Miranda by Susan Wiggs

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.
    â€œHave I been here before?” she asked. She nearly reeled with weariness, her hair escaping from its single frayed string, yet a sense of exhilaration buoyed her up.
    â€œNay, lass. It’s not proper for an unchaperoned lady to call on a gentleman.”
    The word lady rolled elegantly off his tongue. His Scottish burr turned mere words to poetry. She felt a ripple of delight course through her. “Have I always loved the way you talk...Ian?” It felt delicious and right to call him by his Christian name.
    He looked at her with his gentian blue eyes, and the shiver up her back turned to a warm river of sensation. “You never told me so,” he said.
    â€œI should have.”
    He gave her the oddest sensation, a sort of breath-held anticipation that lodged behind her heart. Had he always had this effect on her? How in heaven’s name could she have forgotten?
    Miranda saw a movement from the corner of her eye. Turning, she noticed a window in the wall. A woman stood in the window, watching her. And then it hit her—this was no window, but a mirror. The first mirror she had encountered since her terrifying journey into madness had begun. Her heart pounded as she looked into the glass. A complete stranger looked back at her. Miranda lifted one hand to her cheek, skimming it along a cheekbone and across a straight dark brow. The stranger did the same.
    A feeling of utter panic swept over her. What sort of oddity of nature was she, a woman so addled in the brain that she did not know her own face? Brown eyes—what had they seen that was so horrible she had hidden from the memory? Dark curls falling across a high, clear brow—had her unremembered father ever kissed her there? An ordinary nose and a wide mouth—had she opened it to scream the night of the fire?
    Who are you? she asked the image silently. What have you done with your life?
    The stranger stared silently back at her. There were no answers in the unfamiliar brown eyes. Only questions. Only an endless string of questions, and the answers were locked up inside the creature in the mirror.
    She looked back at Ian, feeling more lost and helpless than ever, and wanting more than ever to be swept into his world, where she knew she would be safe.
    For long moments they simply stared at each other like two figures in a painting. His face was inscrutable, while Miranda felt certain every inch of her yearning for him surely showed on her features. She wanted to tumble right into the middle of his life, and she had never been so aware of her own desire. Had she?
    Then Ian looked past her and broke the spell. He said something in a rolling, guttural tongue that she recognized as Gaelic but did not understand.
    â€œMy assistant,” Ian said, taking her by the shoulders and steering her around. “Angus McDuff.”
    She turned to see a cherubic man of middle years, dapper in black breeches and a tartan waistcoat, his gray beard forming a bristly U from ear to ear.
    Angus McDuff spoke with Ian in Gaelic, then swept low in a courtly bow. “How good it is to see you safe and sound, Miss Miranda.”
    She inched her head. He seemed to know her, or at least to know of her. “It is good to be safe,” she said. “But sound?” She looked helplessly at Ian. “I cannot remember my life before the moment of the explosion.”
    â€œSo he was just explaining. Some things are for the best, my dear. ’Tis a thing I have always believed.”
    â€œThank you, Mr.