle. She worked her fingers raw to keep me fed while you licked gold plates.”
“No gold plates in our nursery,” Cameron interrupted in a mild voice. “There was a china mug I was fond of, but it was chipped.”
“You know what I mean,” Fellows snarled. “You had everything we should have had.”
“And if I’d known that my father had left a woman to starve and raise his child, I’d have done something much sooner,” Hart said. “You should have told me.” “And come crawling to a Mackenzie?”
“It would have saved us all so much trouble.” “I had my own job, earned by my hard work, which you did your best to destroy. I’m older than you by two years, Hart Mackenzie. The dukedom should be mine.” Hart moved to the table behind a sofa and opened a humidor. “I’d give you the joy of it, but the laws of England don’t work that way. My father was married to my mother legally four years before I was born. Illegitimate children can be left money, but they can’t inherit the peerage.” “You wouldn’t want it,” Cameron put in. “More trouble than it’s worth. And for God’s sake, don’t murder Hart or I’m next.”
Fellows clenched his hands. He moved his gaze around the room, taking in the fifteen-foot-high ceiling, the portraits of Mackenzies, and Mac’s painting of the five Mackenzie dogs. Mac had painted them so lifelike that Ian expected them to come loping out of the painting and start drooling on Mac’s boots.
“I am not one of you,” Fellows began.
“You are,” Ian said. Beth smelled so good, her hair snaking over her shoulders in dark brown waves, making patterns on her gold dressing gown. “You don’t want to be, because that means you’re just as mad as the rest of us.” “I am not a madman,” Fellows returned. “There is only one madman in this room,
“All of us are mad in some way,” Ian said. “I have a memory that won’t let go of details. Hart is obsessed with politics and money. Cameron is a genius with horses, and Mac paints like a god. You find out details on your cases that others miss. You are obsessed with justice and getting everything you think is coming to you. We all have our madness. Mine is just the most obvious.”
Everyone in the room stared at Ian, including Beth. Their scrutiny made him uncomfortable, so he buried his face in Beth’s hair.
After a silence, Mac said, “Proof we should always listen to the wisdom of Ian.”
Fellows made an impatient noise. “So we’re one big, happy family now? Will you broadcast it to the newspapers, lord it over me, make me a charity case? Long-lost son of a duke embraced? No, thank you.”
Hart chose a cheroot, then struck a match and lit it. “No. The newspapers don’t know what really goes on in our private lives, because they’re too interested in what we do in public. But if you are family, we take care of our own.” “Are you going to buy me off then? When I should have had your upbringing and your money, you’re going to dangle a bit of luxury before me to keep me quiet?” “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Inspector,” Beth snapped. “If their father did wrong by you, they want to make it up to you. They won’t offer false affection, but they’ll at least try to do the right thing.”
“We hate our father far more than you ever could,” Mac put in. “He abandoned you.
“It’s their father you want to hurt,” Beth said. “I don’t much blame you. I’d like to have fifteen minutes alone with him, myself.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Cameron said. He also moved to the humidor. “Trust me.”
“He’s dead and gone, where he can’t hurt anyone again,” Beth said. “Why carry on his legacy?”
“You’re trying to wrap me around your finger, my lady. You’ve thrown in your lot with
Ian lifted his head again. “Because she’s right. Our father is dead and gone. He caused us all misery, and we shouldn’t keep letting him do it. Beth and I will have another marriage ceremony at my house in Scotland in a few weeks. We will all gather there and be finished with our father from that time on.”
Beth looked at him with shining eyes. “Do you understand how much I love you, Ian Mackenzie?”
Ian had no idea why this was relevant, and he didn’t answer. Everyone else started talking at once. Ian ignored them, anchoring himself with Beth. He wanted so much to leave her alone, to not hurt her, but the warmth and scent of her drove out everything else. He needed her. “Bloody hell,” Fellows said. “You’re all madmen.” “And you’re one of us,” Hart said grimly. “Be careful what you wish for.”
Cameron rumbled his big laugh. “Get the man a drink.
He looks like he’s about to swoon.”
“You’ll have a Scots accent before you know it,” Mac said. “The ladies like it, Fellows.”
“God, no.”
Mac and Cameron dissolved into raucous laughter. “I think we should celebrate,” Daniel shouted. “With lots of whiskey. Don’t you think so, Dad?”
A week later, Hart’s coach let Ian and Beth, Curry and Katie out at Euston Station to take the train back north. The brothers and Isabella had said they would follow in their own time, promising that they’d be present for the elaborate wedding Ian would give Beth for consenting to be his wife.
The weather had turned rainy, and Ian was anxious to get back to the wide-open spaces of Scotland. At the station, while Curry rushed off to purchase tickets after settling Beth into the first-class lounge, Ian turned around to see Hart coming at him out of the rain.
The fog parted for his brother’s broad shoulders, just like the rest of the world did. Travelers’ heads turned as they recognized the famous and wealthy duke.
“I wanted to speak to you before you went,” Hart said stiffly. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Yes.” Ian hadn’t liked the way his rage mounted every time he found himself alone with Hart, and so he had found means to not be alone with him. Hart started to pull Ian aside, out of the crowd, but Ian remained stubbornly in the middle of the platform, the crowd snaking around them. Hart heaved a resigned sigh. “You are right that I’m a ruthless bastard. I truly didn’t know that for five years you were trying to protect me.” He hesitated,
