“I saw it while I was shopping with Isabella. I wanted you to have it.”

Ian continued to stare sightlessly away from her, the shape of his broad shoulders reflected in the grimy window.  Beth laid the box on the windowsill and turned away. If he didn’t want to speak to her, there was nothing she could do.

Ian pressed his hand flat against the windowpane, still not looking at her. “How can you be to blame?” Beth dropped the skirt she’d caught up in preparation for leaving. “Because if I’d refused to speak to Inspector Fellows yesterday in the park, you’d never have seen him. I should have had him thrown out when he came to Isabella’s house and began those awful accusations, but I’m too curious for my own good. Both times, I wanted to hear what he had to say.”

Ian finally turned his face to her, keeping his hand on the window. “Don’t protect me. They all try to protect me.” Beth went to him. “How can I possibly protect you? It was wrong of me to poke and pry, but I fully admit I wanted to speak to Fellows to find out all about you. Even his lies.” “They aren’t lies. We were there.”

“Fellows’s interpretation of the truth, then.” One hand fisted on the windowsill. “Tell me what he said to you. Everything.” His gaze rested on her mouth as he waited for her words.

She told him what Fellows had told her, including the man’s abrupt proposal of marriage. She did keep Fellows’s speculations about her father to herself, something she’d have to explain to Ian someday, but not now.

When Beth got to the proposal, Ian pivoted to the window again. “Did you accept?”

“Of course not. Why on earth should I want to marry Inspector Fellows?”

“Because he’ll ruin you if you don’t.”

“Let him try.” Beth glared. “I’m not a hothouse flower to be sheltered; I know a thing or two of the world. My new fortune and Mrs. Barrington’s approval have done much for my standing—I’m no longer the girl from the workhouse, or even the poor vicar’s widow. The wealthy get away with much. It’s disgusting, really.”

She realized, when she ran out of breath, that Ian hadn’t registered a word. “I beg your pardon. I do run on sometimes, especially when I’m rattled. Mrs. Barrington often remarked on it.”

“And why the devil do you drag Mrs. Barrington into every conversation?”

Beth blinked. He sounded more himself. “I don’t know. I suppose she had great influence on me. And opinions. Many, many opinions.”

Ian didn’t answer. He reached to the windowsill and picked up the package, his strong fingers making short work of the paper. He opened a wooden box and stared into it, then lifted out a flat gold pin embossed with stylized curlicues.

“For your lapel,” Beth said. “I’m sure you have dozens of them, but I thought it was pretty.”

Ian continued to stare at it as though he’d never seen such a thing.

“I had it engraved, on the back.”

Ian turned the pin over, his eyes flickering as he read the inscription Beth had mulled over for so long in the shop.

To Ian, In friendship. B.

“Put it on me,” he said.

Beth slid the pin through the cashmere with a trembling hand. His body was hard beneath his coat, and she let her fingers rest a moment on his chest.

“Do you forgive me?” she asked.

“No.”

Her heart beat faster. “I suppose I shouldn’t expect too much.”

“There is nothing to forgive.” Ian caught her hand in a crushing grip. “I thought you would leave Paris after you saw me in the park.”

“I can’t possibly. Your brother hasn’t given me drawing lessons yet.”

A line appeared between his brows. Beth amended quickly, “I was joking.”

His frown deepened. “Why did you stay?”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Ian’s gaze flicked past hers. “You saw.”

Beth remembered his nearly purple face, his hoarse curses, his hands in hard fists, his brother and Curry dragging him away.

“It stays away most of the time. But when I saw him touch you, my Beth, it rose like a fire. I frightened you.” “You did, rather.” But not in the way he meant. Beth’s father had been prone to violent rages when drunk. She’d run from him and cowered behind whatever would hide her small body until he’d slammed out of the house.

With Ian, she’d not wanted to flee. That he could have hurt Fellows she had no doubt, but she hadn’t been afraid Ian would hurt her. She’d known he wouldn’t. She’d been more afraid that he’d hurt himself or that a passing policeman would decide to arrest him.

Beth rested her cheek against the stiff white fabric of his shirtfront. “You told me not to protect you, but I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I don’t want you to lie for me.” His voice rumbled under her ear, overshadowing the strong beat of his heart. “Hart lies for me. Mac and Cam lie; Curry lies.” “Sounds like verbal conjugation. I lie; you lie; he, she, it lies....”

Ian fell silent, and she looked up. “I’m a very truthful person, Ian. I promise.”

He ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek.  Beth felt an insane need to keep talking. “Those clouds are thick. It might rain.”

“Good. Then it will be too dark to paint, and Mac will send that bloody girl home.”

“He isn’t her lover, is he?” Beth put her ringers over her lips. “Oh, dear, I can’t stop asking questions. You don’t have to answer.”

“She’s not his lover.”

“Good.” She hesitated. “Are we lovers?”

“The pin says ‘in friendship.’”

“Only because I was too put off by the shopkeeper to have him engrave ‘to my love.’ Besides, Isabella was standing right next to me.”

Ian went silent for a long time, looking at her and avoiding her gaze at the same time. She saw his eyes flicker back and forth, restless, never wanting to settle.  “I told you I can’t fall in love,” he said. “But you have.”

Her heart thumped. “Have I?”

“With your husband.”

So many people wanted to talk about Thomas Ackerley.

“I did. I loved him very much.”

“What was it like?” His words were so low she barely caught them. “Explain to me what loving feels like, Beth. I want to understand.”

Chapter Ten

Ian waited, his golden eyes burning, for her to explain the mysteries of the world. “It is the most divine thing imaginable,” she tried.

“I don’t want to hear about divinity. I want to hear about flesh and bone. Is love like desire?”

“Some people think so.”

“But you don’t.”

Sweat trickled down Beth’s back, despite the clouds cutting the sun’s heat. The trouble with Ian Mackenzie’s questions was that he asked the unanswerable. And yet she should know how to answer—everyone should. But they couldn’t, because everyone simply knew. Everyone except Ian.  “Desire is part of it,” she said slowly. “The love for another’s body. But also love for their heart and their mind, and for all the silly things they do, no matter how absurd. Your world brightens when they walk into a room, dims when they leave it again. You want to be with the beloved so you can see him and touch him and hear his voice, but you want his happiness as well. It’s selfish, but not entirely so.” “I can feel desire and wanting. I find you beautiful, and I want you.”

She warmed. “I must say, you are quite good for my pride. But when you don’t desire a woman, you feel nothing for her?”

“Nothing at all.”

Beth heaved a sigh. “And that, Ian Mackenzie, is why I said you’ll break my heart.”

His gaze strayed out the window to cloud-strewn Paris.  “Wanting is not enough? Desire so strong you’ll do anything to fulfill it?”

“It’s lovely in the moment, but in the long view, 1 think, no.”

“In the asylum, I learned to take the short view.” She imagined a younger Ian, lanky and not yet grown into his man’s body, bewildered and alone. The bewildered boy reminded her of the girl who found herself abandoned at fifteen with predators roaming, waiting for her to become their victim. Even now, with a respectable name and a fortune, Beth never felt entirely safe.

“I admit that I, too, have learned to take the short view,” she said.

“You feel the wanting.” Ian took her fingers between his, pressing their palms together. “You felt it at the duchesse’s.” Her face heated. “Of course I felt it. You had me in that sitting room with my skirts up to my ears. How could I not?” “Do you want to feel it again?”

Excitement whispered through her. “If I were a lady, I’d protest that of course I don’t want to feel like that ever again. But I do, actually. Very much.”

“Good, because I want to see your body.” Beth swallowed. “You’ve already seen a good portion of it.”

He sent her a dark smile. “And it was fine. I wish to see the rest. Right now.”

Beth darted a glance to the door. “Mac might return any minute.”

“He’ll stay away until we leave.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know Mac.”

“The window . . .”

“Too high for anyone to see in.”

Beth had to admit that he’d answered her most basic objections.  She knew she should have other objections, but she couldn’t remember them right now.

“And if I decide I’d rather run away?”

“Then we’ll wait.”

Beth hesitated, her legs feeling like water, but at the same time, she knew nothing would induce her to leave this room short of a fire. A very large fire.

“I’ll need help with the buttons,” she said.

Beth’s clothes came off layer by layer, like a complicated wrapping peeling back to reveal simple beauty. One by one, her garments fell across the studio’s sofa in a multicolored layer: rich blue bodice and overskirt, a brighter blue underskirt, the fabric light for summer. Two silk petticoats, both white, then her corset cover, until at last Ian unlaced the linen corset himself.

Ian’s arousal throbbed, and he knew he wouldn’t be happy until he saw her bared in her entirety. He untied her lacy pantalets, then unbuttoned the chemise. The silk garments floated gracefully to the floor, and Beth stepped out of them, nude for him. She reached for him, but Ian stepped away, and Beth stopped, confused.

Her hair was mussed from undressing, little ringlets falling from the mass of curls on top of her head. Her arms were soft and round, her thighs also, her waist nipped in by years of wearing a corset.

From her waist her hips softly flared to smooth and firm buttocks. He’d seen her vee of dark hair when he lifted her skirts in the little gilded room, but it was even more beautiful now touched by daylight.

Under his close scrutiny, she blushed and folded her arms over her breasts.

Ian leaned against the back of a chair and basked in her beauty. “You don’t need to hide from me.” Beth hesitated, then gave a little laugh and spun around, arms outstretched. She was so beautiful, with her curls every which way, her mouth laughing, her blue eyes flashing in the fading sunlight. The clouds thickened and rain began to fall, but that didn’t dampen the glow inside the room.  Beth laughed again. “How strange is life?” she asked.  “One moment you are a dowdy companion without a shilling, the next you are a wealthy bohemian in Paris.  One moment a drudge, the next you are buying gifts for your paramour.”

Her words slid over him like water. He’d remember each one in its precise order later, but he would never understand them any better than he did now.

Beth caught up the drape Cybele had dropped and spun it around herself. The gauzy folds caught her hips and breasts, not hiding her in the slightest. She spun around and around, laughing.

Ian grasped the drape when she whirled by, and used it to haul her against him. She stumbled into his arms, still laughing. His first kiss parted her lips, stopping the laughter as she melted to him.

Beth had seen him at his worst, and yet she’d come here today, bleating an apology and handing him a gift. He caught the glint of the gold pin on his chest and his heart warmed beneath it.

Other parts of him were plenty warm, too. He lifted her against him, loving her pliant, bare body in his arms. If she’d been a courtesan, Ian would have already bent her over the chair and taken her without further ado. But while Beth’s husband might have taught her the pleasures of the bed, she’d know nothing of the crude coupling of courtesans.  She smiled at him in perfect faith, a flower just opening.

Beth’s fragile trust was in Ian’s hands. He’d growled that he didn’t want to be protected, but the instinct to protect her was strong. Beth was so alone in the world, so vulnerable, and she didn’t even realize it.