Miranda

Barking an oath, Larkin stepped outside, slammed the door and shot the bolt home. Gwen laughed again, and others joined her, their shouts of mirth no longer eerie, but strangely joyful.

Miranda stood with her back to the wall of iron bars and stared. When at last she found her voice, she asked, “Why did you do that, all of you? Why did you defend me?”

Gwen clasped Miranda’s hands in hers. “Because of what you said, girl. About us all being too fine for Larkin.”

“I spoke no more than the truth.”

“Aye. But no one’s ever said it before.”

* * *

The explosion was four days past and Miranda’s trail was growing cold. Ian MacVane had inquired at churches, poorhouses, bawdy houses, almonries. He had paid bribes to wharfside idlers and shipmasters, to innkeepers and stablers, all to no avail.

His superiors were growing more insistent by the hour. Frances had been shocked to learn the young woman had survived the explosion, and she was frantic to speak to her—or so she said. But Ian knew instinctively that Frances was not particular. She merely wanted the girl found—alive or dead.

Frustrated, he stalked through the ransacked house in Stamford Street for the tenth time. Curses trailed like a black banner in his wake.

Four days, and he was no closer to finding her than he had been after the night of the disaster.

And to think he had held her in his arms!

The thought haunted him. He remembered how fragile she had felt, remembered the fright and confusion in her eyes. The urge to protect her had been powerful. He should have heeded his instincts rather than entrusting her to the watchman.

“You should hae listened to the voice in your noggin rather than shunting her off on that peeler,” Duffie said, shouldering open the door and stepping inside. “You knew that, did you not?”

Ian glared at his assistant, Angus McDuff. “Not before you did, it seems. Truly, you give me the willies.” Duffie had an uncanny gift for reading a man’s thoughts. “If I were the superstitious sort, I’d call you a devil’s imp and banish you to the Outer Hebrides.”

“The London peelers are as corrupt as the criminals themselves,” Duffie said. “It takes no great gift to figure that out.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be looking after Robbie?”

“The lad’s fast asleep in the coach, bless his wee heart,” Duffie said with fondness. His bristly, graying beard outlined the bow shape of his broad smile. “At the moment, you need me more.”

They stood together in thoughtful silence, surveying the place that had been the home of Miranda Stonecypher.

It was a modest suite of rooms with scuffed plank floors, threadbare upholstery and papers crammed on shelves or strewn about. Black smears of dried blood marred the walls and floors.

Books were piled on every available surface. The topics ranged from works on moral philosophy to scientific tracts on physics and cosmography.

Had Miranda read them, or had they been her father’s? The Englishwomen Ian knew did not trouble themselves to read anything more challenging than La Belle Assemblée. God forbid they should actually have to think.

By far the most disquieting item in the room was a painting over the mantel. It was a reproduction of The Nightmare by Fuseli, Swiss painter and darling of the radicals. A sleeping woman, clad in a gauzy night rail, reclined on a draped bed. On her bosom perched a creature with a burning gaze and a wicked leer, and in the background loomed a horse with glassy eyes and flaring nostrils.

“Now that,” Duffie said, “gives me the willies.”

“Be certain Robbie doesna see it.” Ian turned away from the picture. The room was in a shambles, destroyed by the murderers and then rifled by officers from Bow Street who had been alerted by an anonymous citizen.

Ian grinned humorlessly. Lady Frances hated the Runners. This was not the first time they had interfered in her work.

He and McDuff picked through the rubble that was left. A half-written letter responding to a lender’s dun for money. Greek symbols sketching out some mathematical formula. A mundane list in a more feminine hand: foolscap, ink, silk thread...

In a carpetbag he found a stocking to be mended, along with an unfinished needlework project depicting a spray of forget-me-nots around an old-fashioned tower house. The caption read, “One father is more than an hundred schoolmasters.” A faint floral scent clung to the bag. Ian dropped it and raked a hand through his hair.

He knew nothing about this woman.

Except that she read wonderful books and liked dangerous paintings and loved her father.

And that when he’d held her, he had felt a reluctant stirring in his heart.

“Och, I dinna believe my eyes,” Duffie exclaimed.

“What do you mean?” Ian asked in annoyance.

“The great MacVane of the Highlands actually felt something other than hatred and rage. Ah, dinna deny it. I saw it in your pretty face. You care about the lass, don’t you?” Duffie gave a sly wink.

Ian clutched the back of a wooden chair and glared down at his gloved hands. The gloves spared him from seeing the stump of his finger, from remembering the past.

“She’s a puzzlement, Duffie. There was something...not right about her that night.”

“People dinna generally appear their best following a massive explosion,” Duffie observed helpfully.

“It was more than just panic and confusion. It was—” Ian nearly strangled on his own words as a blinding flash of memory cleaved his thoughts. Just for a moment, he was in another place, another time...

Burning buildings, thick smoke, people running to and fro. And his mother, unable to stand what they had done to her, had that same look in her eyes. That look of madness...

“Madness, you say?” Duffie asked.

“Did I say that?”

“Well, if people were to perceive the poor lass to be mad, then...”

Duffie and Ian looked at each other. At the same time, they snapped their fingers and spoke the same thought.

“Bedlam.”

Three (#ulink_9c57a56d-c762-58b9-a808-2433ed676a95)

Marriage is for life. If I were in your place,

I should tie my sheets to a window and be off.

—Queen Maria Carolina of Naples,

grandmother of Empress Marie-Louise

Ian disliked Dr. Beckworth on sight. It had taken a small fortune in bribes to get this far into the horror chamber that was Bedlam, and now Beckworth stood in the middle of his office, the implacable guardian at the threshold.

“What do you mean, you willna take my coin?” Ian demanded.