Miranda

The doctor lifted a monocle to one eye. “You are related to Miss, er...”

“Stonecypher.”

“Stonecypher.” Beckworth tasted the unusual name again.

“I am betrothed to her,” Ian assured him. Lying had always come easily to Ian. He had learned it at an early age and considered it one of the most fundamental of survival tactics. Please, sir, I canna work today. My cough is infectious...

“Why didn’t you explain that right from the start?” Beckworth asked.

He’s as suspicious as I am, Ian thought. “Perhaps, like you, I prefer to guard my privacy.”

“Ah.” Beckworth tucked the monocle into the pocket of his waistcoat and took a deep breath. “Have you any proof of this betrothal?”

“I do.” Ian levered himself up out of his chair and paced the office. He ducked his head beneath the lime-washed ceiling beams. He stopped in front of the table and slammed his palms down on the surface.

Beckworth flinched.

Ian leaned forward and said, “Aye, I have proof, but she’s locked up like some moonstruck lunatic, damn your eyes!”

“She can’t remember anything,” Beckworth blurted out, then clamped his mouth shut, clearly angry at himself for having divulged Miranda’s condition.

This, Ian realized, was no gamble after all. She would not recognize him, but that, of course, would all be part and parcel of her affliction.

“I want to see her,” Ian stated. “Now.”

Beckworth hesitated. Ian subjected him to the coldest, most menacing stare he could summon. The stare worked. The doctor stood. “Follow me.”

Moments later, Ian wondered if Beckworth was leading him along a circuitous route just to punish him. They passed through a long gallery lined with barred cells. Dank shadows hung in the unlighted corners. Sleek rats scurried in and out through cracks in the walls. A babble of nonsense talk, moans and tuneless singing joined with the foul stench to make the air almost unbreathable.

Fashionable people strolled along with handkerchiefs pressed to their noses and they stopped to gape at the inmates. It was a common diversion to buy a ticket to view the insane. Ian, who had looked madness in the face, found the practice more disgusting than anything he could see behind bars.

“Oh, look at that one,” a lady exclaimed, giggling and pointing. “What is he doing with his—”

“Surely he is thinking of you,” Ian whispered in her ear as he passed behind the woman.

She gave a little shriek. She and her gentleman friend hurried out.

A cleric clutching a prayer book nodded mournfully as he passed. Several inmates reached through the bars, grasping at the air as if it represented freedom itself. Ian fought the urge to run, far and swiftly, away from this place that evoked such uncanny reminders of his past.

This was different, he told himself. Perhaps this woman could be saved. He despised the idea that the girl with the large brown eyes had been trapped in this place for four days. If she wasn’t insane before, she surely was now.

When Beckworth brought him to a large, barred common room for female inmates, Ian spied her immediately. She sat on a wooden stool in a flood of sunlight that streamed through a high window. On a bench in front of her, a chess board was scratched into the wooden surface, small light and dark stones serving as chessmen.

She wore an unbleached muslin gown, plain and much mended, and her abundant brown hair was tied back with a bit of string. Her face looked clean but weary, her complexion smoother and richer than the heart of a rose.

In her lap, propped on her knees, she held a broken piece of slate. She was reciting aloud to a group of uncannily attentive women. “It is time to affect a revolution in female manners—a time to restore to them their lost dignity—and make them, as part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves, to reform the world.”

Ian was familiar with the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft. He had discovered a set of treatises by the female zealot while waiting out a long calm during a sea voyage. But hearing Miranda recite the words aloud, with such conviction, and to such rapt women, was stirring indeed. “You said she had no memory,” he whispered to Beckworth.

“She has perfect recall of general knowledge. It’s really quite astonishing. Yet she has no recollection of personal matters.” Beckworth motioned him into the common room.

“Och, ’tis Bonny Prince Charlie!” An elderly woman, her hair a dirty gray mop, scuttled over and dipped a curtsy to Ian. “I’d know ye anywhere, laddie,” she said in a thick Highland brogue. “Ah, the midnight hair, the eyes of blue. Been waiting for you to return since me granny’s time, we have.” She gave him a toothless smile and remained there, one knee on the floor, quivering slightly, clearly unable to move.

Ian flushed and glanced back at Beckworth, who stood just inside the door. The doctor stared straight ahead. Ian had no choice but to hold out his hand and help the old woman up.

“And a fine gentleman you are, sire, and always have been,” she declared. She turned to address the ladies. “Well, what are ye waiting for? ’Tis our own rightful prince come back to us, just like I told ye he would. And he’s a ghostie, he is. ’Tis why he stays so young and bonny.”

A few of the women, their faces blank, inclined their heads. Ian’s ears heated. He cleared his throat. “It is a high honor to meet you, but I am not Bonny Prince Charlie. Regrettably, he died some years ag—”

“Weesht!” The old woman held a finger to her lips. “We ken. You’re in disguise, eh?” She tugged at his waistcoat. “I thought there was a purpose to that MacLean tartan.”

He nodded in exasperation. “I am here to see Miranda.”

Some of the women began to hiss and whisper among themselves. Ian cleared his throat again. “You are...dismissed.”

The old woman backed away, bowing as she retreated to another part of the room. Most of the others—those who were not chained or bound—went with her. Miranda looked up anxiously.

There was one thing Ian had not remembered from the night of the fire. And that was how stunningly beautiful she was.

Even like this, in a plain shapeless gown, her hair and face unadorned, she was like the moon. Pale skin, sable hair, a study in light and dark. He felt something unexpected and ecstatic in the center of himself as he looked at her. She had a sort of heart-catching innocence that sat ill with his sense of who she was, what she was capable of.

“Hello, Dr. Beckworth,” she said in a soft, cultured voice. Then she looked at Ian, the huge brown eyes showing—not surprisingly—no recognition at all. “Good day to you, sir.” Then she frowned.

“Is something wrong?” Beckworth asked.

“No. For a moment I thought...” She waved her hand distractedly. “It was nothing.”

“My dear,” Beckworth said, his meddlesome manner irritating, at least to Ian. “Do you recognize this man?”

“Hello, Miranda,” Ian said softly. He lowered himself so their gazes were level and sent her his kindest smile. “It’s a high relief to find you at last.” Another of his well-honed skills was the intimate whisper. Women succumbed to it almost too easily, tumbling into his arms in fits of ecstasy. He waited for Miranda to melt.

Instead she cocked her head to one side and asked, “Do you play chess?”

He blinked. “Chess.”

She frowned in concentration at the chess board. “It seems that I do. Perhaps too well. Each time I play myself, it ends in stalemate.”

“This gentleman claims he knows you,” Beckworth said. “He says you were betrothed.”

She caught her breath. “To be married?” She stared at Ian with new, keen interest.

“That’s right, love,” Ian said, amazed that he felt guilty deceiving her. According to Fanny, this woman was a deadly traitor and the key to a hideous plot to assassinate the crowned princes of Europe. Yet suddenly he felt as if he had stepped on a kitten. “You canna remember?”

“No.” She bit her lip. It was a full lower lip, the very sort that begged for a kiss. This could prove to be dangerous indeed, Ian thought. In ways he had not yet considered.

“Darling.” He took both her hands in his and drew her to her feet. The top of her head just reached his chin. “Surely you remember me. I am your one true love, your Ian.”

At this the other women clustered round, jabbering and clucking like hens.

“Kiss her!” one of them urged.

“Yes, kiss her, kiss her!” The others took up the chant.

It was odd, Ian thought, looking at these hopeless, disheveled creatures. After all they’d been through, they still wanted to believe in a happy ending.

“Kiss her!” they continued to chant. A buxom woman with black hair and laughing eyes made a smooching sound with her mouth.

“Ian,” Miranda repeated. Her breathing quickened, and she made a sound of distress. “Dr. Beckworth, may we please have some privacy?”

Ian was more stunned than the doctor by her request. He felt a jolt in his chest. God. She was falling for the ruse. He ought to feel pleased by his own cleverness. Instead he sensed a faint edge of panic. He might very well find himself with a fiancée before this day was out.

“Miranda, I shouldn’t allow it,” Beckworth said. “It would not be prop—”

“The lady made a simple request,” Ian broke in.

“You may go to the empty cell across the hall.” The doctor held the door for them. “I shall be outside.” He aimed a meaningful stare at Miranda. “You need only call out and I’ll come.”

“She’ll call out, right enough,” said the black-haired woman. “But not for you, Beckie.”

Ian glared at the doctor as they left the room. Officious little toad. Does he think I would ravish her right here in this rank cell?

Rather than seeming absurd, the very idea made him hard. Perhaps he was crazy, too, lusting after a woman in Bedlam, of all places. His chest felt tight when he turned to Miranda. “Does the name Stonecypher mean anything to you?”

“Stonecypher.” She tasted it like an exotic fruit. “No. Should it?”

“That’s your name, my love. You are Miranda Stonecypher, and I am Ian MacVane.”

“My betrothed.”

“Your betrothed.”

She clasped her hands demurely in front of her. “Were we in love?”

The question took him by surprise. In love. He almost laughed aloud at the thought. Love was something that didn’t happen to Ian Dale MacVane. It simply wasn’t meant to be. Yet here she stood, all innocence, brimming with hope.

“Well?” she prompted. “Was it a love match?”

“Very much so.” How easy it was to gaze into her wide, trusting eyes and lie. “We were deeply in love.” He traced his fingers along her jawline. “I still am.”

“Oh, my.” Her slender throat moved sinuously as she swallowed hard. “And we were to be married?”

His thoughts came together swiftly. “Aye, we were going to Scotland so there would be no need to secure a special license.” Recklessly he plunged on. “And of course, you wanted to meet my people in the Highlands.”

“Why?”

“Because they’ve not met you, lass, and—”

“That’s not what I meant.” She pressed her palm to his chest. Her warmth burned into him. “Why were we going to be married?”

“I thought I explained that. We love each other. We—”

“But why marriage?” Her hand crept along his chest and slid upward to skim his collarbone. He wondered if she was at all aware that by touching him this way, she was breaking every rule of proper behavior. He wondered if she cared.

“Marriage is the institution of a corrupt society, designed to enslave women,” she stated.

Ian could barely think. Was she naive or simply bold, touching him like this? He had been caressed more intimately by more brazen women, to be sure, but there was a compelling quality to the way Miranda slid her long-fingered hands over him.

“Who told you that?” he asked. “Did you learn it by reading Mary Wollstonecraft?”

“I suppose so. Dr. Beckworth urged me to remember things. It is odd. I can recite whole passages by heart, yet I can’t even recall my name—” She backed away as a violent shudder racked her. “You can’t know how frustrating it is.”

An outraged female yell drifted in from the common room.

He saw something flicker in her eyes—fear. Settling his hands on her shoulders, he asked, “What is it?”

“This is a place of corruption. I—I wasn’t prepared for that.”

A chill prickled down his neck. “What do you mean?”

She folded her arms in front of her. “There is a warden called Larkin. He wanted—that is, he would have—” She looked away, pressing her lips together as if loath to speak further.

“Miranda, did he hurt you?”

She shook her head. “No, and it’s silly of me to dwell on it. I convinced him that it might be dangerous to harm me.” A fond smile curved her lips. “I said I was undoubtedly a great lady, with a vast fortune and a title, and that as soon as my memory was restored, I would reward those who befriended me.”

Ian gave silent thanks for her quick thinking.

“But lately,” she said, “he’s been eyeing me. I think he’s starting to suspect it’s a lie.”

Ian trapped her hands in his. “I want you to come away with me. Now that I’ve found you, you need not stay here a moment longer.”

“I know you claim me, but you’re a stranger. I’m sorry—”

“You’ll be safe with me,” he said.

“I want to believe you, but I do not know you. I cannot go with you.” She shivered. “It’s awful here, but it’s familiar. It’s all that I know.”

“Believe me,” he whispered, lowering his mouth toward hers, wanting just a taste of her. “Do, Miranda. Believe me.”

His mouth hovered closer. She gasped and parted her lips slightly. At the last second, he changed his mind. He must not kiss her. He knew better than to kiss a woman when he wanted her this badly. He brushed his lips across her brow. “I’ll keep you safe,” he heard himself whisper, not knowing whether or not he was lying. “I’ll keep you safe.”

She glided her hands up his chest, pressing closer, skimming his shoulders.

He hissed and broke away, barking a curse. His shoulder was on fire, and for a moment he saw nothing but a red haze of pain.

“Mr. MacVane!” Miranda cried. “What happened?”

“My shoulder, lass. I was burned in the fire.”

“You were in the fire?” she asked. “My fire?”

“Aye, lass, if you’re claiming it.”

“Lass,” she whispered, wonder dawning on her face. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

“That depends on what you’re accusing me of.”

“You’re the man in the flames. You called me lass. You pulled me to safety. Gave me your coat.”

“Aye,” he said again, wishing his shoulder would stop throbbing.

“You ran off to help a small child, and that was the last I saw of you.” She shuddered. “The watchman said you had both perished.”

“The watchman turned out to be quite unreliable.”

“You would have come back for me, but you were unable?” she asked, unwittingly making it easy for him to deceive her.

“Injured,” he admitted. “Not mortally, as you can see.”

“Thank God. How is the child?”

“Robbie is fine. Some bumps and bruises, a burned hand that’s healing nicely.”

She subjected him to a wide-eyed, wondering look that made him feel as if he had grown a foot taller. “How grateful his mother must be.”

“Robbie’s an orphan. He had been staying at a flash house, where they were training him as a cutpurse.” Ian decided not to tell her the worst of it, the other things they were forcing Robbie to do. “He ran away from there and was living alone in an abandoned building.”

“How sad. What will become of him?”

“After my assistant, McDuff, tutors him, Robbie’ll be bound for public school, perhaps university.” An old dream flickered in Ian’s mind. A lad like Robbie should live free, racing through Highland dales and shouting with laughter, just as Ian had so many years ago.

Miranda clasped her hands to her chest. “You kept the child.”

“He had nowhere to go.”

She crossed to the door.

“Miranda?” he asked. “Where are you going?”

“With you.”

“But you just said you wouldn’t.”

“I changed my mind.”

“What made you change your mind?”

She gave an incredulous laugh. “I have two choices. I can stay locked in this asylum. Or I can leave with a man who not only saved me from a fire, but rescued an orphaned child and is raising him to be a gentleman.”

“So you changed your mind because of my sterling character?”

“No.” An unexpected glint of humor winked in her smile. “It was your devastating blue eyes.”

Her wry statement caught him off guard. He stared at her for a moment, then started to laugh. To his amazement, she joined him. “And of course,” she said, “you’d never lie about something that can be so easily disproved.”

Dr. Beckworth appeared at the door. “Are you quite well, Miranda?”

She bathed him in a radiant smile that made the poor man all but squirm with delight. “Oh, indeed I am, Doctor. Surely your patience and care prepared me for a full recovery of my lost memory.”

It was all Ian could do to keep panic at bay. What was this? She remembered? If so, that meant she realized Ian MacVane was no part of her past.

“God be thanked.” The doctor raised his eyes heavenward.

Miranda rested her fingers on Ian’s sleeve and sent him an adoring look. “My dear fiancé will, of course, send a large endowment to the hospital.” She glanced at the women’s ward. “Enough for some sweeping improvements,” she added, and the subtlest note of warning hardened her voice. “Of course, I shall check on the progress of the reforms.”

With a decided spring in her step, she walked toward the main foyer. She stopped at the common room. “Things will get better here,” she said to the women.

Some of them looked up, waved and blew kisses. “We’ll take care, ducks,” Gwen assured her. “See if we don’t.”

“We still think you should kiss her,” said the old lady who thought he was Bonny Prince Charlie.

I still want to, Ian realized. He followed Miranda out, joining her amid the foot traffic on the street. He stared at her, filled with bafflement and delight that quickly froze into icy suspicion.

Just how much did she recall?

“You say you remember?” he demanded.

“Lies,” she said breezily, turning a giddy circle on the cobbled walk. “All lies.”

“But you did it so well,” he said, impressed. “I know of no one who lies quite so well, except perhaps—” He broke off, taking her elbow to steer her out of the path of a pieman’s cart.

“Except whom?” She had an engaging way of tilting her head and regarding him sidewise. The look was both charmingly naive and artlessly seductive.

He thought better of elaborating. “Never mind. You were quite magnificent.”

She sobered for a moment. “To survive in a place like Bedlam, one must develop certain skills.”

It was not what she said, but what she did not say that told Ian she had lived a nightmare. He grimaced, imagining her bedding down in filth amid lunatics. Without volition, he slipped his arm around her shoulders. In a matter of moments they had violated a dozen rules of propriety and decorum. Either she had forgotten those rules or, like him, took pleasure in disregarding them. Or perhaps she had never known the rules in the first place.

She peered up at him with that slanted look. “So now you have rescued me. Again. If you persist in being this kind to me, our future is very bright indeed.”

Though his customary long strides never faltered, Ian felt his stomach knot. He couldn’t even reply. In a very short time, he would have to deliver her to an address in Great Stanhope Street. Only God knew what would happen to her then.

Four

There is no greater sorrow than to recall,

in misery, the time when we were happy.

—Dante

The authorities would try to extract information from her. Ian would not allow himself to think about the methods they might use. He worked for the English, aye, but only because they were the highest bidder for his services. He had no false ideas about their compassion for a woman they perceived as a traitor.

He brought Miranda south through London, along the crumbling river walks. When they reached the west side of London Bridge, they would take a barge and then a hansom cab to the rendezvous in Great Stanhope.

“So we will leave the city today?” she asked, standing at the edge of the river and watching the traffic of boats and barges with rapt fascination. Before he could reply with an appropriate falsehood, she said, “I know that I lived in London before the...” She hesitated, looking so vulnerable for a moment that he had to glance away. His heart was pure steel—he had made it so. Yet he sensed that this woman could turn steel to ash if he let her.

“Before what?” he asked.

“Just...before. But I don’t remember it being so vital. So alive and exciting. Look at all the people. I wonder if I should know any of them.” She sobered. “It is the oddest feeling, Mr. Mac... Ian. It’s happened a few times. I feel as if I’m on the brink of something—some discovery or revelation—and then everything disappears into a fog. Dr. Beckworth said my memory would return.” She raised bewildered brown eyes to him. “The question is, what made me forget this in the first place?”

Ian’s heart gave a lurch. “It was the accident,” he said quietly. “’Twas a miracle you survived.”

“But what was I doing there?”

His gut twisted. “I don’t know, love,” he said. “I’m only glad I was there to get you out in time.”

“I wanted to die in there,” she whispered.

He hoped he had heard her wrong. “No, Miranda—”

“It’s true. A calmness came over me, an acceptance. I wanted it, Ian, I did.”

“You were overcome by smoke.” The idea that she had craved death disturbed him deeply. In God’s name, Miranda, he wanted to say. What happened to you?

But he couldn’t ask that. She expected him to know.

She frowned and rubbed her temple, swaying a little.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“A headache. They come and go.” She walked a few steps along the quay, then turned and walked back. Ian watched her, trying to analyze the effect she had on him.

What was it about the lass? She was almost waiflike in the faded dress, yet the worn fabric failed to conceal the body of a temptress. And in her eyes he could see ancient, veiled secrets. A wealth of memories lived inside her. His task was to unlock them, even if he had to batter down the door.

She rubbed her temples again, wincing at the pain and closing her eyes.

“Are you certain you’re all right?” he asked again.

She nodded, eyes still closed. “Can you take me to the house where I live?”

He thought swiftly of the ramshackle rooms in Blackfriars, the overturned furniture, the dried blood. “You should rest.”

She opened her eyes. A shroud of shadows crept over her face. Without moving, she distanced herself from him, receding to a place he could not imagine. For a moment it was as if she lived somewhere else, in a world of her own fancy. Or was it the past?

“Miranda?” he prompted. The syllables of her name tasted sweet, spoken with his Scottish burr. He was a sick man indeed. He took a perverse pleasure in simply saying her name.

She blinked, and the distant look passed. “I try, truly I do. I try to remember.” She clasped both her hands around his. Her fingers were chilly; he could feel it through his gloves. He rubbed his thumbs over them, to warm her. Or himself, he was not sure which. But in that moment he felt something—they both did; he could see it in her eyes. The startlement. The recognition. The deep inner twist of captivation that defied all logic.

“You must tell me, Ian,” she said. “You are my betrothed. Surely you know my home.” She hesitated. “My family. For the love of God, what was my way of life?”