Susan Wiggs - Miranda

“Because it’s the kind and proper thing, which is not what you are used to doing.” Duffie pointed a stubby finger and narrowed an eye as though taking aim at his employer. “You’ll do exactly as you promised, my fine gentleman. You’ll marry the girl. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, you’ll find out her secrets. And if you’re luckier still, I willna skelp you.”

Five

We loved, sir—used to meet:

How sad and bad and mad it was—

But then, how it was sweet!

—Robert Browning

The inmates at Bedlam were not nearly as entertaining since the endowments had started to arrive. Dr. Brian Beckworth, for one, did not regret the change. He did not miss the gawkers who paid their coppers to come and stare at the moonstruck inmates. He did not miss Warden Larkin, given the boot the same day Miranda had left.

The till at the door had dwindled, but the anonymous payments drawn on a London bank account more than made up for that. Before long, the hospital would relocate to a new building in Lambeth, and this moldering pile of rubble would be abandoned.

For years Dr. Beckworth had wanted the institution to be a place of healing. A place where people who had lost pieces of their souls could find themselves again—or at least find solace. Now there was a chance that it could happen.

Some of the women were hopeless, it was true. But others simply needed care and compassion. And now the doctor could afford to give it to them. All because of Miranda.

Feeling a rare sense of accomplishment, Beckworth smiled up at Gwen, who came in with his morning tea and the London Times. She had started doing a few tasks around the place and seemed to take her new responsibilities in stride.

“Nice and strong like you favors it, sir,” she said. Today her hair was caught back neatly with a bit of ribbon, and her hands and face were scrubbed clean. She hid less and less behind her brash, uncaring facade.

Beckworth inhaled the fragrant steam and held up the paper, scanning the front page. Gwen turned to leave, but her eyes widened and she bent close. “Sir, look there! ’Tis our own Miranda, and no mistake.”

With a frown, Beckworth turned the paper over and laid it on his desk. He saw a small sketch of a woman with large eyes and a swirl of thick, dark curls. The caption identified her as “Miss Miranda Stonecypher.”

For no apparent reason, an icy claw of fear clutched at his gut. There was something sinister about seeing her likeness, her name in bold print.

“What’s it say, sir? Please.” Gwen propped one hip on his desk and bent over the sketch.

Beckworth cleared his throat. “It seems her family is looking for her. Requests a reply to an anonymous box at the paper. Claims she has been missing since...” He scanned down the article. “Since the day before she arrived here.”

“But that can’t be,” Gwen stated. “Mr. MacVane already collected her.”

Beckworth’s mouth went dry. “He claimed he knew her, but I was never quite convinced.”

“Hell and damnation,” Gwen burst out. “Then MacVane played us false and stole poor Miranda away!”

From the corridor outside came a scuffle of feet and the murmur of voices, but Beckworth was more preoccupied with the extraordinary notice in the paper.

“So it would appear.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. The cold clench of fear in his gut tightened. Had he let a stranger spirit the girl away?

With a less than steady hand, the doctor dipped quill in ink and scribbled an urgent message. “I shall have this delivered to the Times,” he said, thinking aloud for Gwen’s benefit as he blotted the ink. “And another to the lodgings of Ian MacVane. I have a few questions for him.”

She took the note. “I’ll see that it goes out with today’s post.” She left through the rear door of the office.

A moment later, the other door banged open and two people pushed inside.

“How do you do?” he asked, recognizing both of his visitors. They had come before to gawk at the inmates, but he noticed they’d paid particular attention to Miranda. “I just composed a message to the Times. I do hope—”

“Where is she?” asked the one with the French accent.

Dr. Beckworth was taken aback by the abruptness of the voice. “She left with the Scotsman, Ian MacVane.”

“When?”

“Thursday. That is why the notice in the paper surprised me. You see—”

A strong hand plunged into his hair. Dr. Beckworth found himself forced to his knees. A foot pressed into his back, shoving his chest hard against the floor. “Who took your message to the Times?”

By now, Beckworth understood the peril. He must not lead them to Gwen. “P-posted it myself. Just this morning.”

The visitors exchanged words in French. Beckworth tried to fight, but he wasn’t trained for brawling. His arms flailed, and he managed to choke out one word: “Why?”

The hand holding his hair jerked his head up and pulled back, baring his throat. An expert hand wielded the sharp, cold blade quickly, neatly. As he bled to death swiftly on the floor of his office, Dr. Brian Beckworth answered his own question. He was dying because of Miranda.

* * *

“I’m certain I’ve never done this before.” Miranda gripped the forecastle rail of the sleek, swift frigate Serendipity and gazed out at the churning North Sea. She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the fresh, salty air, and threw back her head, wishing she could unbind her hair and let the wind ripple through it. She knew the winds. Somewhere in her forgotten past she had studied wind and weather, though she had no idea why.

“Done what?” Ian stood beside her. With a swath of plaid draped diagonally across his chest, he looked as regal as a Highland chieftain. She shivered with admiration at the very sight of him. How plain and mousy she felt next to her betrothed, yet at the same time, his appearance empowered her. To have the devotion of such a man was heady indeed.

“Gone on a sea voyage,” she said, watching the endless rush of the waves below the bow. “I feel quite sure I’ve not experienced this before.”

Sailors in the mizzentop raced along wooden booms, working the sails as the wind made the ship yaw back and forth. Miranda hugged herself and smiled at the sky burnished like copper by the setting sun. “It all feels brand-new. And so exciting... Ian—” She broke off when she saw the way he was looking at her.

As if he wanted to eat her alive.

She sometimes caught him at it, eyeing her in a manner that was both fierce and tender. Was that the way he had always loved her, with that mixture of intensity and gentleness?

“What is it?” he asked, laying one gloved finger on her wind-stung cheek.

She wondered if he had ever told her why he always wore gloves, but it felt too awkward to ask. Besides, there was something mysterious and romantic about it.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just that I know you’re frustrated because I can’t remember anything.” His touch made her tingle in secret places. Were these places he had touched...before?

She could not quite bring herself to ask him that, either. “I do want to, Ian. Truly I do.” She felt a stirring inside her, a sharp but unfocused yearning that ached in her heart. A sense of loss and longing and emptiness came over her.

“I did recall one thing,” she said.

Clear as ice shards, his gaze focused on her. His hands gripped her upper arms. “Yes?”

She so hated to disappoint him. She wanted to please him, to bring a flicker of cheer to his brooding eyes, to feel his smile like the sun on her face. “I’m afraid it’s not terribly important,” she confessed. “When I woke up this morning, I realized that I know Homer’s Iliad by heart.”