Miranda (14 page)

She should have known he would see through such a bald challenge. He merely smiled. “Ah, Miranda.” To her dismay, he stepped very close and touched her lower lip with his finger. “Not nearly as well as I'd like.”

After the encounter with the mysterious man, she was in no mood to spar with Ian MacVane.

“Something happened just now,” she said. “I think it might be important.”

“Aye? Go on.” He leaned against the basin next to her.

“I was approached by a man who recognized me—from before.”

She understood Ian well enough now to realize that though he showed no outward reaction, his every sense had come alert. His gaze became just a little keener, his posture a little stiffer. “Is that so?”

“Yes. It was only a brief encounter. We exchanged no words of note.” She thought it safer to lie. “But he seemed to know me.”

“Who was he? Describe him.”

“Just a man. An ordinary man with a small scar on his chin. I thought he might be attached to the archduke, but I could be wrong. He left quickly, and I don't know where he went.”

“Did he call you by name? What did he seem to want?”

“He didn't say my name.” Ah, why couldn't she remember? Her head ached with the need to know. She turned and gazed at the surface of the water where small bubbles clung to the leaves of the lily pads.

All of a sudden, a jagged white light streaked across her vision. It felt like thousands of hammers on the inside of her head, trying to pound their way out. The pressure built until she was certain she would explode.

Her throat clogged. She could not force words out, or her breath in. Ian took her arm to steady her, but she barely felt his touch. She was seeing something. She was looking into the water and seeing something.

“They threw his body into the river,” she said when at last she found her voice. “They tried to kill my father. They threw him into the Thames.”

She remembered it in sharp snatches that stung like darts. Her father's broken form. Blood smearing the cobbles of the walkway. A brick with the mortar crumbling, carelessly tied around Papa's limp ankle.

Her mouth opened in horror. But when she tried to scream, there was only silence.

Ian was there, solid as an anchor, his hands holding her shoulders. “Tell me, Miranda,” he said. “Tell me what you remember.”

“Nighttime,” she said. “Raining. A little wind, because the curtains were blowing. They...they came to the flat.”

“Who?”

“I don't know.” Menacing shadows darkened her soul. The pounding in her head grew louder, fiercer. “They were black shapes. Three of them. Gruff voices.
I don't know.
”

She took a long, ragged breath as shards of memory dug into her. “They beat my father, beat him until he was silent, and dragged us both away.” She rubbed her wrists over and over again, feeling the burn of the rope that had bound her. “They said if I made a sound, they'd kill us both. The place where they took us was like a prison cell. Dark and dank. The hours seemed like days. My father would talk to me.”

She heard it all again, his voice breaking through the hammering in her head.
Mindy, my dear, you must forget what you overheard. All that you know. All our plans. All our projects. You know nothing. Nothing. Forget it all. It's the only way to stay safe...

“He called me by a pet name—Mindy. He told me to forget...everything. Even when he—” her voice broke “—even when they were beating him, he would say to me, ‘You're not seeing this. You don't see me. This is not happening.'” She lifted her heated face to the wind and said, “It worked for a while. But now it's coming back in broken pieces, and I don't know why.”

Ian's hands massaged her shoulders. “Ah, love. You have to let yourself remember. What else? The beatings—they got worse?”

“Yes. They thought they killed him.” Hope flickered inside her. “But as they dragged me away from the river, I noticed something they'd overlooked.”

She saw it all again. A pale hand emerging from the churning water. Fingers clutching at a piling under a dock. “Ian,” she said, “I think my father is alive!”

Eleven

Such things we know are neither rich nor rare
But wonder how the Devil they got there.

—George Gordon, Lord Byron

I
an kept his face carefully blank, though a murderous rage was burning a hole in his heart. Someone had forced her to watch her father beaten nearly to death. Just as Ian had watched his own father and brother die. No wonder she had fled from the memories.

He felt her trembling beneath his hands and knew the force of the images coming back to her now could easily shatter her. Very gently he gathered her to his chest and held tight, tucking her head against him and stroking her hair.

Meanwhile his mind raced. She was remembering the past in bits and pieces. She was remembering. But the memories were not what he had expected.

“Can you tell me more?” he asked, bracing himself. Any moment now, she might remember that she had never known a man called Ian MacVane, had never loved him or shared her dreams with him or promised to marry him. Any moment now she might realize he was a liar.

It shouldn't bother him. He had lied to kings and ambassadors and battle commanders, to ladies who had given more of themselves to him than Miranda ever had.

Yet the thought that she might soon realize the extent of his deception jabbed unpleasantly at his conscience. He pictured her wounded expression and decided that hurting Miranda was his own private version of hell.

“They took me... I'm not sure where,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “It was a small room with a single candle burning. One window, and outside I could see ships' masts, so I knew we were not far from the river. I was seated in a chair, and then...then the questions began.”

“Questions.”

“About our work. Manned balloon flight. Missiles. Navigation and the wind. We did...our most advanced work in those fields.”

“I don't understand,” Ian said. “Why would they have abandoned your father and questioned you?”

She drew back from him and stepped away, looking small and infinitely fragile. Yet he knew better. He knew she had endured agonies beyond bearing, had been subjected to horrors so stark that her mind had recoiled, wrapped itself in a cocoon of forgetting.

“That,” she said, “is my fault. Entirely my fault.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I thought admitting the truth would protect my father. I thought they would set him free and concentrate on extracting the information from me.”

“Why you and not your father?”

A bitter smile twisted her mouth. “Because he didn't know anything. The information they wanted was here.” She pointed to her temple. “It was always that way. Scholars, like the rest of society, could not accept erudition from a woman. So my father always pretended my inventions were his, and that I was merely his assistant.” A single tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. “My father could not save himself by surrendering information under torture because he had nothing to confess.”

Ian felt shocked. This was important information to be so lightly admitted.

She raised her tear-drenched gaze to him. “Why didn't you tell me, Ian? Why didn't you tell me about our projects?”

Hating himself, he said, “It was a secret you kept even from me.” He took out a handkerchief and daubed at her cheek. “Ah, Miranda. You canna blame yourself, lass.”

“I should have known they'd kill him once they realized he knew nothing.”

“They,” he repeated. “Do you know the names of these men? Can you remember what they looked like?”

She frowned and closed her eyes for a few moments. Ian held his breath. Even in a state of despair she was lovely—and he kept expecting her to open her eyes and look upon him with hatred.

Instead she shook her head and let out a long, weary sigh. “Everything is all jumbled up inside my head.”

“Can you remember how you managed to escape them, or why you ended up in that warehouse?”

She shuddered. “I have no idea. I just recall a feeling of utter compulsion. I
had
to go there. But the reason...?”

“The place housed explosives. We've known that from the start.” Ian watched her closely, but her grave face gave him no indication that she was hiding something.

“So I must have been trying to destroy the explosives—or something else, something concealed in the warehouse.” She shook her head, looking pale and drawn as she tucked her hand into the crook of Ian's arm. “We had best go inside. The grand duchess was most insistent that I attend the sitting for the portrait.”

Ian felt a wave of guilt. He was supposed to be scanning the premises, for the cream of European royalty had all arrived. Another perfect opportunity for an assassin.

Yet not to save all the crowned heads of Europe would he abandon Miranda. Duffie and Frances were inside, Ian reasoned. Between the two of them they would spot anything suspicious.

He understood now why Miranda was so sought after. Her genius was the sort that darker minds would try to exploit. It was up to him to discover just what she knew and who was after her. A sense of startlement gripped him. In the manly world of scientific invention, Miranda shone like a star—but hid her light behind her father.

“So now, at least, I know what I must do,” she said, her hand firm and warm on his arm.

“What is that?”

“I must find my father, of course.”

Ian took her hand in his. “Has it occurred to you that your plan could be dangerous?”

“Of course. The men who kidnapped us are murderers. But tell me, Ian. Do I really have a choice in this?”

He smiled, and surprised himself because it was a genuine smile, warm and heartfelt. “Ah, lass. And do I?”

* * *

“You know,” Frances said that evening, “if he chooses to claim his conjugal rights, no one can legally stop him.”

Miranda looked up from her copious notes and stared across the drawing room at her. “Ian, you mean?”

“Of course.” A tinge of bitterness crept into her voice as she added, “Not every woman can flit back and forth between two extraordinary men.”

Miranda's grip on her stylus tightened. “I do not flit. I'm doing everything I can think of to avoid flitting with anyone, Frances.”

Macbeth, the deerhound sent by Ian, wandered over and placed his huge, hairy muzzle in Miranda's lap. She patted his broad head and looked lovingly into his large, liquid brown eyes.

A gift from Ian. He and Lucas were playing a game with her as the unwilling prize. Each time one man sent an offering, the other tried to surpass it with one of his own. The sweets and flowers from Lucas had been disconcerting enough. The services of Yvette suggested an intimacy that Lucas believed was warranted.

Yet Ian's gifts were gifts of the heart. The endowment. A sprig of heather. And now this creature. Macbeth was a handsome, gentle beast the size of a small pony. He had endured much cooing and fussing from the grand duchess, but his loyalty lay with Miranda.

“He's a gray, smelly thing, isn't he?” Frances said, wrinkling her nose at Macbeth.

“I suppose so, but he has other virtues.” Miranda scratched his ear, and the dog stretched his neck in ecstasy. “I think what I like best about him is that I don't have to question his loyalty.”

Frances sniffed. “I hope you're not implying that you question
mine
.”

Miranda smiled. “It's only male animals that plague me.” She had explained to Frances all that she had remembered at the fountain that afternoon. Her Ladyship had pledged to help her find her father, and even now they were trying to decide where to begin.

Miranda rubbed her eyes, then scanned the pages on the desk in front of her.

“Did you find anything useful?” Frances asked.

“No.” Miranda scowled at the notes. “This was a wasted exercise.”

It had been her own idea—to write down every detail she remembered in the hope that she might scribble some telling fact that would lead her to her father. Instead, after two hours of laborious writing, all she had were masses of disjointed phrases and images that got her no further than her talk with Ian had.

Ian. She still had no idea how he fit into her unremembered past. She would never admit it, but most of the writings on the desk before her concerned him. It was as if her life had begun the day he had rescued her from Bedlam, and every moment was almost mystically bound up with him.

Now she had a more urgent purpose. To locate her father. To find out if he had indeed survived. Though he had not been as gifted a scholar as his colleagues thought, Gideon Stonecypher was still a brilliant man. His area of expertise lay in ciphering; he had always been fascinated by remote communication.

Miranda dipped her stylus in ink and wrote, “Semaphores.”

Something in her expression must have changed, for Frances stood and crossed the room. “What is it?”

“Much of my father's work involved semaphores.”

Frances's reaction was curious. She flushed a deep, becoming shade of red, as if something had embarrassed her. “Really? How very interesting.”

“I never found it particularly so,” Miranda said. “But Papa did, so I left him to it. We even had use of a semaphore tower in—” She scratched her pen and looked down at what she had written. The letter
H
and the letter
W.
Unconnected.

“Where?” Frances asked urgently.

Her stomach knotted with disappointment. “I'm sorry. I can't. I started to write something—Lord knows what—and then everything just turned gray and foggy.” She kneaded her temples. “This is so damned nettlesome!”

“Perhaps you're trying too hard, dear,” Frances murmured sympathetically. “Why don't you go to bed, rest awhile?”

“All right. Come, Macbeth. To bed with us.” Miranda rose from the desk, leaving the notes scattered there. She bade good-night to Frances and made her way slowly through the long, gilded halls of Biddle House.

Having deep emotions, she realized, was exhausting business. Although she couldn't be certain, she suspected that before the fire, she had been uninvolved in matters that set entire nations to war. But now the conflict had become personal. They had taken her father. Perhaps killed him.

How dare they? she thought. How dare they?

She stopped walking and clutched the marble rail of the winding staircase. Rage came over her in a blinding flash. Macbeth stopped on the landing and sat back on his haunches. The images that seared into Miranda's mind at that moment made no sense. She saw Lucas's glittering smile, then the flamelike intensity of Ian MacVane's blue eyes.

How dare they?

Frances was right. She
was
exhausted, and Lucas and Ian only muddled her thinking. In different ways, she was attracted to both of them. She was dazzled by Lucas's social and physical perfection, his charming manners and easy wit. At the same time, she felt drawn to Ian's darkness, to the complex depths of him. In Scotland, she had been so certain of her love for him. Now she knew, with a painful surge of her heart, that one day she might have to choose between the two of them and that the choice might end up hurting her.

Lucas kept telling her of their past, of the secret affection they shared, of their hopes and dreams. Ian no longer spoke of the past; he seemed to think she should accept him on faith alone.

She could not. She must proclaim her independence. She must discover the truth for herself rather than leave it up to any man.

She started walking again, very slowly, up the grand, curving staircase. Recessed alcoves at regular intervals supported busts of important historical figures. Their blank-eyed stares and smooth marble faces haunted her. She recognized each one—Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Linnaeus.

And the headache started again.

Someday you'll be famous for this, Papa. You know that, don't you?

And it'll all be a lie, Mindy love. All a lie. The honors should rightfully go to you. But I wonder, sweet, if you've thought beyond the obvious.

I don't know what you mean, Papa.

Couldn't someone with an evil purpose exploit your gift? Use it to cause harm rather than good?

Oh, honestly, Papa. Who in their right mind would ever do such a thing as that?

Miranda shuddered, trying to look back at the memory without recoiling. She wasn't sure precisely what they had been speaking of. She did not know when or where she'd had the conversation with her father, but it seemed his dire prediction had come true.

At the top of the stairs, long, golden triangles of light wavered on the marble floor, cast there by a single lamp set at the newel post at the top of the winding stairs. She put her hand on the knob.

Macbeth whined softly.

“In a moment, boy,” she said, knowing he was eager to get to the bowl of kitchen scraps she had set out. She opened the door and stepped inside.