Miranda (20 page)

Lucas sat straighter on his stool. Ian's shoulders tightened in defense, though he took pains to appear relaxed, as if breaking a cup in his bare hands were an everyday occurrence.

“Papa,” Miranda said gently, “are you certain you feel quite well enough to stay up and talk?”

Gideon gave a thin smile. “Believe me, Mindy, after being Duchesne's prisoner, this is a pleasure.”

She shifted nervously on the edge of the bed. “Papa, did I ever speak to you of a—of my personal life?”

He winked. “You pretended to have none. You pretended that your work was your life.” His face sobered. “In truth, Miranda, you were never free with your feelings. There was...a coolness about you, a distance. My fault, of course, for dragging you across England like a piece of baggage. And I paid the price. I was never quite sure how you felt...about anything. Even about me.”

She flushed and looked down at her fingers knotted in her lap. “What sort of person would be such a distant stranger to her own father?”

Ian felt her desperation. It was a struggle to sit by and watch her, knowing she hurt, wanting to comfort her. But he forced himself to wait while he pondered the changes in her. With him she had been unreserved, spontaneous, trusting. Too trusting.

“Oh,” she said at last. “Then I suppose there's no point in pursuing this. It was a silly idea in the first place—”

“I said you never spoke to me of your personal affairs,” Gideon cut in. “That doesn't mean I wasn't aware of them.” With shaking hands, he set his soup bowl on the bedside table. “I lacked your mind for invention, for learning, Miranda. But not for the deep human understandings of the heart. That was
your
lack. And it was all my fault, God help me.”

She gasped and stared at him. “What sort of person was I?”

Lucas started to say something, but Gideon waved him silent. “Forgive me,” he said. “Miranda and I have private matters to discuss.”

“Then you knew I was, er, involved?” she asked him.

“You were in love, my dear, and at great pains to hide it from me. I suppose you thought I'd be afraid you'd abandon me or some such nonsense. I was just waiting for you to tell me.” Looking bleak, he shook back his long white hair. “I imagine I'd still be waiting. We simply didn't speak of matters of the heart. Ah, if only I'd paid more attention to you as a child.”

She swallowed hard. “So I never told you who he was.”

Ian felt like an intruder, watching father and daughter struggle through an estrangement that had clearly started long before she had lost her memory. He could tell Gideon was a man who revealed what was on his mind in his own time, and there would be no pushing him.

“You never did. Never told me a thing about him.” Gideon glanced from Ian to Lucas, then back to Miranda. “So. Which one is he?”

Miranda's shoulders shook. At first Ian thought she had begun to weep, but then she threw back her head and laughed, long and loud. Lucas stiffened in shock, and Ian wanted to pound the disapproval from his face. No doubt the viscount did not believe a proper lady should show mirth so blatantly.

But it was laughter born of pain; Ian could see that. She was on the verge of hysteria.

“That's just the problem,” she said to Gideon, wiping her face with her sleeve. “I've lost my memory. I have forgotten my one grand passion in life.”

Gideon gazed at her in affectionate bewilderment. “You didn't ask them?”

Losing patience, Ian blew out his breath. “Lord Lisle and I both claim her.”

“
He
is lying,” Lucas stated.

Miranda giggled wildly again. “Perhaps you are both telling the truth. Perhaps I was a wanton, flitting from one man to another. Did you ever consider that, hmm?”

Ian wanted to shake her. Instead he rested his fists on his knees and feigned a blasé sense of amusement. “Actually, the point is now beyond debating, since we're married.”

“Married!” Gideon sat forward in bed, clutching the covers to his chest. “Who is this man? Can he provide for you? What sort of fam—”

“I took her to Scotland and married her,” Ian felt an absurd sense of pride.

“Illegally. Against her will.” Lucas reached for Miranda, grasping her arms. “Sweetheart, I beg of you. Think. Think very hard. I was the man you chose, and I am the man you must choose now. We loved each other. You're rising in society. Soon we'll be able to wed properly. You'll be the Viscountess Lisle.” His voice broke with anguish. “We used to share a dream, Miranda. Don't let it go. Please, don't let it go.”

The last vestiges of humor left her face. Her eyes blazed with fury, but also with frustration. “Perhaps what I've learned from this ordeal is to avoid
any
man.”

Ian felt her eyes on him, felt Gideon's eyes, too. He knew they were waiting for him to make a similar impassioned speech, to try to outdo Lucas. He felt weary to the bone, exhausted by all the pretense, all the unaccustomed emotional turmoil.

“I have nothing to say.” He rose from his chair and walked to the door, turning to fix Miranda with a piercing stare. He had to take this risk, or he was doomed. “Except that the truth is staring you in the face, if you'd only see it.”

Impressed by the grandeur of his own bluff, he left the room and sought his chamber. It was small, with a dormer window and a roomy bed covered by a good feather tick. He took little pleasure in his surroundings, though, and even less in the fresh country breeze that blew in through the open window.

He doubted he would be able to sleep. Miranda was on the verge of having a breakthrough. Soon she would remember everything. She'd know he had been lying to her.

And then there was Gideon. What an odd, gentle old soul he was. Clearly he adored his daughter. Just as clearly, she baffled him. What must it have been like, raising a child like Miranda, trying to keep up with the demands of her hungry, brilliant mind? Trying to understand what lurked in her private heart?

No wonder the old fellow was befuddled.

Befuddlement or not, tomorrow Gideon would have a few things to answer for. He, at least, had not lost his memory. Though he seemed confused at present, perhaps after a good night's sleep he would be more forthcoming with information.

La Couleuvre. The Adder. The name chased itself round and round in his head until he envisioned a black snake, head and tail connected, forming an endless circle.

Ian set his candle on a wall shelf and went to the window, looking out over the gently rolling hills, glistening gray green in the moonlight. He loosened his cravat, then discarded it altogether, flinging it over the back of a chair.

Then he plunged his hands into his hair, raking with his fingers as if trying to comb his brain for answers. All the information was there, floating about like wind-borne seeds. But he could not gather them in, make sense of them.

Finally he lowered his hands and propped his shoulder against the side of the dormer. If that were the only thing troubling him, he would have been asleep already. To himself, in private, he could admit it. Miranda. He wanted her.

God, he needed her. And he was about to lose her.

Ian MacVane had never been more frightened in his life.

* * *

Miranda bent and kissed her father on the brow. The gesture felt awkward, rusty, as if she had never done it before. He slept deeply, peacefully, and she felt a surge of warmth when she held up a bowl lamp and watched him.

You are my father
, she thought, feeling the truth bloom like a small miracle inside her.
My father.

Here he was, living, breathing proof that she had been wanted, loved. Never mind that huge pieces of her past were still missing. She could remember the important things. He used to tie her bootlaces in sailor's knots. He brought treatises and textbooks to church so she could read if she got bored during the sermon. When they had no place to sleep at night, he made a bed for her in his arms.

With a lump in her throat, she backed away from the bed. Why had she kept secrets from her own father?

The thought raised prickles of apprehension on her skin. She remembered the man in black who had approached her at the Thomas Lawrence sitting, confident that she was part of his plot. Had she been living a double life? A traitor to England hiding behind the guise of a scholar's dutiful daughter?

What she hated the most was that she knew nothing for certain. And the three men in her life—Gideon, Lucas and Ian—were no help to her at all.

One true thing had come out of the conversation tonight, though. She had learned to trust her instincts. So, strictly on instinct, she walked past her chamber door and went to another door, envisioning the man within. Was he pacing up and down? Wondering if she would come? Wondering what she had decided?

It was only fair to tell him. Now, before she lost her nerve. Before she started to doubt.

She rapped very lightly on the door. It opened a crack, and then farther, and he stood there, unsmiling, expectant, heartbreakingly handsome.

Her mouth went dry. She looked up at him, gathered her courage and said, “Hello, Lucas. May I come in?”

Sixteen

Every room is a masquerade.

—Miss Mitford,
Our Village

C
arefully Ian closed the door to his room, though he longed to smash it out of its frame.

He stood, feeling a shock that rocked the very foundations of his pride. Hearing a sound outside, he had gone to his door and looked out in time to witness his wife going into Lucas Chesney's room. He saw the scene over and over in his head. He was inside a bad dream from which there was no waking.

He managed to reach down and take a small silver flagon from his boot. The whiskey burned, but even though he drained the bottle, he could tell drinking wasn't going to work.

She'd gone to Lucas. Even after all that had happened, after he'd made love to her as if his very life had depended on it, after he had started to care about her with an intensity that terrified him, Miranda had gone to Lucas.

She had remembered.

“The charade's over,” he muttered, prowling the room restlessly, then stopping to glare out the window.
“Over.”

He told himself all was happening for the best. He'd known the risk he was taking the moment he had decided to spirit her away to Scotland. He'd known that one day she would remember, would learn he had played her false.

He just wasn't prepared for how much losing her would hurt.

And it wasn't like Miranda to accept what he had done to her. Why wasn't she here, in this room, confronting him, accusing him?

He wondered if he should be feeling guilty. Hadn't he, after all, robbed her of a future with a titled nobleman? Worse, hadn't he endangered her chance to be with the man she truly loved?

Aye, he had done both, but the odd thing was, he did not regret a single moment. Perhaps because her nobleman was on the verge of ruin and forced to enter into shady dealings to stay afloat. As to Lucas being the man she truly loved—

Ian sucked in a breath between clenched teeth. As a stowaway on a merchantman long ago, he had been under the lash more than once, and that pain returned now, searing him and flashing out along his limbs to the very tips of his fingers. Only this pain was worse, for it wouldn't go away. He could not stop thinking about their night together, the way they had touched, the things they had said to one another. He had seen and felt things that no even words could express. Joy and brightness and possibility...

Enough, he told himself. She'd had no memories of the past then, save the false ones he had planted in her mind and in her heart. He had not played fair, and now he would pay the price of his cheating.

It was no more than he deserved.

He yanked his frock coat from its hook on the back of the door. He should have gotten out of this mess long before. He should have gone back to his life of routine espionage, watching people from afar, laughing cynically and secretly at their posturing, holding himself aloof. Treating ladies like whores and making them beg for his favors. Winning fortunes from drunken gentlemen at the clubs. And every once in a while, providing some critical bit of information to the British government.

It was an empty existence. He wondered why he had never noticed that before.

No matter. It was preferable to the torment he had found with Miranda Stonecypher in his arms. In his bed. In his life. In his heart.

A faint tapping sounded at his door. “Now what?” he grumbled. With his cravat untied and his frock coat hanging askew, he yanked open the door.

And froze where he stood.

Several seconds passed, and then he found his voice. “Miranda?”

* * *

She took a deep breath for courage and stepped into Ian's room, closing the door behind her and then leaning against it with her hands behind her back.

“I have no idea if I've done the right thing,” she said. “But it's done, and there you are, and I feel ever so much better.”

He had only a single candle burning. His face was half in shadow, but she noticed a tension about him. Taut lines pulled at his mouth and around his eyes.

“You'll have to explain, Miranda.” His voice was chilly. “I have no idea what you mean.”

She had hoped for some measure of compassion from him. But he was an unpredictable man, moody and hard to know. Perhaps he had always been that way. She drew a deep breath. “I went to Lucas's room just now.”

He propped an elbow on the mantelpiece and crossed one ankle over the other. Though his stance appeared casual, she sensed a restrained violence in him, and she stayed by the door.

“Indeed?” was all he said.

“I went to tell him that I could not possibly have been in love with him before the accident, because—” Her mouth felt dry as dust. She licked her lips, but it didn't seem to help. “Because I love you.”

“Christ,” he muttered, his breath causing the candle flame to waver.

She lifted her chin even as her pride plummeted. She had been so certain it was the right thing to do. “Is that all you have to say?”

“How did Lucas take the news?”

She swallowed hard, remembering the stricken look on his face, the glitter of anger and hurt in his eyes. “He insisted that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. That you are a stranger who means me harm.” She pushed away from the door and went to stand before him, fearlessly facing his hooded suspicion and his volatile mood. “But I knew that couldn't be. Not after the night we shared.”

In one swift movement, he caught her against him. “Why do you trust me, Miranda? Why?”

He frightened her, but it was an exhilarating fear, a challenging one. She glided her hands up over his chest, glorying in the hard sculpture of muscles beneath his broadcloth shirt. “I trust what I feel when you hold me in your arms.”

He said something in Gaelic, another swear word, probably. Then he crushed his mouth down on hers. Gladness rose like a fountain inside her. She had made the right choice. She had to believe that. Lucas was simply a decent man who thought she needed protecting. Ian was her love, her life, her past and her future.

“What did you say?” she whispered against his mouth, hungry for more kisses. “What did you just say to me in Gaelic?”

“Never trust a moment of lust.”

She laughed and went up on tiptoe to nip his earlobe.

“You think I'm joking?” he asked.

“I never know when you're joking.”

“I never joke.”

“Ah. Then I shall be deadly serious.” She stepped back and pulled at the fastenings of her dress.

“Miranda—”

She ignored the warning note in his voice and disrobed. When he looked at her with hungry yearning, she felt a delicious sense of power and an answering longing so intense it held the keen edge of anguish.

Was it always like this with us? she wondered as he swept her up and carried her to the bed. He set her down, not gently, but then again, she did not want him to be gentle. He all but ripped off his own clothing and then covered her like a stallion on a mare in season, dominating and consuming her, yet at the same time remaining uncommonly sensitive to her merest want, her smallest vagary of mood.

He was an unpredictable lover, taking her swiftly one moment, slowly the next, bringing her to a high, trembling state of ecstasy until she was certain she would shatter. And of course she did, shattering in his arms, her inner being exploding, set off by the touch of his hands and mouth and body. The passion was almost frightening in its intensity, dark with an edge of fire.

She wondered vaguely, in some distant part of her mind, if there might be danger in feeling this strongly, this sharply. The love burning inside her was no gentle sentiment, but a madness, one that brought to mind the chained prisoners of Bedlam.

He plunged down, engulfing her in that all-consuming way, thrusting his tongue into her mouth and making her want him with a need that was nothing short of madness. He seemed to want to brand her with himself, his teeth nipping her vulnerable flesh, leaving a trail of tiny marks on her throat and breasts. He ran his hands and then his tongue down between her legs, finding a spot of such searing sensitivity that she nearly cried out with the pain and the pleasure of it. His passion was like a whirlwind around her, and though part of her wished it would go on forever, she understood that every storm must spend itself into silence.

“Ian,” she whispered after they had made love. “Ian, I'm afraid.”

“Shh.” He kissed her, leaning over as if to shield her from the world. The menace she had sensed in him earlier was gone now; he seemed to have spent his unexplained anger along with his lust, and what remained was simply tenderness. “What are you afraid of?”

“That this can't last. That something is going to happen to change what we've found together.” She waited, expecting him to deny it, to reassure her.

Instead he kissed her again, very gently, his lips feathering across hers and his hand skimming down her torso. “Then we had best enjoy the moment while we may,” he said.

“That wasn't what I wanted to hear, Ian MacVane.”

He twined a lock of her hair around his finger and studied it. “I can't make the world go away, Miranda, much as I'd like to. I can't stop things from happening. And I canna help it that I've got a duty to do.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why you?” She traced her hand through the fine hair on his chest. “Perhaps you've told me before and I've forgotten. But I want to understand.”

“Understand what, lass?”

“Why you are the way you are.”

He laughed without humor. “I daresay you've never asked me that before. No one has.”

“Then tell me, Ian.” She pressed her ear against his chest, smiling when she heard the surge of his beating heart. “I want to know.”

“It's not very interesting. I was like thousands of others—a poor boy forced to work in Glasgow.”

“That's where you were sent after the English raided your family's croft.” She still had trouble picturing it—the peaceful dales of Crough na Muir aflame and overrun with marauders.

“I worked as a climbing boy,” he said with slow deliberation, “indentured to a chimney sweep. But climbing boys must be small in order to fit into tight spaces. My brother and I were fast to outgrow the job.”

His heart beat more quickly now, though his voice remained matter-of-fact. She wondered what memories haunted him, to make his heart pound in fear or dread all these years later. Perhaps there was some small advantage to not remembering the past.

“And after you grew too big to fit in small spaces?” she asked.

“We were forced to work anyway. Accidents were common.” He held up his hand. In the shadowy candle glow, she studied the last finger, cut off at the first joint. “I lost this. My brother, Gordon, lost his life.”

She pressed her palm to his, and his hand was stiff for a moment; then he tried to take it away. “No,” she whispered. “You're always covering it up with a glove. It's not necessary. I swear it's not.” She closed her hand so that their fingers were laced. “How?” she made herself ask. “Your brother, that is.”

The heartbeat went even faster. “He fell. Three stories to his death. I saw it happen.”

She couldn't stand it. Could not stand to think of all he had endured. Her tears began then, flowing down her chin onto his chest.

“'Tis past,” he reminded her, cupping her head in his hand. “Forgotten a very long time ago.”

She dried her face with the sheets. “I hurt for you, Ian. I do. When I think what it must have been like for you, I can scarcely bear it.”

“It all turned me into a manly little lad,” he said with a dark chuckle. “I vowed, of course, to punish the man who had brought about Gordie's fate.”

“And did you? Punish him?”

All mirth died in his throat. “Nay. I lost track of Mr. Adder, and eventually all the lands of Crough na Muir were sold. Though it would be sweet indeed to find him if he still lives, to make him pay for what he did.”

“Is it only happenstance that one of the Bonapartistes is called the Adder?”

“I don't know...yet.” He hissed out a sigh. “I dream of it, you know. Of finding him. Killing him.”

The chained violence she heard in his voice disturbed her. “You're no murderer, Ian.”

He chuckled, a mirthless rumble in his chest. “Some would say it's what I'm best at.”

Feeling reckless, she touched him intimately, smiling in the dark at his response. “I know what you're best at, MacVane. And it isn't killing people.”

“Wench.” He pressed her back against the soft mattress and filled her yet again, robbing her breath, her will, her very self as he lifted her up to a sweet, piercing rapture. This time he was swift and silent until the very end, when shudders pulsed through him and he spat her name like a curse.

She lay quietly for a long time. “You're angry.”

“Nay... Aye, perhaps. You consume me, Miranda. Sometimes with you I feel powerless. Adrift. You have glimpsed more deeply into my soul than anyone ever has.”