“You see? Lord Cameron’s wife died equally as tragically, though she was a much more spirited woman. She was a firebrand her own family couldn’t handle. Then after she had her son, she went crazy with a knife, tried to kill the baby and Lord Cameron both. No one knows quite what happened in that room, but when Lord Cameron came out, his face was cut up, and his wife lay dead on the floor.”

Beth blenched. “How dreadful.” She’d seen the scar on Cameron’s face, a deep gash on his cheekbone.  “Yes,” Fellows agreed. “If they’d left those ladies alone, they’d be alive today.”

“Were either of them friends of yours?” Beth asked him.

“Are you persecuting the family to avenge their deaths?” Fellows looked surprised. “No, I never knew them. The ladies in question were well above my class.” “But someone you cared about was hurt by the Mackenzies.” His look told her she was right. “They’ve hurt so many, I doubt they’d even remember.”

“And because of this slight, whatever it is, you want to blame Ian for the High Holborn murder.”

Fellows reached out and clutched Beth’s elbow. “Ian killed her, Mrs. Ackerley. You mark my words. He never should have been let out into the worlds—he’s completely mad, and I intend to prove it. I will do anything to prove he murdered Sally Tate and Lily Martin, and I’ll lock him away forever. He deserves it.”

His face was red with fury, his mouth shaking. The anger went deep, nursed for years, and Beth was suddenly consumed with curiosity. What on earth could the Mackenzie family have done to a police inspector to make him so determined to destroy diem?

She heard shouting and looked behind her to see the tall bulk of Ian Mackenzie running toward them. He had a walking stick in his hands and rage in every step. The wind carried lan’s hat to the ground at die same time he dropped the stick and jerked Fellows away from Beth.

“I told you to stay away from her.”

 “Ian, no.”

Last time, Ian had shaken the man and pushed him off.  This time, lan’s strong hands closed on his throat and didn’t let go. “Leave her alone, or I’ll kill you.”

“I’m trying to save her from you, you filth.”

Ian roared, his rage so bright that Beth backed up a step.  “Ian.” Mac Mackenzie sprinted across the grass and grabbed his brother’s arms. “Curry, help me, damn you.” A lean, wiry man wrapped his hands around lan’s huge arm, but it was like a small dog trying to drag down a tree.  Mac was shouting in lan’s ear, but Ian ignored him.  A crowd began to gather. Upper-class Parisians out for their morning stroll, nannies with their children, and beggars alike moved closer to get a look at the mad Englishmen brawling in the middle of the park.

Mac spewed foul language as he pried lan’s hands from Fellows’s neck. Released, Fellows fell to his knees, then hauled himself up again, trousers stained with wet grass. His throat was red, his collar ripped.

“I’ll have you,” Fellows snarled. “By God, I’ll have you swinging for the hangman before you know where you are.” Foam flecked his lips. “I’ll destroy you, and I’ll put my heel in your brother’s face when he begs me for mercy.”

“Fuck you,” Ian screamed.

Beth pressed her hands to her face. Katie stared, openmouthed, as Curry and Mac laced their arms around lan’s middle and dragged him away from Fellows.  lan’s face was purple, tears tracking his cheeks. He coughed as Curry jerked a fist against his breastbone.  “You have to stop, guv,” Curry said rapidly. “You have to stop or you won’t breathe sweet air anymore. You’ll be back in that hellhole, and you’ll never see your brothers again.  What’s worse is I’ll be stuck in there with you.”

Ian coughed again, but still fought, like an animal not understanding it had been caught. Mac stepped in front of Ian and grabbed his face.

“Ian, look at me.”

Ian tried to pull away, to do anything but look his brother directly in the eye.

“Look at me, damn you.”

He swiveled Ian’s head, forcing Ian’s eyelids open until finally, Mac’s eyes and Ian’s met.

Ian stopped. He gasped for breath, tears shining on his face, but he stilled, staring, mesmerized, into Mac’s eyes.  Mac’s hold on him softened, and Beth saw that Mac’s own eyes were wet. “That’s it. You’re all right.” His grip on Ian’s cheek turned to a caress, and then Mac leaned forward and kissed Ian on the forehead.

Ian’s breath was hoarse and audible. He dropped his gaze and looked away across the park, seeing no one.  Curry still had hold of his arms. Ian shook him off, then turned his back and started toward the carriage that had stopped in the lane.

Its coachman was standing on the ground, holding the horses and looking agitated. Beth guessed that Ian and Mac had been riding by, and Ian had leapt from the coach when he’d seen Beth with Fellows.

She realized then that Mac and Ian both wore rumpled evening dress, Ian in the same suit he’d worn the night before.  They weren’t up early; they were still returning from the night’s revelries.

Ian never looked at Beth. Curry retrieved Ian’s hat from the ground, dusted it off, and strode after him.  Mac turned to Fellows, his eyes like cold copper. “Go back to London. If I see you again, I’ll thrash you until you can’t stand.”

Fellows was breathing hard, rubbing his throat, but he wasn’t cowed. “You can hide Lord Ian behind the duke as much as you want, but in the end, I’ll get him. That terrifies you, doesn’t it?”

Mac growled. Beth pictured another outburst of violence in this quiet, sunny park, and she stepped between them.  “Do as Mac says,” she begged Fellows. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”

Fellows turned hard hazel eyes to her. “One last warning, Mrs. Ackerley. Don’t throw in your lot with them. You do, and I won’t be merciful.”

“Didn’t you hear her?” Katie said, planting her hands on her hips. “Be off or I’ll call the police on you. Wouldn’t that be a laugh? A Scotland Yard ‘tec arrested by the French coppers?” Mac put his hand on Katie’s shoulder and pushed her toward Beth. “Get your mistress home and make her stay there.  Tell my . . . Tell her she needs to look after Mrs. Ackerley better.”

Katie opened her mouth to snap at him, but she took one look into Mac’s eyes and quieted. “He’s right, Mrs. A,” she said meekly. “Best we go home.”

Beth gave Ian’s retreating back one last look, and then gazed up at Mac. “I’m sorry,” she said, her throat tight.  Mac said nothing. Beth ignored Fellows and let Katie turn her toward the lane that led to the Rue de Rivoli. She felt Mac’s eyes on her all the way, but when she glanced back, Ian had entered the coach and was sitting with his head turned from her. He never once looked out at her, and she walked away with Katie, the garden’s brilliance blurred by her tears.

 “I’ve lost her, haven’t I?” Ian grated.

Mac landed next to him in the carriage with a thump, and slammed the door himself.

“You never had her, Ian.”

Ian let familiar numbness flow over him as the coach started. He rubbed his temple, the rage having brought on his headache.

Damn the demon inside him. Seeing Fellows reach out and touch Beth—and worse, Beth do nothing to stop him—had unleashed the beast. All he’d wanted was to wrap his hands around Fellows’s throat and shake him. Just like Father—

Mac sighed, cutting through the memory. “We’re Mackenzies. We don’t get happy endings.” Ian wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and didn’t answer.

Mac watched him a moment. “I’m sorry. I should have sent the bastard packing the minute you told me he was in Paris.”

Ian sat back, unable to speak, but his thoughts spun, words tumbling over words until he had to keep mute. He looked out the window, but instead of the passing streets, he saw Beth reflected in the glass, her hands white lines on her beautiful face.

“I’m sorry,” Mac repeated wearily. “Damn it all, Ian, I am so sorry.”

Still gripping Ian’s arm, Mac rested his forehead on lan’s broad shoulder. Ian felt Mac’s distress, but he couldn’t move or say a word that could offer any comfort.  Mac’s studio was not what Beth expected. He’d rented a shabby apartment in the Montmartre area, two rooms to live in on the first floor and a studio at the top of the house. A far cry from what she pictured a wealthy English aristocrat would live in.

A man built like a pugilist with iron gray hair and hard brown eyes opened the door. Beth stepped back in alarm, clutching her satchel to her bosom. This was a man one would find in a wrestling match or a brawl in a pub, not answering doors in Paris.

But no, he seemed to be Mac’s valet. Isabella had told her that the four brothers picked up their unconventional valets off the streets, thus saving them time and expense at the agencies. Curry had been a pickpocket, Bellamy a pugilist, Cameron’s valet a Roma, and Hart’s a disgraced clerk to a London financier.

The sneer left Bellamy’s thug like face when Beth said who she was. Looking almost polite, he directed her up three flights of stairs to the door at the top.

The studio covered the entire floor, with two huge skylights letting in the gray Paris sky. The view, on the other hand, was breathtaking. Beth saw across rooftops down the steep hill to the flat plain of Paris and cloud-bedecked hills in the distance.

Mac was perched on a ladder in front of an enormous canvas, his hair covered by a red kerchief that made him look like a Gypsy. He held a long paintbrush in his hand and scowled bleakly at his canvas. Paint splattered his hands, face, painter’s smock, and the floor around him.

On the eight-foot canvas that reared in front of him, the figures of a pillar and a plump naked woman had been roughed in. Mac was concentrating on the folds of a drape that just missed the woman’s intimate parts, but the model kept twitching.

“Stay still, can’t you?”

The model saw Beth and stopped wriggling. Mac glanced over his shoulder and also went still.

Ian moved out of the shadows. His hair was rumpled, as though he’d been scraping his hands through it, perhaps massaging one of his temples, as he often did. His gold gaze darted over Beth, and then he deliberately turned to look out the window.

Beth cleared her throat. “The porter at your hotel said you’d come here,” she told Ian’s back.

Ian didn’t turn.

“Cybele,” Mac snapped, “go downstairs and tell Bellamy to give you tea.”

Cybele squeaked, then spoke in a heavy accent. “I’ll not go near Bellamy. He frightens me so much. He looks at me like he wishes to lock his hands around my throat.” “Can’t imagine why,” Mac muttered, but Beth broke in.

“It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. I only came here to apologize. To both of you.”

“What the devil do you have to apologize for?” Mac said.  “Fellows is to blame, blast the man. He was told to stay away from us.”

Beth walked to the window, her gloved fingers closing tightly on the handle of her satchel. She looked up at Ian reflected in the glass, his face utterly still.

“You were quite right, Ian,” she said softly. “I should have sent the inspector away with a flea in his ear. I didn’t because I was curious about things that were none of my business.  Mrs. Barrington always said curiosity was my besetting sin, and she was right. I had no call to pry into your family’s history, and for that I soundly apologize.”

“Very pretty,” Cybele sneered.

Mac leapt from his stepladder, threw a dressing gown at Cybele, took her by the ear, and pulled her with him out of the room. Cybele shrieked and swore in French. The slam of the door shook the walls, and then everything went silent Beth studied the unfinished painting as she gathered her wits. The painted woman gazed at the bowl of water at her feet. Patches of wetness suggested she’d just stepped out of it. She held a thin scarf across her back as though she’d been drying off.

It was a sensual painting, like the one Isabella had shown her, but Beth understood the difference right away. The woman in this picture was a thing, a curve of colored flesh.  She was no more a person than was the bath at her feet or the pillar behind her.

The woman in Isabella’s picture had been Isabella. Mac had painted his wife, every stroke lovingly placed, every shadow carefully laid. Any woman could have modeled for this bather—only Isabella could have been the woman in her painting.

Beth turned from the easel and faced the solid upright that was Ian. “I bought you a present” He still didn’t move. Beth unlocked her satchel and pulled out a small box.