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Ian took Beth’s elbow and steered her back up the stairs to the drawing room He slammed the doors behind hiht across her chest

"Don’t trust hi Hart for years Have nothing to do with him" "It’s a bit late for that" Beth made no move to sit down, but she didn’t pace either She stood very still, save for where her thuood inspector knows many secrets"

"He knows far less than he thinks He hatesto discredit them"

"Why on earth should he?"

"I don’t know I never did know"

Ian scrubbed his hands through his hair, his frustrated rage boiling to the surface He hated that rage, the one that had so infuriated Ian’s father and had earned young Ian s

It rose in his but couldn’t find the words, when he couldn’t understand the nonsense everyone around hi he could--lashed out with fists and screa would stop only when Hart came The little boy Ian had worshiped Hart Mackenzie, ten years his senior

Ian was old enough now to control his iht the demon of it every day

He’d fought it the night Sally Tate had been murdered

"I don’t want you to be part of this," he repeated Beth simply looked at him Her eyes were so blue, her lips lush and red He wanted to kiss her until she forgot all about Fellows and his revelations, until that look in her eyes was gone

Ian wanted her under his body, his heat asp when he fitted hi with her until they both dissolved with the passion of it He’d wanted her as his refuge ever since he’d seen her sitting next to Lyndon Mather at Covent Garden Opera House

He’d taken her away froht that Ian had stolen her, and Ian didn’t care But now Beth knew lan’s secrets, and she was afraid

"It should be sih to establish that you co "Surely your coachman and valet and so forth can account for your whereabouts" She thought it was so, so si her petal soft skin beneath his palm "I don’t want you to know about this It’s base and dirty It will soil you"

He wasn’t certain what all Fellows had told her, though he could guess But Fellows had dug up only the barest part of the incident The reality went miles deep, secrets so nasty they could ruin all of the him to clear it up in a sentence or two, to reassure her Ian couldn’t, because he knew the stark truth His dao of what he’d seen, what he’d done Both ladies had been involved, and they’d both died Would Beth?