Susan Wiggs - Miranda

Miranda felt nauseated. Her head started to throb. She had been there. Inside the warehouse. Sickening guilt crept up her throat, gagging her. She thought of the twist of stiff, sulfur-smelling rope she had found in her apron pocket, along with tinder and flint. She had almost caused her own death and that of this innocent child.

She remembered the victims of that night, the bleeding faces slashed by flying glass, the burned flesh, the screams and moans of the wounded. Why would she hurt them? Why? She swayed, and the question she dared not ask screamed through her mind. Am I a murderer?

“There, see?” Duffie said with comforting brusqueness. “The lady’s well nigh exhausted. I’ll just have the housekeeper show her to—”

“Not so fast.” Ian spoke in his customary low voice, but his words rang with authority. “Robbie, was Miss Miranda alone?”

“Oh, aye, sir, and she were in a great hurry—but she took the time to toss me a copper and bid me to get myself home.” His round cheeks flushed. “She didn’t know about me having no home.”

Ian contemplated the boy with a look that was fierce, but protective rather than frightening. “Run along, then,” he said. “See if Cook’s made more of those gooseberry tarts.”

Robbie scampered off, and Duffie followed him out of the foyer.

Miranda faced Ian with trepidation. He knew something. But what? Was it more than she herself knew about that night? Or less?

The icy speculation in his eyes was unmistakable. She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “I don’t suppose,” she said, “you could explain why I was down at the wharves, unchaperoned.”

His large and powerful hand, still sheathed in its black glove, came to rest on her arm. A shiver coursed through her.

“I’m certain you had your reasons, love,” he said, leading her into an opulent parlor furnished with dark wood and deep green hangings. “Come and sit down, and we’ll—”

“Excuse me, sir.” A cheerful-looking man with a peg leg came into the room. On his hand he balanced a salver, and he approached them with an ease that belied his infirmity. “This just arrived for you.”

Ian took the letter from the tray. “Thank you, Carmichael.”

“You’re welcome, sir.” Carmichael sent a pleasant smile to Miranda. “And welcome to you, too, miss. We’ve heard so much about you—”

“Thank you, Carmichael,” Ian said, louder this time. “That will be all.” He helped Miranda to a settee as the servant withdrew.

“How did he lose his leg?” she asked.

“The Battle of Busaco. We were in the Thirty-second Highlanders together.”

Ian MacVane, she decided, was a man who took in strays. As Miranda watched him open his letter, she wondered what sort of stray she had been when they’d first met.

“Damn it,” he said.

She jumped. “Damn what?”

He crumpled the letter in his hand. “Cossacks in Hyde Park.”

She felt no surprise; her knowledge of local events had remained intact. Arriving with fanfare and entourages that often occupied entire flotillas, an extraordinary group was convening in London this summer. All the crowned heads from Tsar Alexander of Russia to the prince of Saxe-Coburg had come to celebrate Bonaparte’s defeat. The Cossacks, under their hetman Count Platov, were serving as life guards to the tsar.

“Have they done something wrong?” she asked.

“It seems they’ve challenged the Gentlemen Pensioners to a horse race. A few of them had too much to drink and are terrorizing people.” Ian went to the door. “I’d best go and see that order is restored.”

“Why you?” She was suddenly aware that she had no notion of Ian’s role in all of this.

He grinned. “It is my métier. I’ll tell you more when I get back. Duffie will see to your needs.”

“Ian, wait!” A flush suffused her cheeks. “Is it true—what you said earlier? About...going to Scotland?”

“Upon my oath,” he said, then was gone.

* * *

The next morning, Ian awakened to the dreadful notion that he had pledged to take Miranda to Scotland and make her his bride.

“A simple enough idea, when you consider it,” Duffie said as he laid out a clean shirt and morning coat. “Marriage happens every day.”

Ian sluiced cold water over himself from the yellow-glazed Newcastle ware bowl on the washstand. “Not to me.” He turned the ewer sideways and took a long drink directly from it. “Never to me, McDuff.”

The diminutive man seemed to swell to twice his size. “What are you saying, then?”

Ian grabbed a towel and began scrubbing his face and hair dry. Craning his neck, he inspected his burned shoulder. He closed his eyes, felt a sickening terror pitch in his gut as he relived the moment of rescuing Robbie. Only the desperate need of a child had prodded him out of his paralyzing fear of heights, prodded him just as the bigger boys had, so many years ago, sticking pins in his bare feet to urge him to climb higher, higher through the tight, narrow passageways of the chimney pots he had been forced to clean.

“I’m waiting for an answer.” Duffie snatched away the towel and gave Ian’s shoulder a casual glance. “Healing nicely,” he pronounced, “which is more than I can say for your paper skull if you don’t answer me. What are your intentions toward the girl?”

Ian grabbed back the towel and rubbed it across his chest. Only from Angus McDuff would he tolerate this constant meddling. He heaved a sigh. “You sound like a fierce papa.”

The salt-and-pepper brows beetled. “Lord knows she could use one. She’s helpless as a lamb, man. Dinna eat her alive.”

Ian began dressing in traveling garb of black breeches and boots, a starched and snowy shirt, a waistcoat, and a cravat. “I’m taking her to Scotland.”

“To Scotland.”

“Aye.”

“To marry her.”

“Nay.”

For an older man, Duffie moved with surprising speed. In one swift movement he had Ian shoved back against the wall, showing no sympathy for the wounded shoulder. His face was florid, his eyes hard. “Damn you to hell, Ian MacVane. I ought to skelp your stubborn hide for you. Have you taken a knife, then, and carved out your own heart?”

Ian glared at him coldly. “Oh, aye. You know I have.”

Duffie dropped his hands to his sides, but he did not retreat. “That doesna mean others are made of ice. I’ll not let you ruin the girl. Not let you whisk her away, destroy her reputation, destroy any chance she has to settle down one day and find happiness.”

“She’s happy now,” Ian said, his mouth a cruel twist, “when she knows nothing of the past.”

“Fine. She knows nothing. And you care nothing for her future. It’ll be no future at all if you skulk off with her, wooing her with false promises. What decent man would have her after she goes adventuring with Ian MacVane?”

“No one need know.” The back of Ian’s neck prickled. He didn’t like feeling this way—knowing he was wrong but lacking the conscience to stop himself.

“She will know,” Duffie said obstinately. “To her core, she is a sweet and decent soul.”

“Frances thinks she is a traitor. Oh. Do pardon me. A sweet and decent traitor.” Ian raked a wooden comb through his close-cropped hair. “Look, would you rather I do what I should have done in the first place?”

“And what is that?”

“Take her directly to the authorities. I could make this all very simple by marching her before them and letting them be the ones to unlock her secrets.”

Duffie’s cheeks paled beneath his beard. “She’s a wee, fragile thing. I suspect you guessed that or you wouldna have brought her this far. There is only one solution.”

Ian set down his comb. He was tired of arguing. It had taken half the night to get the hard-drinking Cossacks to return to their residence at the Pulteney Hotel. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”