Miranda (7 page)

Agnes spoke to Mary in Gaelic. Mary ignored her, and Agnes withdrew. Ian stepped into the small, scrupulously clean room, bending his head slightly, for the ceiling timbers were low. He went to his mother and held out his hand. Miranda was surprised and touched by the yearning she sensed in the gesture.

“Mother,” Ian said in English. “I've come back, Mother, and this is Miranda. She's to be my bride.”

Mary MacVane sat like a stone. Ian touched her hand. He talked to her a while longer, speaking low in Gaelic. He reminded Miranda of a penitent praying before a statue of the Madonna, and her heart ached for him. He was a man of great charm and self-assurance, but when he faced his mother, he seemed as defenseless as a child.

It struck her then that he had deeply hidden needs. Had she known about them before? Had she dared to believe that if she loved him enough, she could drive the sadness from his soul?

When he finished speaking, the woman continued to sit and stare. He rose to his feet, then bent to kiss her on the cheek. Still she sat frozen, looking at nothing, saying nothing—until Ian turned away and reached for the door.

“I curse you, Ian MacVane,” Mary said in a low snarl, her voice trembling with vitriol. “Aye, curst be your name and your union with the Sassenach woman. You might have forgotten, but I never, ever shall. It was the Sassenach who brought suffering on me and my Fergus, and poor baby Tina.”

Horror and pity welled up in Miranda. She stood frozen, helpless, shocked by the words of a mother to her son.

Agnes came to the door, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Enough,” she said. “You've tired yourself, Mary. You should rest.” Agnes motioned for Miranda and Ian to leave. “Dinna fash yourself, dearie,” she said to Mary. “And you were having such a good spell, 'tis a shame you couldna hold on and greet Ian properly...”

Miranda glanced back into the madwoman's room, and a chill slid through her. Mary had lapsed into Gaelic and was hugging herself, rocking back and forth. The woman lived in hell, and the most eerie part of all was that Miranda understood that place.

But Miranda's hell was different. She had no memories, while Mary was plagued by horrible ones. Perhaps that was why Miranda couldn't remember—perhaps there was something so terrible in the past that she had scoured her memory clean.

Shaking her head, Agnes left Mary alone and started back for the main house. Mary's quarters were separated from Agnes's cottage by a thatched arcade with ivy growing up the sides. Noting Miranda's appreciative glance over the adjacent garden, Agnes smiled. “'Tis a grand place for such as myself, eh? All Ian's doing. Starting with the first copper he ever earned, he's sent me half of everything. He's a generous lad, he is.”

When they entered a small, tidy keeping room, Miranda looked at Ian and almost wished she had not. The wounds inflicted by his mother shone beneath his surface like diamonds under water, cold as ice, distant as the stars.

“She was doing so much better, lad, as I wrote to you in my letters. I was starting to hope she'd forget the past, stop letting it torment her so.”

“As long as I'm alive,” Ian said, “she won't get better. I'm a constant reminder. That's why I stayed away.”

“There, don't be blaming yourself.”

“I'm the only one left alive to blame,” he said grimly.

Agnes heaved out a long-suffering breath. She went into the adjacent kitchen, leaving them alone. Duffie had gone to the village alehouse, and Robbie played in the garden, sailing an imaginary ship through rows of foxglove and lemon grass.

Miranda crossed the room and stood in front of Ian. “Why?” she asked. “Why did she curse you?”

He flinched, just for a second, as if she had probed into a wound. As of course she had.

“Because I survived, Miranda. I failed to protect her when our croft was attacked by an Englishman with hired soldiers. My father was killed that day, my baby sister abandoned in her cradle. I can still hear her infant wails in my head.” He made a fist with his hand. “I should have run for help.”

“How old were you, Ian?”

“A lad of seven.” Sweat broke out on his brow. “Jesus. I've never said these things to anyone. Ever.”

Miranda was afraid to touch him. She wanted to take his hand, lift it to her lips and soothe him. But he was dark and withdrawn; she couldn't be sure he would not lash out at her. With an effort of will, she reached past his pain, took his hand and drew herself closer. “And your mother?” she made herself ask. “Did they harm her? Dishonor her?”

His reaction to her touch was swift and violent. He pulled her against him and glared down into her face. His strong fingers felt hard, unyielding. He was a cold stranger, and suddenly he frightened her. “Do you know what English ladies call dishonor, Miranda Stonecypher? In Scotland we call it rape.”

She scowled, fearful and then furious that he had frightened her. “I know what rape is, Ian MacVane, and I'll thank you not to handle me like a sheep at shearing time.” A white bolt of pain flickered in her head. She caught her breath as a voice called out in her mind.
Don't hurt her! She doesn't know anything—

“What is it?” Ian asked.

The voice was gone as quickly as it had come, and the headache began to subside. The sense of immediacy she felt was for Ian, not herself.

She pressed her palms against his chest and was surprised to feel the racing of his heart. “You say I never knew my mother, so I cannot speak of that bond. But I know when she cursed you, it was the madness speaking, not the mother. Inside her, there is a woman who loves her son.”

“What can you know of it?” he demanded.

She refused to flinch at his acid tone. “I lived with madwomen. I have eyes to see.” She stepped back, dropping her hands to her sides. “I'm sorry for you, Ian. I want to help, but I don't think I can.”

He was quiet for a long moment, and the rhythm of his heart gradually slowed. “You already have, Miranda,” he said, an edge of surprise in his voice. “Aye, my love, you already have.”

* * *

“Take me to see Scotland,” Miranda said to Ian the next day.

Miranda's request startled Ian out of his brooding contemplation of the village that lay beyond the kitchen garden. In spite of himself, he let a smile curve his mouth.

“To see Scotland.” He imitated her British accent. “'Tis all you Sassenach want, to come and sketch pictures of our landscape and cry, ‘Oh, how quaint!'” He punctuated the statement with a limp-wristed gesture.

“I do remember my history,” she said, a trace of laughter in her voice. “Scotland has not always been considered quaint.”

He spread his arms. “And what of me? Am I quaint?”

Her gaze raked him boldly. “Hardly, sir. But I've come a very long way, and since you insist I'm to become your wife, I should learn the sort of place Scotland is.”

Her words stung him with panic, but only for a moment. All would be well, he told himself. Surely soon she would remember. It was all a question of putting her mind at ease, making her feel safe, lulling her until the memories flowed back into her.

He took her hand. “Come along, then. I'll show you the sights.”

They left through the rear door of the cottage, tiptoeing past Mary's quarters. Ian saw a jar of freshly picked wildflowers on the shelf outside his mother's room, and his heart lifted a little. Robbie, uncritical and too young to make judgments, had decided that Mary MacVane simply needed a bit of cheering up. He had vowed to gather flowers for her each day until she got better.

How simple the world appeared through the eyes of a child.

Ian and Miranda climbed a slope above Crough na Muir. “It means ‘hills by the sea,'” Ian said. “They say it was first given the name by pagan priests who worshiped the trees.”

“Crough na Muir,” Miranda recited. “It's a lovely name.”

Halfway up, he stopped and pointed across the glen. “Innes Manor,” he said. To Ian, the gabled house of gray-green stone, with its slender fluted chimneys and banks of tall windows, used to seem like a dwelling out of a storybook. High on the shoulder of a mountain called Ben Innes, the manor rose above the mist, a kingdom in the clouds.

“It used to be the laird's house,” he said.

“Who lives there now?”

“No one. The butcher who took over the district sometimes sends guests up for grouse hunting.”

“It's so lovely.” Miranda smiled up at him. “I wonder what it would be like to live in such a place.”

The odd thing was, he could picture her at Innes Manor, walking along the stately garden paths like a figure in a Watteau painting. “Perhaps you'll find out one day.”

“We.”

“What?”

“Perhaps
we
will find out one day.”

The reminder jolted him. “Idle talk.” He had long since ceased to question his own motives when it came to indulging Miranda's whims. It had become simply something he did, with no rhyme or reason other than his own guilt about playing her false. So he did not pause when he found himself leading her ever higher, to a place he had not visited since he was a boy.

He had not put on his gloves today, and he noticed her looking at the stump of his finger. When she saw that she'd been caught, she glanced away, blushing.

“It's all right,” he said.

“I don't...remember that.”

“An accident. Happened when I was very young.” And for the first time in his life, it was all right. Almost.

He kept hold of her hand, though she needed no help. With her skirts bunched in one fist, she climbed with a sturdy gait. Her hardiness appealed to him. He had gone too long entertaining fan-fluttering London beauties whose tight corsets and meager diets made them overly delicate. Miranda, by contrast, had thrived on the sea voyage and would grow stronger still on Agnes's robust meals and the bright, clear air of the Highlands.

The meadows lay in green velvet folds between the vales. Wildflowers rioted underfoot and clung stubbornly to the steep, rock-strewn slopes. He brought Miranda to Ben Ocelfa, the highest peak of the range. They found a level spot of ground so smooth that it resembled a table covered by a green baize cloth.

He loosened his collar and lifted his face to the endless summer sky. “I used to think this was the top of the world.”

She turned in a slow circle, arms outspread. “It is the top of the world. Surely it is.” When she turned back to him, her eyes shone. For a moment, he forgot the mysteries and memories that hid inside her, forgot that his sole purpose was to unlock them. She was simply a woman whose face lit up when she looked at him.

“It's beautiful, Ian,” she said. “Thank you.”

“It's the bonniest place I know,” he said, half to himself. And so it was, the blue sky melting into the soft green of the distant hills, the black striated veins of rock peeking through flower-studded meadows. Below and to the east lay the immeasurable sea, midnight blue and shifting at the base of a sheared-off cliff. To the south, the town huddled in a meander of the river. Round the bend, the stream poured itself into Loch Fingan.

Before he could stop them, memories rushed like the tide into the sucking sea caves on the coast. Once again he was looking through that unblinking glass, seeing and hearing a past he tried each day to forget.

Someone shouted at him to run. Gordon seized his hand and the two brothers raced blindly toward the mountain. The screams of their mother pierced the air, halted them as surely as an iron manacle. Black smoke plumed skyward from the burning thatch, stinging Ian's eyes and nose with a sharp reek.

“What shall we do with the pair of them, Mr. Adder?” a soldier asked, dragging the boys before a man with thick lips and hard eyes. How tall and gaunt Adder looked, high on his horse. He wore coarse clothes and had a thick ginger beard. His manner was so cold, he didn't even flinch at the sound of a woman begging for her baby's life.

“Send them to my factor in Glasgow.” Adder raised his voice above the hoarse shrieks of Mary MacVane. His speech was coarse and ugly. “They'll make a fine pair of climbing boys.”

Miranda touched Ian, and he came back into the sunlit day, with the peaceful hills all around him. “There you were again, drifting off,” she scolded gently. “What is it that troubles you on such a fine summer day? Look at this scenery. Am I allowed to say it's quaint?”

Ian laughed briefly, quietly. “If you must.”

“But actually, it's not. It's majestic. Magnificent. How blessed you are to have known such a place.”

The irony of the words seared him, but she was an enchanting distraction. He
wanted
her to distract him, if only for a moment. Surrounded by the splendor of the Highlands, she looked lovelier than ever, her cheeks blooming, her hair gleaming in the sunlight, her expression open, almost enraptured.

“Can we stay long?” she asked. “Must we hurry back to London?”

“We must,” he said, though he, too, felt reluctant. How remote and absurd it seemed from here, the idea that Bonaparte's spies were planning to assassinate all the leaders of Europe. “After we're—” he hesitated “—after the handfast, we'll be off.”

“Handfast,” she said. “I do know of this custom, so I must have read of it somewhere.” She regarded him soberly. “And did I agree to it?”

“Sweetheart, you couldna wait.” He grinned affably.

“But why a handfast, and not a proper marriage?”

He thought fast. “You're a follower of Wollstonecraft, remember? The crusader for free love.”

“So we're to be handfasted. A trial marriage. If I conceive in the first year, the bond endures. If not...”

“You're free.”

“Free.” Her voice caught on the word. “As I am now? Knowing nothing and no one except you?”