Once More, Miranda

by Jennifer Wilde

  “Have you been in touch with him?”

  “I don’t think I care to answer that, Captain Ramsey.”

  “The latest report is that he’s involved with a gang of smugglers working off the Cornish coast. He’s been seen, identified as one of them. The reward for his capture has been doubled.”

  “I fail to see that that has anything to do with me.”

  “On the contrary,” he said, eyes glaring, “I suspect it might have quite a lot to do with you.”

  If I hadn’t been a lady now, if I hadn’t been a guest in a stranger’s home, I would have slapped his face so hard his ears would ring for hours, but I was no longer a fierce little street urchin. I was a dignified adult now, so I merely looked at him with level eyes, one brow faintly arched. Captain Ramsey curled his thin lips, his eyes holding mine while, in the room behind us, voices chattered and china rattled and laughter rang out, drowning the music that was still being played in another room.

  “I repeat, have you been in touch with him?”

  “I have a suggestion, Captain Ramsey,” I said. My voice was extremely polite.

  “What’s that?” he sneered.

  “I suggest you take your questions and shove them up your ass.”

  Ramsey didn’t flinch. The thin lips tightened, and his hands curled up into hard fists. He would have loved to have knocked me down, beaten me black and blue, and he would have liked to do something else, too. I could see it in his eyes. I knew very well how his kind treated any poor woman unfortunate enough to find herself in his power. He would enjoy inflicting pain, and only the most brutal rape would appease his particular appetite.

  “You may be a famous writer, Miss James, you may be protected by wealth and powerful friends, but in my eyes you’re still the whore of a wanted man, and you haven’t seen the last of me.”

  “I’ll be listening for your rattle,” I said. “In the meantime, why don’t you just sod off.”

  Captain Ramsey glared at me for perhaps thirty seconds longer, and then he whirled around and marched off, the fringed gold epaulettes on his broad shoulders shimmering and swaying. The encounter had shaken me far more than I cared to admit, and I longed for another glass of champagne, although I knew it would be a disastrous mistake. I remembered all those questions they had bombarded me with three years ago. Dear God, wasn’t it over yet? Several minutes passed in a blur, the kaleidoscope shifting, colors whirling, and I was surprised to find myself staring into Lady Julia’s face, her eyes protruding, her mouth flapping open and shutting like some great pink trap.

  “—know you’ll adore it,” she was saying. “It’s his favorite piece. No Bach for Dean Jordon, just this Albi—Albay—just this Venetian composer over and over again. Have you met him yet? No? The ladies have been monopolizing him, I fear. I’ll see that you’re introduced to him after the music.”

  “I—really, Lady Julia, I don’t think I—”

  “Come along, my child,” she said gaily. “You’ll want to get a good seat, I know.”

  I found myself following her as though in a trance. We left the vast drawing room and moved into another almost as large. The ornately molded ceiling was pale pink-beige with circular designs in gold leaf, three enormous chandeliers spilling tiers of crystal pendants. The walls were pale powder blue with pink-beige panels painted with delicate green leaves and garlands of roses and plump cherubs playing various musical instruments. Fifty delicate gilt chairs were lined up ten to a row, and at the end of the room, on a low rosewood stage, a huge organ loomed up, the great, golden pipes gleaming in the light. A dozen men in black were tuning up their string instruments, and a spry, red-haired man with a clerical collar bustled about, giving them last-minute instructions.

  Quite a number of guests had been more fortunate than I, making their escape before the performance began. Only half the chairs were taken, and I was one of the last to enter the music room. Captain Ramsey was nowhere in sight. Music would hardly be his pleasure, I thought, still a bit dazed. Sam Johnson had not been among those to make a hasty exit. Seeing me standing there inside the doorway, he leaped out of his chair and moved ponderously over to me.

  “Thought maybe you’d been able to slip off,” he mumbled. “Damned women I was talking to bustled me in here by force, one pulling my left arm, one pulling my right, another powdered hussy pushing me from behind, all of ’em tittering like demented magpies. Come, child, we’ll take seats in the back row.”

  I sat down on one of the gilt chairs, my striped brocade skirt spreading out with a crisp, silken rustle. Johnson sat beside me, the fragile chair making ominous creaks as he shifted his bulk into a comfortable position. People talked quietly, the women toying with fans, many of the gentlemen taking snuff from the small bejeweled boxes no fashionable male was without. The musicians were tuning up, violins making twangy, cricketlike noises. Lady Julia skittered about, speaking to various guests, the tall feathers affixed to her hair bobbing like bizarre tentacles.

  “I hate to admit it,” Johnson remarked, “but Jordon’s really quite good, could have been a professional musician had he not taken the cloth. Invariably plays the same music, though, Adagio in G minor by Albinoni—it’s his showpiece, don’t think he knows anything else. Sentimental claptrap, no intellectual content like you find in Bach, but I suppose it’s a pretty enough tune. I like something a bit more cerebral.”

  I hardly heard him. The encounter with Captain Jon Ramsey had distrubed me a great deal, but not for the obvious reasons. The man himself, his open hostility bothered me not at all—I’d encountered far too much hostility in my lifetime to be bothered by that—but his questions had brought it all back again. Would I never be free? Would Cam Gordon haunt me the rest of my life? Would I feel this sadness, this loss every time I … every time I remembered that tall, slender body, that mouth, those piercing blue eyes, the heavy black wave flopping over his brow? Damn him. Damn him. Why must I remember, why must I long for him still with every fiber of my being?

  Dean Jordon was still bustling about on the stage, speaking to the musicians, occasionally jotting a note on the sheet music in front of them on elegant rosewood stands. Lithe and agile, a bit below medium height, he wore his dark red hair pulled back sleekly and tied at the nape of his neck with a thin black velvet ribbon. Although soberly dressed all in black with the white collar around his throat, he nevertheless had a dandified look. The black breeches, vest and frock coat had the dashing cut only the best tailor could provide, and the cloth was much finer than one would have expected to find on a clergyman. Southwark was, of course, a plush, fashionable parish, I thought, trying to distract myself. Dean Jordon was certainly no longer a youth—he must be at least forty, I reasoned—but he somehow reminded me of a merry, mischievous lad inordinately pleased to be able to show off in front of such a swank, affluent crowd.

  He was taking his seat at the organ now. A hush fell over the people sitting on the gilt chairs. I rarely had an opportunity to hear good music. Perhaps it would help drive those memories away. It began, lovely and lilting, a wave of melody swelling, swelling, ebbing, swelling again, music that was indescribably poignant, as though … as though the most intimate human emotions had been magically transformed into melody … as though the sadness and longing inside me had been captured in sound. The organ swelled. Violins sang softly, sweetly, sad, so sad, lovely, so lovely, over and over again until heartbreak itself washed over one in waves of music. Cam. Cam. There in front of me, his eyes gleaming. Holding me now, caressing me, making love to me … disappearing, my arms reaching out, emptiness, longing, love replaced by anguish as the music ebbed for a final time and the last notes were played. Silence at last, sadness still wafting on air.

  There were tears on my lashes. I brushed them away. Johnson grumbled at my side, dabbing at his own eyes, as moved as I had been but not about to admit it.

  “Sentimental claptrap,” he muttered, “cheap emotional effects, not an ounce, of real content.” He added that he seem
ed to have gotten a speck of dust in his eye.

  Dean Jordon was standing now, bowing humbly in acknowledgment of the polite applause. People were getting up, chattering again, a magical spell broken. “More champagne!” Lady Julia cried. “Everyone must have more champagne!” Johnson stood up, gave me his hand. I felt weak, emotionally depleated.

  “I—I’m really not feeling well,” I said. “I must—must get home.”

  “Come with me,” he said gruffly.

  He gripped my arm and led me out of the music room and through the enormous drawing room, snarling viciously at all those who approached us, trying to stop our progress with questions or effusive comments. He led me into the empty foyer and told me to wait, he’d have my carriage brought around front, it’d probably take five minutes or so, take deep breaths. Was I going to swoon? I shook my head. He gave me a worried look and shambled out, glaring menacingly at the two bewigged footmen stationed on either side of the door. I stood beneath one of the chandeliers, a tall, pale woman reflected in the mirrors, her rich coppery red hair worn in sculpted waves, long ringlets spilling down in back, her black brocade gown with its thin gold, pink and silver stripes rich and sumptuous. Who was she? What was she doing here?

  “Honora?”

  I turned. Dean Jordon was standing several yards away, staring at me with incredulous brown eyes. He shook his head, blinked, looked at me again and put a palm to his brow.

  “You—you must forgive me,” he said. “It couldn’t be, of course. For a moment—” He cut himself short, shook his head again as though to clear it of some disturbing image. “Forgive me,” he repeated.

  “You—you called me Honora.”

  “You reminded me—you look so much like a lady I once knew, many years ago, a very lovely lady. Your hair is a different color, your eyes, too, but the features—the features are amazingly alike. You might be her twin. She would have been about your age when I last saw her. I played the organ at her wedding, Albinoni, in fact, the piece you just heard. I was a mere lad at the time—it must have been twenty-three, twenty-four years ago.”

  Dean Jordon came closer, still studying my face as though he couldn’t believe what he saw. The two footmen stationed by the door were immobile, looking at us with indifferent eyes. Close to, the Dean still resembled a mischievous lad, only the fine lines about his eyes and mouth betraying his true age. It was a good-natured face, the mouth generous, the eyes amiable a scattering of freckles across his nose and cheekbones.

  “Her name was Honora?” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “Honora James. Married Jeffrey Mowrey. Never saw a young couple so much in love. Like a fairy tale, it was, their story, with, alas, a very sad ending. He died right after the wedding, and she—”

  “I am Miranda James,” I said.

  Dean Jordon took a step backward, shaken. His eyes grew even wider with disbelief.

  “No. No, it—it’s too—you couldn’t be the child who—” He placed a palm over his brow again as though to check for fever. “She disappeared, vanished into thin air, it seemed. My uncle, Reverend Williams, came to London as soon as he received Honora’s manuscript and read it. She had already died. The child had run off. He spent almost three weeks in St. Giles trying to locate her.”

  “My mother died,” I said. “They were going to send me to the parish workhouse. I ran away. I—I had a friend. She hid me from the authorities.”

  My voice seemed to come from a very long way off. It seemed to belong to someone else. The sparkling crystal chandeliers, the gold gilt, the footmen in their white satin breeches and blue satin coats and powdered wigs, the sound of laughter and chatter drifting into the foyer, the woman in the mirror, the redhaired man in black—none of it had reality. Dean Jordon took my hands in his, holding them in a strong grip.

  “My child, you’re pale. Probably am myself. I never thought—the fate of that child has haunted me for over two decades, and now—” He hesitated, squeezing my hands tightly. “I still have the manuscript your mother wrote. She sent it to my uncle in Cornwall, and it was with his things when he died.”

  Johnson came through the door, looking extremely belligerent when he saw the Dean gripping my hands.

  “You couldn’t really call it a letter,” Dean Jordon continued. “She wanted to—she wanted my uncle to know the full story so that he could explain things to you when were you were old enough—”

  “What’s this!” Johnson barked. “Miss James isn’t feeling well. She’s in no condition to listen to you chatter about some—”

  “I’ll bring it to you tomorrow,” the Dean said. “Four o’clock in the afternoon? Will that be convenient?”

  I nodded. “Grosvenor Square. Lord Markham’s place, the Dower House in back of Markham House.”

  “My child, this is amazing. I still can’t believe—”

  Johnson led me away and helped me into the waiting carriage and insisted on riding back with me. I vaguely remember saying good-bye to him when we got home, sending him off to his own house in the carriage. Millie had come over and was waiting up for me, eager to hear all the details of my glamorous evening out. I shook my head, unable to speak. She helped me undress, helped me into bed. The champagne, the encounter with Ramsey, the music, the memories, the amazing meeting with Dean Jordon had all taken their toll, and I sank into a heavy sleep immediately, one blessedly free of dreams.

  I slept until ten the next morning and awoke in a stupor. Millie brought a pot of hot coffee and some buttered croissant rolls up on a tray, hovering over me like a broody hen. My head was splitting. I sent her away. The coffee was very strong. It helped. By eleven I was feeling somewhat better. By twelve I had bathed, washed my hair, brushed it and put on a simply cut but elegant yellow silk frock. When Dean Jordon arrived at four, I was waiting for him in the drawing room, calm, composed, in complete control of myself.

  “I must apologize for last night,” I said when Millie showed him into the room. “I’m afraid I wasn’t myself.”

  “Nor was I,” he admitted. “The shock of it all quite discombobulated me. After all these years—it’s amazing, child, absolutely amazing.”

  He carried a thick parcel covered in heavy brown paper. He handed it to me, and I placed it on my desk. The Dean was wearing clothes identical to the ones he had worn last night, sober but expensive, exquisitely cut, a fresh white clerical collar around his throat. Sober or no, there was a glossy patina about him, an indefinable glamor, and one sensed exuberant high spirits carefully repressed, boyish merriment just beneath the surface.

  “Could I pour you a glass of wine?” I asked.

  “I’d be delighted. You have a lovely place, Miss James. That Hogarth—I know I’ve seen it before.”

  “Prints of it were sold all over London,” I said, pouring sparkling white wine into a crystal glass.

  “I know who you are, of course. Miranda James—M.J. I didn’t make the connection last night. I read Duchess Annie, of course. I suspect much of it is autobiographical—an orphan who grows up on the streets, becomes a pickpocket, meets an artist who takes her into his home.”

  “I—I used some of my own experiences, yes.”

  “I’ve also read your stories. You’re a very gifted young woman.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re not joining me?” he inquired when I handed him the glass.

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t. I’m not accustomed to drinking, and I had far too much champagne last night. It was the only way I could endure the evening.”

  “Things do tend to get rather hectic at Lady Julia’s, but she’s a dear lady, actually. Means well, even if she’s a mite overbearing at times. Extremely charitable, too. That’s very important in my line of work.”

  “It was very kind of you to come today, Dean Jordon. I know you must have a terribly crowded schedule.”

  “There are an awful lot of demands,” he confessed, “but it’s all for the Lord. I reread your mother’s manuscript last night—it’s
a remarkable document. It’s all there, my own small part included. She caught me to the life, I fear. You came by your literary talents quite naturally.”

  “I’m eager to—to read it.”

  Dean Jordon took a final sip of wine and set the glass down. His thick red hair gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the windows. His freckles were a light golden brown, adding a piquant touch to that boyish middle-aged face. He took my hands as he had done the night before, holding them in a surprisingly strong grip. He smiled a gentle smile and nodded and squeezed my hands tightly, releasing them a moment later.

  “Of course you are,” he said quietly, “and I shan’t detain you. I’m delighted to have found you at last, my child, and I hope you will come to see me soon. We have much to talk about.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  I showed him out. A carriage was waiting for him on the drive. I waited until it had driven away, standing there on the doorstep with the sunshine making silver yellow patterns on the lawn, and then I went inside. I told Millie I did not wish to be disturbed. I went into the drawing room, sat down at the desk and unwrapped the parcel Dean Jordon had brought. The pages were old and brittle, beginning to brown slightly with age, and the ink was faded, but the words were quite legible. I hesitated, a strange, tremulous feeling welling up inside, and then I began to read:

  There is so much to say and so little time. There is so much Miranda must know, so much she must understand, and one day she will, I trust. One day she will be old enough to understand and forgive. I’d like to take her into my arms right now and explain it all to her in my own voice and let her see my eyes and what is in my heart, but I dare not.…

  33

  The sky stretched overhead, endless and airy, white, with the vaguest suggestion of blue, while below the land was rugged and rocky, bleak, gray and brown and gray green with patches of tarry black. There were touches of pale, faded purple as well as the stark white sunlight washed over the short gray-tan grass and the enormous gray boulders. Gulls soared against the sky, cawing angrily as my private coach forged ahead, the four sturdy horses plodding steadily, the coach itself shaking and rocking as the wheels moved over the rough ground. I had hired it in London. The horses had been changed a number of times, and it seemed I had been on the road forever, staying the nights in rustic inns. My journey was almost over now. I should reach Mowrey House before noon.