Miranda (25 page)

Gideon closed his eyes a moment, his nostrils thinning as he inhaled. “Come, sweet,” he said, turning away. “Let us go back to the house. You need a draft of brandy, or—”

She pulled away from him. “Papa! Ian is still up there!”

The balloon, lightened of Silas's weight, bobbled and pitched even higher, scudding above the thickest part of the forest.

“I must watch him land. He doesn't know what he's doing, so we'd best be ready.” She studied Gideon's face, and a chill streaked up her spine. “You said something a moment ago, Papa. When I told you that Ian could overpower Silas and land the balloon, you said it couldn't happen like that.”

“Did I?” Gideon's shoulders narrowed in defeat. “I did.”

“What did you mean?” She grasped his hands, held them desperately. “Tell me, Papa. Tell me what you meant.”

“I've failed you too many times to count, Miranda. But this time will be the last, for after today, I won't expect you to speak to me ever again.”

“It's the balloon, isn't it?” she said, watching its almost comical dance through the summer sky. “There's something wrong with the balloon.”

He nodded in misery and shame. “I discovered a flaw in the design. The copper fuel tubes tend to rub against the gold-beater lining of the silk. After a while, it creates sparks.”

“Oh, God,” Miranda said. “No, please God...” She forced herself to watch the balloon, forced herself to ask one final question of her father. Her well-meaning father, whose folly was going to kill Ian MacVane. “What's going to happen?” she asked.

* * *

The balloon caught fire. Ian felt nothing more than a dull, hollow surprise when it happened. After heaving Adder over the side, he had experienced a single rush of elation, a sense of justice, as quickly gone as a stroke of summer lightning.

For what did it mean, after all?

Silas's death would not bring back Ian's father, or Gordon or the baby. It would not make his mother whole again.

It would not make Miranda love him.

And why should she, anyway? He had lied to her. Placed her directly in the path of danger. Stolen her innocence. Worse, shattered her fragile trust.

So when Silas went over the side and the lightened balloon swooped dizzily upward, Ian merely felt battle shocked, like a soldier who had just lost a limb and still felt the tingle of its presence.

In his mind, Miranda lingered like fine perfume. The magic of her was strong, as if she were very near, caressing him, calling to him, whispering his name.

Except that the whisper was an angry splutter and a hiss. He glanced up in time to see an orange flame leap up, lick at the gold-lined silk of the balloon.

At first, he could not bring himself to react. No force in creation was stronger than his terror of heights; if he stood in the gondola, he would be compelled to look down, to see the toy houses and tiny trees below.

He inhaled deeply. The air was frigid, and the breath did not seem to feed his starving lungs. How odd, he thought, realizing he was growing light-headed from the altitude.

Wrong. What was wrong? Oh. The idea that there was no force stronger than his fear. But there was. There had to be. He tried to take another breath. Remember that one time...?

Remember.

How often he had urged Miranda to remember, only to seize her memories and use them for his own cold purpose.

Remember.

A fire. A dizzying height. And he had overcome his fear. He had defeated his darkest enemy. Because...

He shook his head, listening to the crackle of the fire, watching without comprehending as the edges of the silk blackened and curled.

Because of Robbie. The answer flared in his head. That was it. He'd held the lad in his arms and known that if the fear conquered him, they would both perish.

There. You've proven it, he told himself, grasping the sides of the gondola, hauling himself up. You've found something stronger than fear. The need to survive. For Robbie. For Miranda. For the memories he held in his heart. For the days he had shared with her, the nights of being her lover.

He drew himself to his full height. He had flown higher than ever and sailed over the woods now, the green woods and the winking blue lake and the endless sky out into eternity.

Suffocating, shivering with cold, his thoughts muddled, he tried to concentrate. He could not reach the flaming silk to douse the fire. He could not cut off the supply of gas, for then he would simply plummet to the ground.

He touched one of the cords that anchored the gondola to the silk bag. The balloon teetered.

And once again, he remembered Miranda. Something she'd said.
One day, we'll be able to sail a balloon much like a ship sails the seas.

“Avast!” he shouted, laughing with the hideous irony and hopelessness of it all. “Blow me to the bounds of buggery!” Cackling like a crazed pirate and drunk from lack of oxygen, Ian MacVane began to work the controls. The balloon responded feebly, wavering down and to the left. “Heave to, and no more five-water grog!” he bellowed.

And he was laughing. Laughing, because his fear was gone. Laughing, because this was the ride of his life. Laughing, because he was about to fall from the sky in a burning silk balloon, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it.

Exit laughing, he told himself, tugging on the ropes, pretending he could steer the balloon like a seasoned helmsman. Aye, laddie, there's the spirit. Exit laughing.

Twenty

When flying machines begin to fly
We shall never stay at home,
Away we'll skip on a half-day trip
To Paris, perhaps, or Rome.

—The Musical Comedy
The Bride of Bath

T
he crowned heads of Europe bowed in regret as the flaming balloon plummeted into the forest. Chroniclers and reporters would swear, when their hands stopped shaking and they wrote their accounts of the extraordinary day, that everyone heard laughter—eerie, joyous laughter—as the balloon went down.

The duke of Wellington organized a detachment of men to comb the smoke-filled woods for wreckage.

Miranda knew that her heart was still beating in her breast, because when she put her hand there, she could feel it. But she was a dead woman. Her spirit had died. Her soul had died.

She had never really lived until she'd met Ian MacVane. She had been a woman half alive, sustained by the meager satisfaction of scholarship and invention. No wonder Lucas Chesney had seemed to her the very epitome of romance and excitement.

But that was before Ian. Before she had looked across a roomful of madwomen and seen his astonished face, his fiery blue eyes. Before he had whisked her away on a sea voyage and danced with her on the deck of a ship. Before he had stood before all the people of Crough na Muir and pledged to wed her.

Before Ian, she'd had no notion of her own capacity for passion and joy. And for pain.

Oh, God, Ian, what happened to us?

Brutal reality was what had happened, she told herself.

She was barely aware that she was following the men into the forest, walking doggedly toward a gray billow of smoke.

Even at his most deceptive, Ian had managed to convey a sense of caring and tenderness that made his duplicity irrelevant. She remembered his gifts—a small pony of a dog and a sprig of heather. They weren't the gifts of a hardened spymaster, but those of a man who loved with a reluctant heart.

He
had
loved her; she knew it with the diamond-hard certainty of perfect hindsight. He had loved her until it hurt, and he had kept on loving her, long after he should have let her go.

“You let me go at last, my love, my Ian,” she said, the heat of the tears like flames on her face. “Ah, love, you let me go.”

Men fanned out through the woods, some of them stopping to beat out bits of burning debris in the dry wood and underbrush. Someone yelled that he had reached the lake, and that the men should bring buckets and barrels from the estate.

Near Miranda, a tall dead tree flared up, the flames decking its branches like fiery autumn leaves. There was a great
whoosh
as the fire sucked at the air.

She fell back into the past, back to that night when she had caused the explosions in London. She used to fear trusting her own judgment, yet now she felt strangely calm as she walked toward a wall of fire.

Someone shouted at her to stay away, but she went closer and closer, mesmerized by the hot, strong beauty of the burning woods.

She saw him then, a shadow man like the one she had glimpsed that night long ago, an image out of a dream. Aye, a dream, it had to be, for he walked through the golden veil of flames and emerged unscathed.

He could not be real, but still she ran to him, thinking that his ghost was a gift from God, a last chance to tell him goodbye, to tell him of the love that wrenched her heart.

“Ian!” she screamed, knowing they would think her mad. “Ian!”

He swooped her up in his arms and spun her around, and her face was streaked with tears, her dress wet by his sodden clothing—

She stumbled back. “You're alive!”

He spread his arms wide, showing her the drenched rags of his shirt and trousers, the tall black boots squelching on the forest floor. “I fell into the lake. I came back down because I had to tell you something.”

She shook her head in shock and disbelief. “You have to tell me...something,” she repeated stupidly.

He took her hand and she saw that his was cut and bleeding. “Never mind that,” he muttered, and hurried her out of the woods to the fringe of the green, where a cool breeze swept over them. Already the fire was dying as a small army of men brought it under control.

Miranda heard a buzzing sound in her ears like a swarm of bees. The sensation of utter joy and relief. Too powerful for words.

“I conquered my fear of high places,” he said, speaking matter-of-factly, as if he had not just fallen out of the clear blue sky. “That was one thing I wanted to tell you.”

“There's more?” she squeaked, unable to form a coherent thought.

“I thought you might want to know that. The navigating ropes on the balloon need work, though the idea has promise. I remembered what you said about wind currents. I sailed through the sky like a ship on the seas, Miranda, just like you said. A bit faster than I would have liked—”

“
That
is your big announcement?”

“I aimed myself for the lake. The water broke my fall. Not the smoothest of landings, but there you are. And here I am.”

“Here you are,” she echoed dully.
Here you are here you are here you are.
Her mind reeled and bobbed crazily, as the balloon had, thousands of feet in the sky.

“There's something else I need to say to you, Miranda,” Ian went on, quite calm, seemingly oblivious to her shock and confusion. “The most important thing of all. The very reason I fought so hard to stay alive.”

“I'm...listening.”

His arms slipped around her, and she began to believe. The feeling unfurled inside her like a blossom opening to the sun. At last, she could believe he was real, he was alive, he had survived. He was actually here, holding her in his arms.

“Ian, I thought you—”

“Weesht, lass, and listen.” He pressed a finger to her lips, then removed it, leaving the taste of soot on her mouth and apologizing with a grin. “I was given a second chance. Like you, love. You had the answer all along.”

His hand burrowed into her hair, cradling her head. “You are the one who taught me to fly, my beautiful Miranda. You taught me to fly, but more than that.”

“I should hope so,” she said, beginning to feel peeved.

“I know I don't have to leave the ground in order to soar.”

A sob ripped from her throat. She wasn't sure why his words darted into the very softest part of her heart, but they did.

He let her go. “Ah, my love, I am so sorry. You chose Lucas, and I'm prepared to accept that.”

Yet another shock jolted her.
“Lucas?”

“I think in future he'll be more discriminating about the company he keeps. He's a decent sort and one hell of a sharpshooter. He'll probably get a handsome reward for stopping the rockets and apprehending Yvette and the Austrian. You'll be well-heeled enough, too—”

“You think I chose Lucas.” The words dropped like dull thuds of disbelief from her. Then, abruptly, she threw back her head and shrieked with laughter. She coughed, realizing she was close to hysterics and even closer to tears. “You are the most thickheaded of idiotic males, Ian MacVane. You went stalking off after revenge before you realized what was happening between Lucas and me.”

“And what was that?”

“I
did
remember. The moment he kissed me, I remembered. Whatever Lucas and I shared in the past is gone. We could not have been in love, because it didn't last. Couldn't last.”

“How,” he asked, a cautious optimism lighting his blue, fierce eyes, “did you come to be such an expert in love, Miss Miranda Stonecypher?”

“It's Miranda Stonecypher
MacVane
, and that's one thing I'll not be forgetting,” she told him, trying to laugh through her tears and failing miserably. “I love you, Ian. Even when I didn't know anything else in the world, I loved you. Even when I had every right to despise you, I loved you. And I always, always will.”

She expected him to gather her into his arms then. She wanted it. She ached with wanting it.

Instead, he sank down on one knee, almost reverently carrying her hands to his lips, covering her fingers and palms with kisses that seared her very soul. “And I love you, Miranda. Right from the start, I knew I would. I told myself I was after your secrets. But deep inside, I knew it was more than that. I was after your heart.”

She yanked him to his feet. “Then kiss me, for heaven's sake, MacVane.”

And he did, at last giving her the kiss she had been waiting for, the kiss she would have waited for all of her life. When it was over, she looked up into Ian's face and smiled.

“Well?” she asked.

“Duty discharged,” he murmured, and kissed her again.