A Mackenzie Clan Christmas

by Jennifer Ashley

  The second man dashed out the garden door, but Ian didn’t care. The first man, seeming to recover at every step, ran to where the pistol had fallen and scooped it up. Instead of turning to shoot Ian, he raced along the gallery toward the main stairs.

  Ian went ice-cold. Beth was up there. Ian had heard the echo of their bedroom door closing as he’d fought—the galleries and staircase let sound carry in an almost magical way. He knew Beth would have made her way to the stairs and started down, as Ian had, to see what was going on.

  This thug with a pistol was running directly toward her.

  Ian sprinted after him, kilt flying up over his thighs as he put on a burst of speed. Ian knew this gallery, and the thug didn’t—where the bare spaces between carpets lay, where tables had been placed in the middle of the floor so a piece of sculpture could be viewed from all sides. Ian dodged these and leapt from rug to rug, gaining on the man before he reached the stairs.

  Ian tackled him. He heard Beth give a sharp scream as the thug went down under Ian’s body.

  Ian felt the cold pistol touch his ribs. In the next second, he’d be dead.

  He used that second to roll, grab, and twist. The pistol came away from the man’s hand and went off, the bullet striking somewhere in the vast ceiling.

  Beth’s scream came again, and then her shouts for help.

  Ian hauled the thug around and punched him full in the face. The thug, instead of fighting back, wrenched himself out of Ian’s grip, charged for the front door, yanked it open, and ran out into the darkness. Ian heard the man’s boots crunching on gravel, and then nothing.

  Ian dashed out after him, but the tough was gone, swallowed by night and swirling mists. Dogs were barking now, and men carrying lanterns were hurrying from the stables.

  Ian closed the door. The thugs didn’t matter anymore. The safety of Beth and his children was all to him.

  Beth ran down the stairs, her dressing gown floating behind her. “Ian, are you all right? Ian?”

  Ian caught her as she came off the staircase. He lifted her from her feet and crushed her to him. The feeling of her soft body came to him, the vibrancy that was the woman he loved.

  If the man had reached Beth . . . The thug was the sort to grab a woman and use her as a shield, and then shoot her when she was no longer useful.

  If Ian had been a few seconds too slow . . .

  He buried his face in Beth’s neck, inhaling the warm scent of her. She was beautiful, and well, and in his arms. Safe.

  People brushed past him—the household servants coming see what was wrong. Lights flickered and grew brighter. Men came into the house through the front and garden doors, exclaiming, making sounds of disbelief and dismay.

  Ian wanted them go away, to leave him with Beth alone in this bubble of peace he found in her arms, a place where the world couldn’t touch him.

  But it wasn’t to be. His valet, Curry, once a London street villain, clattered down the stairs on swift feet. “Bleedin’ ’ell!”

  Beth tried to lift away. “Ian—love—I’m all right. We must see what is happening.”

  She was correct, of course. Ian had learned in this first decade of his marriage—ten beautiful, sparkling years—that he could not withdraw from the world. Once in a while, yes, with Beth and privacy, and maybe a lick of honey, but not always. He’d grown used to facing immediate situations without panic, without having to bolt.

  Letting out a long breath, Ian raised his head. Beth gave him a little smile and tucked his kilt, which had come awry while he’d chased the thug, more securely around his waist.

  The little gesture made Ian’s heart beat swiftly. To hell with facing the world. Ian would take Beth back upstairs and let her unwrap him, so she could enjoy whatever she found in whichever way she wanted to enjoy it.

  Beth, catching the look in his eyes, let her smile grow wider, but she shook her head. Not yet, she meant. But later . . .

  Ian would be sure to take her up on the unspoken promise. Resolved, he twined his fingers though Beth’s and let her lead him the rest of the way down the stairs.

  The entire gallery glowed with light. The servants had turned up every lamp in the place.

  Beth gasped in shock. Ian had seen and noted everything out of place as he’d run past in the dark, but he’d pushed the vision aside so it wouldn’t distract him in his pursuit of the intruders. Now he faced the gallery and the truth of what he’d observed.

  Most of the tables that had held sculptures were empty, and almost every painting from the garden end of the gallery was gone. These pictures had been painted by famous artists through the centuries, plus a precious handful by Ian’s brother Mac. Only those that had been hung high, out of easy reach, remained. A few paintings lay piled on the floor, half-ripped from frames, the frames broken. Ruined.

  Hart Mackenzie’s priceless art collection had just been ravaged and stolen, the thieves fleeing with the loot into the night.

  Chapter Two

  “It isn’t your fault, Ian,” Beth said for the dozenth time.

  She watched worriedly as Ian paced the drawing room. He’d donned a shirt, belted his kilt around his waist, and put on shoes, but only because Curry had chivvied him into them. The police would be there in no time, Curry had argued. He couldn’t have his master seen by the bloody Peelers with his backside hanging half out of his kilt.

  The children had been sleeping quietly in the nursery when Ian and Beth had gone upstairs to check on them. They left without waking them. The three would be vastly disappointed in the morning to have missed all the excitement, but Ian’s relief that they hadn’t been hurt or upset was profound, and Beth shared it.

  Now Ian strode back and forth under the twenty-foot-high ceiling adorned with pointed corbels, and refused to sit down. His restlessness told Beth he wanted to be out chasing the criminals. The only reason he was still in the house was because he did not know where to begin looking.

  Eleven years ago Ian might not have answered Beth at all. Since then, Ian had taught himself to respond to people, even if the question or declaration, in his opinion, merited no answer.

  He turned his head and fixed Beth with his golden stare. “Hart isnae here.”

  Beth, for her part, had learned to, as she put it, speak Ian. What he said might not seem to answer the question, but would be one or two steps beyond it. Sometimes seven or eight steps. Ian saw no reason to fill in the gaps for people, wasn’t aware he needed to.

  Hart isnae here meant that Ian felt responsible for the whole house and what went on inside it in Hart’s absence.

  “Lack of better door locks are to blame,” Beth said, annoyed with Hart for not supplying them, or guards for his priceless collection. “You are entitled to go to bed of nights.”

  She warmed, remembering how, earlier this night, when she’d finished writing her letters and had finally climbed into bed, Ian had come awake. His nightshirt and her nightgown had fallen to the floor, and Ian had slid over her, his mouth and hands banishing her tiredness.

  Ian was a determined and passionate lover. Beth had been happy, satisfied, and more sleepy than ever when he’d rolled onto his side and spooned her against him.

  Ian caught her blush now, and heat warmed his eyes. He was never shy about physical love. While learning to show emotion was difficult for him, he’d never seen a reason to be embarrassed about desire.

  I always want you, my Beth. Why pretend I don’t?

  Beth sent him a little smile and was rewarded by another flicker of Ian’s eyes.

  “It is Hart’s fault,” Ian concluded.

  “Exactly.” Beth rose and went to him. “If he insists on displaying costly works of art in his downstairs gallery without stationing guards everywhere, then he cannot be surprised when someone tries to steal them.”

  Ian listened, his gaze steadily on hers. He enjoyed looking into her eyes now—sometimes wouldn’t look away for a long time. “Hart will blame me,” Ian declared. “But we will tell him he
is wrong.”

  “That we will.” Beth took his hand. “Shall we go talk to the police sergeant? The poor man is terrified.”

  Ian closed his fingers firmly around hers. “I will send a telegram,” he said as they left the room together.

  “Do you mean to Hart?” she asked. “No—you mean to Inspector Fellows, to Lloyd. The sergeant will no doubt do that, love. He’ll have to report it to Scotland Yard.”

  “But it won’t be a telegram from me,” Ian said.

  Beth decided to concede this, and continued downstairs with him.

  * * *

  “Ye were done over proper, me lord.” The sergeant was originally from Glasgow but had been assigned this post in the north. Highlanders made him nervous, Beth had seen, and the Mackenzies made him more nervous than most.

  The sergeant was rocking on his heels in the middle of the ravaged gallery. The constable by his side, a local lad, had brought out a pencil and tiny notebook to take down the particulars.

  “Professionals, I’d say,” the sergeant went on. “In and out, never raising an alarm. You’d have lost more if ye hadn’t been wakeful, sir.”

  The sergeant rocked again as he spoke, not comfortable with the way Ian gave him a swift glance then wouldn’t look at him again while Beth described what had happened.

  As she spoke to the sergeant and constable, Ian turned on his heel, walked past them, and headed out the garden door, which was a glass single French door. Beth gave the sergeant a reassuring smile and hurried after Ian.

  She found her husband at the bottom of the steps outside the door. The stairs led to a path that guests used for strolling from the art gallery around the house to Kilmorgan’s famous gardens.

  Ian took in the trampled grass and the scuff marks on the marble steps, then walked a little way down the path and peered up at the trees that grew near the house. While Beth and the two men watched, mystified, Ian moved back up the steps and ran his hands along the garden door’s frame. He opened and closed the door a few times, then bent down to examine the lock.

  Ian walked into the house again, past the worried sergeant and to the front door, which he also went over. Beth followed him closely, not because she was concerned, but because whatever Ian did was certain to be interesting.

  “They had a key,” he announced.

  Beth blinked. “A key? How could they?”

  Ian shut the front door and ran his hand along the bolting mechanism. “This was unbolted when the last man ran out. He didn’t have to stop and fumble with it. The thieves came in through the garden door and unlocked the front door from the inside in case they needed to leave through it.”

  “So they had a key to the garden door?” she asked.

  Ian kept tracing the heavy iron bolt. “The lock on the garden door was nae picked. Or forced. Nor was this one.” He glanced at Beth, saw her trying to comprehend, and touched the keyhole. “No scratches. No nicks where the door meets the frame.”

  “Who on earth would have a key to Kilmorgan Castle?”

  “Me,” Ian answered readily. “Mac, Cam, Hart, Daniel, you, Eleanor, the majordomo, Mrs.—”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” Beth put her hand on his wrist. “I mean, who outside the family or staff?”

  “No one,” Ian said at once.

  “Precisely. Oh dear.”

  Ian didn’t shake off her hold, but he didn’t answer either.

  “That means,” Beth went on, “that the key must have been stolen from one of us at some point. A copy made. The thieves must have been planning this for some time.”

  Ian said nothing. Whether he agreed with her, Beth didn’t know. He would tell her at some point, but it might be tomorrow before he did, or next week.

  The sergeant approached them. “Well, me lord, if ye don’t mind me saying so, how they got in here is no’ so important. They did it, and that’s that. What ye need to do now is decide what they took and make a list. We can circulate it, and if the pieces turn up, we’ll know they’re His Grace’s.”

  Ian’s gaze went down the mostly empty walls. “Three Ramsays, a Turner, three of Mac’s landscapes—not his best work, a Giorgione, a Velázquez, a Delacroix, six of the Norwich School, a portrait by Édouard Manet and studies by him and his colleagues, three landscapes by Cézanne, a Canova sculpture, two ancient Asian bronzes, five wax figurines Degas gave Mac, and a Raphael.”

  Ian closed his mouth. The sergeant stared, but the constable busily scribbled in his notebook. “Sayz-anne, Sez—” The lad looked up in perplexity. “How are you spelling that, me lord?”

  Beth enlightened him. The constable nodded and carefully wrote it down.

  “Well, be sure, me lord,” the sergeant said. “If you remember any more, send word down to the station and let us know.”

  “There is no more,” Ian said.

  Beth smiled at the sergeant. “Do you need anything else here tonight? We are rather tired.”

  The sergeant gave her a patient look. “Aye, me lady, that’ll be all. We’ve had a look for finger marks and footprints, and we’ve talked to the rest of your servants.”

  “Then we can say good night.” Beth, playing gracious hostess, saw the two to the garden door and out. She closed the door, acknowledging the sergeant’s admonition to be sure she locked it.

  “Like closing the barn door after the horses are gone,” Beth said, turning her key in the lock and removing it. “There’s a thought. Did they bother with the horses? Cam’s new colts would be worth a lot of money. Not to mention all the Kilmorgan jewels upstairs.”

  “They had a key,” Ian said. “No one sleeps on the ground floor.”

  “I know.” Beth deflated. “The artworks in the gallery were the easiest to take. I cannot imagine why Hart doesn’t keep the house better fortified.”

  Ian shrugged. “He is Hart.”

  Beth knew what he meant. Hart had a belief that no one would be foolish enough to steal from the Duke of Kilmorgan, and in most circumstances, he would be correct. These thieves must not understand Hart’s power, or they did not care about it, which was a frightening thought.

  Beth sighed. “And now we have to break the news to him. And Mac—he loved those figurines. Not to mention his own paintings.”

  “He didn’t love his paintings,” Ian said as they climbed the stairs. “Mac gave them to Hart because he doesn’t like them and didn’t want to see them in his own house.”

  Knowing Mac, this was no doubt true. “Even so,” Beth answered. “A Raphael, for heaven’s sake.”

  “The Raphael,” Ian said. “It’s . . . wrong.”

  Beth could imagine art experts the world over swooning at his dismissal. But she understood what Ian meant. The Madonna and child in the painting Hart owned had been idealized, and Ian preferred art that was very realistic—he liked the Dutch and Flemish painters, and Velázquez, for instance, and he liked still lifes most of all. Still lifes were about real things, he said. While Beth found the work of Cézanne stunningly beautiful, Ian said the proportions disturbed him. That was why Ian loved his Ming bowls—each one was a small, exquisite, perfect form.

  Cold rushed through Beth at her last thought. “Ian—your bowls. We haven’t checked that any were taken.”

  Ian maintained a room at Kilmorgan that housed the bulk of his collection. Each bowl had its own shelf, and was labeled, numbered, in order. Ian also kept a few bowls in the house he shared with Beth ten miles north of Kilmorgan, swapping them out every so often with bowls here, depending on what he decided he wanted to look at that week.

  Instead of rushing up the stairs in consternation, Ian shook his head. “You and I and Curry have the key to that room. No one else.”

  “But if the thieves stole the key to the house . . .”

  Ian kept on shaking his head. “No one else.”

  “Still, we ought to make sure.”

  Ian’s look told her he thought her worry unnecessary. But he took her hand and walked with her down the wide hall at the top of the
stairs to his collection room.

  Beth turned up the lights as they entered, but she saw that Ian had been correct. Every bowl was in its place, except the three that had been taken to their house after their last visit.

  Ian drew Beth into the circle of his arm and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t worry, my Beth. You and our children weren’t hurt. The paintings are just paint.”

  Another shudder had just gone through the art world, but Beth understood. For Ian, the people in his life—his wife and children, his brothers and their families—were far more important than artwork and paintings, things that only represented the real. And for Ian, the real would always triumph over the imaginary.

  “I love you,” Beth said, her heart warming.

  Ian frowned, puzzled by her response. Then his face lost its drawn, concentrated look, and his eyes softened. “I love you, my Beth. Love you, love you, love you.”

  He liked saying it.

  * * *

  The nursery was in an uproar in the morning. Ian ran to it when he heard the shouting, and found his son Jamie standing in his nightshirt in the middle of the room, demanding to know why he’d not been woken when the thieves had broken in.

  Jamie was nearly eleven years old now, growing taller and more sturdy each year. He had the dark red hair of the Mackenzies, his mother’s blue eyes, and an arrogant manner worthy of his uncle Hart.

  Jamie considered himself the leader of the band of younger cousins, being the oldest of the children. The only cousin he deferred to was Cam’s son, Daniel, but that was because Daniel was a grown-up, fifteen years or so older than Jamie.

  “Dad!” Jamie yelled as Ian came in. He insisted on calling Ian Dad, when the girls liked to refer to him as Papa. “Why didn’t you fetch me? We’d have caught ’em!”

  Ian didn’t bother to wonder how Jamie knew about the night’s adventure. Curry and the rest of the staff would have readily told the three children the tale.

  “No,” Ian said. “They would have hurt you.”

  “I’d have laid into ’em,” Jamie insisted. “Daniel and Bellamy have been teaching me how to fight.” Bellamy was Mac’s valet, a former prizefighting pugilist.