Miranda (24 page)

In the gondola of the balloon, wearing a tall silk hat and a smile of pure triumph, was Silas Addingham. Adder.

Ian's reaction was a swift, visceral hatred that burned like a fire in his gut. The old craving for revenge seared his throat, almost closing off his air. He knew he would commit murder right here, right now, before all the crowned heads of Europe.

But he never made it as far as the smoke-filled area. Far on the opposite side of the garden, with her skirts hiked up over her knees, running as if the very devil were after her, was Miranda.

* * *

Mounted Cossacks trotted their horses up and down behind the pavilion where the dignitaries waited. The presence of soldiers should have made Ian feel better, but somehow he suspected Adder's plan would include a way around the Russian bodyguards.

Instinctively he kept his presence unknown and hoped Adder had not noticed Miranda racing across the green. Ian intercepted her behind the pavilion, clutching her shoulders and holding her steady as she tried to catch her breath.

She was more beautiful to him each time he saw her. Perhaps one day...

He forced himself to release the thought. Why on earth would she ever forgive him? He had lied to her. Stolen her innocence. Broken her heart. It was a wonder she would even look at him now.

Yet she did, with eyes wide and worried. And abundantly clear and knowing. “I overheard the plan,” she said in a rough, gasping voice. “That's why they were all after me. I think I've finally put everything together.”

“Tell me, Miranda. Hurry!”

“Addingham built rockets equipped with navigating devices I designed. They're aimed at this reviewing stand.” She wrung her hands. “Now I understand why I went to the munitions warehouse that night. I was trying to destroy them—but he must have saved them, or moved them, perhaps built more.”

Laughter and chatter erupted from the crowd. How festive they all looked, garbed in their finest for this event. They were lifting glasses and drinking toasts.

“Where would they be?” Ian asked. With every fiber of his being he wanted to leave her here, to sprint across the green and seize Adder. Wanted to throttle the life out of a man he had hated for all of his life.

She must have sensed his struggle, for she put her hand on his arm. “Addingham will escape. The balloon is designed for that. He will try to reach the coast, perhaps cross the Channel and join with the Violettes. The Bonapartistes.”

“No—” Ian gave a strangled denial.

“If he sees you come near that balloon, he'll shoot you on sight,” she warned Ian. “We must find the missiles. They're more important than your blood feud.”

You could do so much more than hate
, she had said to him that night, tears streaming down her face.
You could be so much more than a bloody mercenary.

If he would let himself.

But how could he? Not now. Not after so many years of this hate. The moment he had found out Addingham was actually Adder, he had been certain his fate was to confront the man who had destroyed his life. Find him and take his revenge. Aye, his dearest wish, something he wanted more than food, more than life itself. More than...?

He glanced down at Miranda, and his thoughts slammed to a halt. More than Miranda? Was there anything in the world he wanted more than Miranda?

She was speaking, moving her lips, but he could not hear her. Somewhere in the depths of his heart he found the conviction to let go of his need for revenge. Because of Miranda, he had found a higher purpose. He would leave Adder to whatever fate found him.

He felt a lightness inside as his heart relinquished its darkest wish. He took Miranda's hand. “Come, my love.”

She looked startled. “Where are we going?”

“To dismantle the rockets.”

She did something most unexpected then. She leaped into his arms and kissed him hard on the mouth. “First we need to find them,” she said.

“You mean you don't know where—”

The bone-jarring tones of a tolling bell drowned out his voice. He recognized the sluggish dissonance of “The Day Is Done.” Miranda stumbled back, her eyes haunted, her face pale, as she looked at the crowd on the lawn. She turned and started to run. Between tolls of the bell, she said, “I know where they'll have to be in order to hit their target.”

How remarkable she was, Ian thought. All of Miranda's beliefs—about herself, her world, and the nature of love and trust—had been tested to their limits. Even with her spirit hobbled by a devastating loss, she had emerged stronger than any woman he had ever known.

He had always regarded Englishwomen with contempt and superiority. Little had he known he was destined to be humbled by one of those ladies.

The tolling of the church bell faded just as they reached a remote area of the garden. Fountains hissed gently into the summer air, cascading into lily ponds. With geometric precision, box hedge and geraniums bordered the walkways leading to three Grecian gazebos.

At first the rockets looked harmless, almost a part of the landscape ensconced in the little arbors surrounded by columns. Then a thread of gray yellow smoke betrayed the lethal weapons. The fuses were already lit.

Ian picked up his pace.

Too late, he realized that if the rockets were lit, someone might likely be tending them.

“Miranda!” he yelled hoarsely.

Too late.

Events unfolded with dreamlike lethargy. She reached the gazebo in the middle, holding her skirts away from the burning fuse. Ian had his foot on the bottom step of the rotunda and was reaching for her, to drag her away. A swift shadow descended, slamming her against a stone column.

“Stop, or the woman dies.” The man spoke with an accent. The arm with which he restrained Miranda wore a splint. Pierpont Duchesne.

Miranda's white throat, where the skin was so delicate that he could see a bluish tracery of veins beneath the flesh, moved as she swallowed. “Do it, Ian,” she said. Though her voice trembled with fear, her conviction shone through, glittering like a steel blade in sunlight. “Call his bluff.”

“Ah, she is brave,
non
?” the stranger said. “She breaks a man's heart. Yet even the brave can die.”

Ian MacVane, who had the soul of a mercenary, knew the man wasn't bluffing.

Miranda's gaze flicked to the sizzling fuse on the floor. “He'll cut my throat whether or not you stop this. Do it, Ian. I beg you.”

He tamped back a roar of fury. To trade the life of the woman he loved for the lives of the strangers who ruled the world. To take that risk—

Tears streamed down her face. “Ian,” she begged. “The fuse!”

“Enough,” Duchesne snapped. “I grow weary of—” A round red dot appeared in the very center of his forehead. At the same moment, Ian heard the sharp report.

Duchesne's eyes went wide and then blank. He sagged back. The knife blade hovered at Miranda's neck, then fell from the man's slackened hand.

She shrieked and leaped away from her captor, who slithered down the side of the column, leaving a smear of blood on the white plaster. In a single stride Ian was upon the fuse, grinding it beneath his boot heel. “Get the other one,” he told Miranda.

She lifted her skirts to run, but before she could move, a pleasant voice said, “We've already seen to it.”

Miranda's fists clenched into the fabric of her dress. Ian felt a cold thud of disbelief inside him as he turned to face the man who had just saved both his and Miranda's lives.

“Lisle,” he said.

With them were two of the men who had ridden into the Scottish village with Lucas. That firelit night seemed ages ago. The men held two others—Yvette, her face white with fear, and a man in black.

“He's the one who approached me at the portrait sitting,” Miranda whispered. “The one who spoke to me so cryptically.”

Lucas handed a smoking pistol to Duffie, who set it in its case. “It was a risky shot, but I didn't have time to make a better plan.”

Ian studied the fallen man. “You're a keener shot than you let on at our duel, my lord.”

Lucas looked sheepish. “I was angry with you that night, MacVane, but not angry enough to kill you.”

Miranda stumbled toward him, clearly shaken by having a knife at her throat one moment, a man shot before her eyes the next. “Lucas, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.”

He bent forward a bit stiffly and kissed her brow.

The world stood still. Ian could not believe his eyes.

“Do that again,” Miranda whispered.

Duffie opened his mouth as if to protest. Ian waved a hand to keep him silent.

Lucas kissed her again, his mouth tender and affectionate on her smooth, pale forehead. “Like that?” he asked with a smile.

She touched her brow where his lips had brushed her. “Yes. Like that. Like you used to.” She laughed briefly. “When you did that just now, I remembered the rest. Everything.”

“Everything?” Lucas asked.

“Everything we were to one another,” she said. “The good times and the bad. Lucas, I remember that at one time, all I wanted in the world was to be with you.”

Ian strode away. He could not bear to see the scene play itself out. He'd heard enough.
Everything.

The real Miranda, the stranger he didn't know and who didn't know him, was back now. He could not simply stand there and watch her take on her old life, her old memories, falling back into her role as Lucas's long-suffering secret love.

He could hear shouting as he loped across the garden, back toward the main yard. But he ignored the noise.

In the distance, he could see the swaying silken top of the aerial balloon.

Adder had not yet made his escape. There was still time for Ian to take his revenge.

* * *

“Where is he going?” Miranda asked, feeling bereft and abandoned as Ian raced away from them. She put her hand to her throat, still feeling the cold ghost of Duchesne's knife. The memory made her shudder. But she nearly forgot the incident as she watched Ian leaving without a word of goodbye.

“Think a wee minute, lassie,” Duffie said. “Clearly, he didna understand what happened between you and His Lairdship.”

“He heard what I said.” She gazed calmly up at Lucas, knowing that he, too, had changed. “I remembered my past with Lord Lisle. I remembered that at one time, all I wanted was to be with him.”

Lucas shoved a hand through his blond hair. But she could tell that he was strong enough to hear this now. Things had changed for him, too.

“I also remembered that on the last night we were together, we quarreled. Not just over your arrangement with Mr. Addingham. We simply did not suit. You needed a wife who would be an ornament to your position—well behaved, well spoken and well born. I am none of those things and never will be.”

“I did love you, Miranda,” he said. “But—”

“But I'm correct. I'm also correct when I say the proper match has been right in front of your nose for years. She's the most well-spoken, well-born woman in England.”

“Frances?” He chuckled. “I'd hardly call her well behaved.”

Duffie tucked the pistol case under his arm. “Two out of three is better than most men get.”

“I know,” Lucas said. “I only pray she'll give me a chance to— Good God!”

Miranda and Duffie followed his astonished gaze. “The balloon!” she said, and started to run.

Nineteen

Better to die sword in hand
than in an unworthy retirement.

—Letizia Bonaparte,
mother of Napoleon

M
iranda reached the reviewing grounds in time to see Silas Addingham casting off the anchor ropes that moored the balloon to the ground and then heaving sandbag ballasts overboard. It was a reckless launch, the act of a desperate man.

The ascent began slowly, clumsily, but inevitably. A vigorous breeze blew the craft sideways. The crowd, baffled by Addingham's frantic manner, gasped in chorus.

As soon as the balloon's gondola cleared the top of the reviewing stand, Miranda understood what all the excitement was about.

“Glory be to the saints and send me to hell and back,” Duffie said.

Miranda was speechless. For there, dangling high above the earth from one of the balloon's tether ropes, was Ian.

The balloon swayed awkwardly, the silken bag lolling like a drunken man's cap. Addingham was using a knife of some sort to saw at the rope Ian held.

He swung back and forth like a pendulum, and Miranda's heart turned over in her chest. This was hell, she thought. This was the very meaning of the word
terror
.

“Dear Lord, keep him safe,” she whispered, oblivious of the people rushing around the quadrangle near her.

It was the sharpest, most unbearable irony she could imagine. Ian, who possessed more courage than an army of trained warriors, feared one thing in the world. “He's so afraid. He's so afraid of high places.”

He climbed toward the gondola, his legs swinging this way and that as his powerful arms pulled him, hand over hand, up the stout length.

Could he make it before Silas hacked through the rope?

She had a sudden, piercing vision of Ian leaving her only moments ago. He thought she was remembering Lucas. He thought she was remembering love.

If he only knew. Please God, if he only knew. She'd had no notion of the true meaning of love and faith and trust until she had met Ian MacVane.

Now he was in danger of dying, and he would never know how much she loved him, how much he meant to her. What she wanted to mean to him.

A sob tore from her throat. The wind swept the balloon higher. Ian's weight made it sag. Miranda dared to hope he might bring it down. But then Addingham—or Adder, she forced herself to call him—cast off more ballast.

The lightened balloon soared, bobbing like a buoy in an invisible body of water.

Hand over hand Ian climbed while Adder sawed away. A babble of voices rose like the tide around Miranda, but they sounded distant, like the swish of the ocean heard through the curling caverns of a seashell.

Adder raised his arm and brought it down hard, giving the rope a final chop.

The severed rope dropped away from the basket.

Someone screamed. Miranda faintly recognized her own voice.

The gondola dipped and swayed. Ian had hold of the wicker edge with one hand.

Adder raised the knife again.

* * *

Gordie, take my hand!

Ian heard his own voice in the far reaches of memory. Suspended in the sky over England, he could clearly hear the desperation of the boy he had been.

In a flash, he saw his brother's terrified face, his mouth opened wide in a scream as he fell, leaving Ian with one hand empty.

A low growl of fury sounded above him. Adder.

Even as Ian grappled for purchase on the curved sides of the gondola, the knife came down toward his hand. Ian moved quickly enough to avoid the blow.

Fear was a powerful ally. He would do anything,
anything
, to keep from dying that way.

He made the mistake of glancing down. There was a certain terrible beauty in the estate below, the formal gardens perfect in their symmetry and the lawn an eye-smarting green. The people swarmed about like colorful ants. The curving wrought-iron gates embraced the front of the estate, with the finials of the iron thrusting skyward like great teeth.

And everywhere else the forest loomed, layer upon layer of deep emerald blazing in the sun. A lake, like a distant mirror, sparkled in its nest of summer trees.

Farther off lay the Channel. Adder's intended escape route.

Even as he took in a sight most men would never see, Ian swung his legs up. His foot caught the top edge of the basket. Silas's blade slashed cold fire across the back of Ian's hand. But Ian had something much more powerful than a knife. He had utter terror—and some twenty years of fury.

With a final heave, he tumbled into the gondola. It swayed and danced on the wind. Silas shrieked and grabbed the sides of the churning basket. But he recovered himself quickly, his powerful form reeling toward Ian.

The years fell away. Silas had changed so little that Ian was amazed he had not recognized him on sight. The bearded creature who had not flinched at butchering Scottish crofters so long ago still had the same icy gaze, the same ruthless mouth, the same greed-driven strength.

The blade drove straight for Ian's heart. He rolled to one side. The apparatus above their heads, the source of the coal gas keeping the balloon aloft, hissed in protest. The silk flapped like a ship's luffing sails.

Ian grabbed a rope, his hand dripping blood and growing numb. He slashed a humorless grin at Silas. “Could you not put that thing away, Mr. Adder, and let the two of us die in peace?”

“Count yerself dead already.” In his agitation, Adder forgot to affect his cultured accent. “I have work to do and a pretty reward waiting for me in France.”

Wary, his gaze trained on the knife, Ian recalled what it was like to be driven by work alone. Miranda was lost to him now. Even if she never forgot the nights she had spent in his arms, she had made her choice. To Ian, it was yet another death. Another fatal wound to the soul.

He let out a curse and caught Silas's wrist on the next downward thrust of the knife. The sharp blade trembled between them.

Silas's face grew bright red with effort. He gritted his teeth. “Should've made short work of you up at Crough na Muir.”

Ian's surprise must have shown, for Adder wheezed out a chuckle. “Aye, I've known for a long time that you were one of the clan MacVane. Filthy crofters, all, and you got no better than you deserved.”

“Your name is a curse on the lips of Highlanders,” Ian said between his teeth. The blood pulsed out of the wound on his hand, and his grip on Adder's wrist slipped. Ian recaptured it, eliciting a yelp of pain from Silas.

The man was desperate, Ian thought, looking deep into the chilly depths of his eyes. He kept watching the blade, waiting for a chance.

“They should thank me for clearing the district of useless human rubble. I should've been more thorough. Tell me, MacVane,” said the big Englishman, his voice soft and cunning, “how is your mother these days?”

* * *

In some small, still-functioning region of Miranda's brain, she became aware that the entire military elite and blue-blooded nobility of Europe were watching Ian's struggle, high above.

“For the love of God,
do
something, Arthur!” shrieked Wellington's wife. The duke of Wellington paused in his pacing to stare skyward, his mouth tight, his face ashen. He was a man whose humanity had not been tarnished by the horrors of war, a man who could still look upon a terrible death and be moved by it.

“I didn't even know MacVane and Addingham were acquainted,” the prince of Wales mused. “And here they're behaving like mortal enemies. It's all a bit of a puzzle to me.”

“
Comme d'habitude
, Your Highness,” Frances said with a blasé matter-of-factness that went right past him.

Miranda neither moved nor spoke. It was like being in the middle of a hideous, vivid dream, the blue-and-gold silk balloon bobbing in the crystal clear summer sky, each gust of wind sweeping it farther and farther away.

Then Lucas appeared, but he did not approach Miranda. It was as if he knew that to touch her now would cause her to shatter. She stood like a statue, her face tilted toward the sky, her chest so full of dread she thought she would burst.

Lucas went to Frances and took her in his arms, and she clung to him.

Miranda remained in the middle of the green, surrounded by jabbering, shouting people. She felt cold despite the heat of the summer sun. Alone despite the crowd.

Her father came to her then, aided by a bentwood cane. “Miranda, I'm so sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry it's ending this way. If only I had been able to get away sooner, if only I had understood what Addingham was after, perhaps I could have stopped this.”

“There are too many if-onlys, Papa,” she whispered, then winced as the balloon took a drunken dip and the wind dragged it in the direction of the thick forest. “They do not console me.”

“I know, my love.”

A small boy in blue silk breeches stood nearby, shading his eyes. He reminded Miranda poignantly of Robbie, back in Scotland. Dear God, someone would have to break the news to Robbie. “That man is going to die, isn't he?” the child asked.

“We must pray for a miracle,” Miranda heard herself say. She felt her father's surprised gaze and realized that the old Miranda had not believed in miracles. The old Miranda had clung to hard scientific principles, believing only in that which could be proven. Now she knew better. Now she knew that the most important things in life were invisible and could never be touched—yet they were more real than Newton's apple.

“Do you think he's praying?” the little boy asked.

She thought of Ian, her dark angel, and wondered if he knew how to pray. Yes, she thought. Yes, he does. When he had taken her to the top of Crough na Muir, they had looked out over the soaring landscape, and the expression on his face had been spiritual, peaceful.

“We must pray with him,” a woman said. “Come along, dear.”

Miranda refused to blink for fear of missing something. She wondered if Ian was thinking of her. She wondered if, in his last moments, he would remember all she had been to him and know that she had loved him.

Love. Once she'd discovered it, she had been convinced that it was the most powerful force in the universe. Powerful enough to heal her wounded mind, to heal Ian's shattered soul. Because of her, because he believed he'd lost her love, Ian had flung himself into peril.

The men in the balloon went back and forth, tearing at each other's throats in a deadly dance. It was impossible to tell which was which. They both wore black clothing, and they were so far away, and drifting farther by the second.

“Ian's strong,” Miranda said, her hands twisting together until her knuckles ached. “He'll overpower Silas and then find a way to land the balloon safely.”

“Ah, Miranda.” Gideon's voice was broken, defeated. “I didn't want to have to tell you, but I've failed you once again. It can't happen like that.”

“But why not?” she demanded. “I don't know what you mean—”

“He's going to fall!”
a voice in the crowd shrieked.

“To the gates!” someone else bellowed. “They're above the front gates.”

One of the men in the balloon was leaning out over the edge of the basket, the other's hands at his throat. He teetered precariously, and the balloon dipped. Ian or Silas? she wondered frantically, even as she began to run toward the gate.

Gideon bellowed an order to a pair of slack-jawed footmen. They made a seat of their arms and bore him like a Roman centurion along with the surging crowd.

The struggle high above went on, but clearly one man was about to go over the side. Still Miranda could not tell which was Ian. The bottom of the gondola wavered perilously, then careened and snapped like the tail of a kite. She stopped running when she neared the front gates. The footmen carrying Gideon stopped, too.

A black-clad man fell from the sky.

There was silence while he fell, as if every part of the world had stopped except for the plummeting body.

The body. The body that struck the wrought-iron bars of the gate. The body pierced through by black iron finials. It had a sound all its own, a wet thud and then a rush of air like steam hissing from a kettle.

The silence reigned a moment longer.

Then the screams started. Men and women alike covered their eyes, wept with horror.

Feeling as if she were in the middle of a waking nightmare, Miranda went to the gate. The air felt thick, like water, slowing her, but she forced herself onward. Toward the motionless body bowed across the fence.

She took one look at the lifeless face, hanging upside down, the eyes staring, and rushed back to her father. Sobs racked her body, and tears streamed down her face. “Oh, my God, Papa,” she said, crumpling into his arms. “My God, it's
him
.”

“Damn me, who? Which one?”

She shuddered, almost unable to bring herself to say the name. Then she dredged it up past her aching throat. “It's Silas Addingham. Adder is dead.”