“Because you didn’t mean to. You thought Lily would betray Hart, and you were scared.”

Mrs. Palmer bit her lip. “You’re right. I went to her to find out what she knew, and she started raving that the money Ian was giving her wasn’t enough anymore. The scissors were right in her basket. I picked them up . . . .”

She stared at her hand, flexing it in wonder.

“Hart will help you,” Beth said.

“No, he won’t. I ruined everything. Lily’s death put Inspector Fellows back on the scent. Hart will never forgive me.”

Beth grasped the edge of the pew, trying to stay conscious.  Sleep beckoned her, sweet sleep where there was no pain. “Did you really kill Sally?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I’ll go to the gallows for Hart, and he’ll understand how much I love him.”

“Lily and Sally were lovers,” Beth whispered. Her mind reached for something, but lights flickered on the edges of her vision.

Mrs. Palmer snorted. “Lily had a photograph of Sally in her sitting room, can you believe it? Sally had thrown her over all those years ago. I took it away with me. I didn’t want to give the police any hints, but they made the connection anyway.”

“Sally and Lily,” Beth whispered. She closed her eyes, and the scene played again in her head. Lily staring into the room while Hart was with Sally, watching Hart leave her.  Perhaps thinking that Hart had already given Sally money.  Lily furious because Sally had given her the push, and she wouldn’t have Sally or the money. A knife lying on the table next to the bed and Lily snatching it up. Ian watching from the parlor as Hart stormed out of the house, Ian seeing Lily in the hall, a witness, he thought, to a crime committed by his brother.

“I have to get away.” Mrs. Palmer shoved her hands into the pockets of Beth’s gown, snatching the drawstring bag that held Beth’s coins. She grabbed Beth’s hand and started working the silver ring with the diamond chip from her little finger. “I’ll take this, too. I can flog it when I get to the Continent. And the earrings.”

“No.” Beth tried to close her fist, but her hand was ice cold and so weak. “My first husband gave it to me.” “A small price to pay for me not killing you.” Mrs. Palmer snatched the earrings out of Beth’s ears, the tiny pain sharp. Isabella had given Beth the earrings in Paris when Beth had admired them. Keep them, darling, she’d said, careless and generous. They suit you better than they do me.

Mrs. Palmer stood up. She looked old in this light, a Woman who’d kept herself young with paint and perseverance.  Now she looked tired, weary, a woman who’d tried too hard for too long.

“I love Hart Mackenzie,” she said, her voice fierce. “I have always loved him. I will make certain that little woman loving whore Sally won’t ruin him even after all these years. I made sure Lily wouldn’t.”

“Stay and explain to them,” Beth gasped out.

In sudden rage, Mrs. Palmer hauled Beth up by the hair.

Beth cried out, her side like fire.

“You had no right to go digging everything up, bringing the inspector to my house. You’re as much to blame as I am.” Spittle flecked her lips.

Beth couldn’t fight anymore. Her whole body wanted simply to stop. She’d die here in Thomas’s little church, not ten yards from the churchyard where Thomas lay.  She thought she heard the lectern door squeak, and she saw Thomas standing by it in the white cassock she’d darned so often. His dark hair was gray at the temples, his kind eyes so blue.

Be brave, my Beth, she thought he said. It’s almost over.

“Ian.”

Mrs. Palmer scanned the chapel, her fingers still gripping Beth’s hair. “Who are you talking to?”

Shouting interrupted her, deep male voices, one of them Ian’s. Mrs. Palmer screamed, hauling Beth in front of her like a shield. Beth groaned in agony.

Ian, his face white, eyes wild, barreled into Mrs. Palmer. He was shouting something, but Beth couldn’t hear him, couldn’t understand his words. Mrs. Palmer stumbled, shrieking, and Ian caught Beth as she fell.

He was beside her, warm, solid, and real. Beth tried to reach for him, but her arms wouldn’t work. He lifted her and cradled her against him on the pew. His golden eyes were wide as he looked straight into hers.

“Ian.” Beth smiled and touched his face. She was the one who couldn’t hold the gaze, as her eyes drifted sideways.  In her peripheral vision, she saw Hart rush in, followed by Cameron and Inspector Fellows. Mrs. Palmer stood tall against the wall.

“I’ll not hang for that slut,” she said in a loud, clear voice. Her knife gleamed in her hands, and she plunged it straight between her breasts.

Beth heard Hart’s cry, saw Mrs. Palmer’s knees give and her body slide down the wall. Hart caught her in his arms.  Mrs. Palmer looked up at Hart. “I love you.”

“Don’t speak,” Hart said, his voice incredibly gentle.

“I’ll get a doctor.”

She shook her head, her smile weak. “It’s all dark now. I can’t see your face.” She groped blindly for him. “Hart, hold me.”

“I’m here.” Hart gathered her against him, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I’m here, love. I won’t leave you.” Ian didn’t even look at them. He had his eyes closed now, rocking Beth. Beth tried to say, “I knew you’d find me,” but darkness closed on her, and her lips would no longer move.  She slid into unconsciousness just as Mrs. Palmer’s last breath rattled through her throat.

Ian used Hart’s opulent carriage to take Beth home to the ducal mansion on Grosvenor Square. Hart’s house was always staffed, always at the “ready for any business the duke might want to conduct in town. Ian carried Beth inside, and the well-trained servants scrambled to obey his frantic commands.

Ian carried Beth to the bedchamber set aside for his use.  A doctor came to clean Beth’s wound and sew it closed, but Beth wouldn’t wake up.

Cameron had stayed with Hart and Inspector Fellows at the church while Fellows fetched who he needed to fetch and tried to make sense of what happened. Ian didn’t care what had happened. It was over, Mrs. Palmer was dead, and Beth had nearly died herself trying to put everything right.  Fellows could do as he liked.

Beth lay in a stupor, feverish and sweating. No matter how much Ian bathed the cut in her side, it swelled and reddened, and fever set in.

Ian stayed by her all night. He heard the others return, Cameron’s gruff voice and Hart’s quiet replies, the deferential voices of the servants. He pressed a cool cloth to Beth’s forehead, wishing he could bring the fever down by force of will.

He heard the door open behind him and Hart’s heavy tread, but Ian wouldn’t look up.

“How is she?” his brother asked in a low voice.

“Dying.”

Hart came around the bed and looked down at Beth, unmoving on the sheets. His face was white, strained.  Beth was so hot. She groaned with it, tossing her head from side to side. She whimpered when her wound touched the bed, as if trying to find release from haunting pain.  Ian glared at Hart. “You and your fucking women. You made them your tame animals, and now they’ve killed Beth.”

Hart flinched. “Damnation, Ian.”

“You thought Beth wanted my money, our name. Why should she?”

“I did at first. I don’t any longer.”

“Too bloody late. She never wanted anything for herself, never demanded anything from us. You don’t know what to do with people like that.”

“I don’t want to see her die, either.”

Hart put his hand on Ian’s shoulder, but Ian jerked away.  “You took me to that house to be your damned spy. You used me, like you’ve use me for every other scheme in your life. You released me from the asylum so I could help you, but you’ve never believed I wasn’t mad. You just needed what I could do.”

“That’s not entirely accurate,” Hart said, tight-lipped.  “It’s close enough. You thought I was insane enough to kill Sally. I did what you said because I was grateful to you, and I wanted to protect you. I admired you and worshiped you just like your tame sluts.”

Ian was breathing hard, but he gentled his hand to brush back Beth’s hair.

“For God’s sake, Ian.”

“I’m finished obeying your commands. Your bloody high-handedness has killed my Beth.”

Hart remained still, his eyes fixed. “I know. Let me help her.”

“You can’t help. She’s beyond help.” Ian met Hart’s gaze for a fleeting moment, and for the first time in Ian’s life, Hart couldn’t look back at him.

“Get out,” Ian said. “I don’t want you here if I have to say good-bye to her.”

Hart remained rigid and unmoving for a few moments,’ then turned around and quietly walked from the room.

Over the next week, Ian left the bedroom only to shout for Curry if the man was too slow answering the bell. Beth tossed in the bed, her face pink and sweating, groaning when anything touched her side. Ian slept on the bed next to her, or on the chair beside it when Beth became too restless. Curry tried to get Ian to sleep in the next room, to let a maid or Katie or himself nurse Beth while he rested, but Ian refused.  Ian had read every book in Hart’s vast library and plenty of tomes at the private asylum, filing away every modern view of medicine in his head. He put into practice methods of nursing festering wounds, methods of bringing down fever, methods of keeping the patient quiet and fed.  The doctor brought leeches, which did help with the swelling a little, but Ian didn’t like his oils and ointments and syringes of suspicious-looking liquids. He wouldn’t let the doctor near Beth with them, which led to the doctor’s loud-voiced complaints to an unsympathetic Hart.  Ian washed Beth’s wound every day, wiping away any evils that seeped from it. He bathed her face in cool water, fed her spoonfuls of broth, forcing them into her when she tried to turn her face away. He had Curry bring in ice, which he pressed against the cut to stop the swelling, and used more ice to cool down the water with which he bathed her forehead.  Ian wished he could move Beth from London, where coal smoke and soot seeped through every window, but he feared jarring the wound open again. He braided her hair to take the heat off her neck, fearing he’d have to cut off her beautiful tresses if the fever didn’t break.

The doctor clucked his tongue and proposed experimental treatments that involved serum from monkey glands and other such wonders. He was developing them in conjunction with specialists in Switzerland, and if he could save the sister-in-law of the Duke of Kilmorgan, he said, it would make his name.

Ian ran him off with threats of violence.

By the sixth day, the fever still had not come down. Ian sat by Beth’s side, his hand loosely clasping hers, and tasted fear.  He was going to lose her.

“Is this what love feels like?” he whispered to her. “I don’t like it, my Beth. It hurts too much.”

Beth didn’t respond. Her eyes were cracked open under swollen lids, a blue glitter that saw nothing. He hadn’t been able to feed her today.

Ian felt sick, his stomach roiling, and he had to leave the room to vomit bile. When he returned, there was no change.  Her breathing was hoarse and a struggle, her skin painfully hot.

She’d come into his life so suddenly, only a few short weeks ago, and just as suddenly, she was departing it. The sense of loss terrified him. He’d never felt it before, not even with all the loneliness and fear he’d experienced at the asylum. That fear had been self-preservation; this was an emptiness that hollowed him out from the inside.  Sitting in this dark room facing the worst brought memories back to him. Ian’s perfect recall played them all clearly, little dimmed by the seven years between now and his years at the asylum. He remembered early morning baths in cold water, taking supervised walks in the garden, where a man with a long walking stick followed him about. The sheepherder, Ian had always called him, ready to beat patients back indoors if necessary.

When other physicians or distinguished guests visited, Dr.

Edwards would give grand lectures, while Ian was made to sit on a chair next to the podium. Dr. Edwards would have Ian learn the name of every member of the audience and recite them back, have him listen to a conversation between two volunteers and repeat it perfectly. A blackboard would be brought out, and Ian would solve complex mathematical problems in seconds. Doctor Edwards’s trained seal, Ian called himself.

His is a typical case of haughty resentment which is festering his brain. Notice how he avoids your eyes, which shows declined trust and lack of truthfulness. Note how his attention wanders when he is spoken to, how he interrupts with an inappropriate comment or question that has nothing to do with the topic at It and. This is arrogance taken to the point of hysteria—the patient can no longer connect with people he deems beneath him. Treatment: austere surroundings, cold baths, exercise, electric shock to stimulate healing.  Regular beatings to suppress his rages. The treatment is effective, gentlemen. He has calmed considerably since he first came to me.