Miranda. Susan Wiggs

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?”

      Falsehoods came to him swiftly. “Ours was a whirlwind courtship, so I confess there is much about you I do not know.”

      “Then tell me something you do know.”

      “You lived,” he said, hating himself for lying but lying anyway, “to love and be loved by me.”

      She caught her breath, a dreamy softness suffusing her face. “Ah, Ian. That is what I want to remember most of all. Loving you, and you loving me.”

      He stroked her cheek, and when her eyes opened, he let a devilish smile curve his mouth. “Does this mean I must teach you all over again?”

      She laughed throatily. “Perhaps. Do I have family?”

      “Alas, no.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t want to see her reaction. “You’re a scholar, Miranda. A teacher. A...private tutor.”

      “Then I lived with a family. With children.”

      “The family recently repaired to Ireland.”

      “Then we must write to them.”

      “Aye, we must.” He knew such a letter would never go farther than his waistcoat pocket. “You’re tired, my darling.” He did not know whether it was part of his ruse or an untapped softness in his heart that made him slip an arm around her shoulders. She nestled against his chest as if seeking shelter from a tempest. And perhaps she was, from the storm of confusion inside her.

      Her hair smelled of harsh soap, yet he also detected a hint of her own unique essence, something earthy and faintly herbal, evocative as a whisper in the dark.

      “Ah, Miranda, forgive me. I know so little of your former life.”

      “Please,” she whispered. “Tell me anything.”

      “’Tis melancholy.” The lie spun itself with quick assuredness, like a silken web produced by a spider. He borrowed from the truth but seasoned it liberally with fiction.

      He explained that her mother had died in childbirth, even though Frances had found out Helena Stonecypher had run off with a lover years earlier. Miranda’s father, an impoverished scholar of indifferent reputation, had raised her in haphazard fashion and had passed on more recently. Miranda had been employed as a tutor, but she had scarcely taken over the duties when the family had gone to Ireland.

      “When I met you, Miranda,” he finished, “you were alone, in leased rooms near Blackfriars Bridge.”

      She extracted herself from his arms and walked to the edge of the river. She stared at the rippling surface for so long that he wondered if her mind had wandered again.

      “Did you hear me, lass?” he prodded, standing beside her.

      She raised her face to him. Her cheeks were chalk pale, her eyes wide. “I was quite the pathetic soul, then,” she said in a low voice.

      She was as fragile as spun glass. So easy to break. He had no doubt he could crush her with words alone. Rather than softening him, the notion made him angry. She was a gift he did not want, a responsibility he could not shirk.

      Determined to stir her out of her sadness, he cupped her chin in his palm and glared down at her. “Did you expect to hear that you’re some long-lost princess, and I a blue-blooded nobleman? That I’ll conduct you to a vast and loving family who have been waiting for your return?”

      She flinched and tried to pull away, but he held her firmly, forcing himself to regard her with fierce steadiness. She would need a stiff spine for the trials ahead. If she broke now, dissolved into tears, he would take her directly to Frances and wash his hands of the entire affair.

      She swallowed, and he felt the delicate movement of her throat beneath his fingers. “Touché, Mr. MacVane,” she said, surprising him with a calm regard. “Though actually I had hoped I was a lady of great learning. There are things I know, things I have read, that Dr. Beckworth considered quite extraordinary.” She squared her shoulders. “But that is a common hope even for people who remember the past, is it not? To wish to be something better than we are?”

      “Touché yourself,” he said. He let his hand trail down to her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. “Forgive me. I’m not angry at you, but at myself. I want so much more for you.”

      Her smile trembled, then steadied, and she looked amazingly winsome. And also weary. “There now,” he said. “You must rest, and later we’ll speak of the past.”

      “And of the future.”

      “That, too,” he admitted, as foul a liar as had ever crossed the border from Scotland into England. Her future was a short trip up the Thames to Biddle House, where she would endure an interview with Lady Frances.

      Yet when a barge arrived and the ferryman asked where they were bound, Ian rapped out his own address. He told himself it was because information obtained under torture was notoriously unreliable. Aye, that was why he didn’t want her tortured. He’d find out her secrets in his own way. In his own time.

      * * *

      Miranda turned in a slow circle in the foyer of Ian’s opulent residence, her head angled up so she could take in the spiraling sweep of a marble staircase, the tall windows of beveled glass, the painted cherubs and clouds on the ceiling and wainscoting.

      “Have I been here before?” СКАЧАТЬ