The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie (Mackenzies & McBrides, #1)
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He would soon arrange it so he never had to leave. He’d marry her for a very basic reason: to have her with him every night, every day, every afternoon, and every time in between. He walked down the boulevard, something in him awakening and breaking free.
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“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.”
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She pretended to have so much experience, but sharing a bed with a sedate husband and intense coupling with a lover were two different things. One was duty, the other . . . wildness. Perhaps her husband had made duty enjoyable, but what Ian wanted was not a dutiful wife lying on her back for her husband. He wanted to show Beth every nuance of pleasure, from the incredibly gentle to the crazed and rough. He wanted them falling to the bed afterward, bruised and spent, both of them sated. He wanted everything with her, and he didn’t want it tame.
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“We don’t fit in, you and me,” he said. “We’re both oddities no one knows what to do with. But we fit together.” He took her hand, pressed her palm to his, then laced their fingers through each other’s. “We fit.”
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“She is my wife, under my protection. The only way I will let you do anything against this marriage is if you declare me a lunatic again.”
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“I want her as my wife, and she stays my wife.” Ian softened his voice a notch. “She is a Mackenzie now. Treat her as one.”
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“Your being with me makes it stop. It’s like the Ming bowls—when I touch them and feel them, everything stops. Nothing matters. You are the same. That is why I brought you here, to keep you with me, where you can please make . . . everything . . . stop.”
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She was his wife, and he wanted her. For now, for always.
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Ian would keep her safe with him here, so safe she’d never, ever want to leave.
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“My father. He killed my mother, broke her neck with his own two hands. He told everyone she’d slipped on the rug, fell, died. My brothers didn’t believe it, but they couldn’t ask me, could they? I was declared mad, shut away, so no one would believe me if I told what I saw my father do.”
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Ian cared—she could see his sorrow for Sally and Lily and his own mother—but what he cared most about was sparing his brother. The brother who had delivered Ian from hell.
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“Is this what love feels like?” he whispered to her. “I don’t like it, my Beth. It hurts too much.”
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“All of us are mad in some way,” Ian said. “I have a memory that won’t let go of details. Hart is obsessed with politics and money. Cameron is a genius with horses, and Mac paints like a god. You find out details on your cases that others miss. You are obsessed with justice and getting everything you think is coming to you. We all have our madness. Mine is just the most obvious.”
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Thomas had taught the lonely, frightened Beth Villiers that she was allowed to be happy. Ian was letting her imbibe all the happiness she wanted.