by Candace Camp
He whirled around and charged out of his room. He went first to the Upshaws’ room, where he found both Joseph and his wife.
“Miranda?” her father said in surprise. “Why, no, I haven’t seen her since luncheon. Have you checked the library?”
“She left there long ago.”
“Where is she?” Elizabeth’s voice rose hysterically. “Has something happened to her?”
He glanced over at the woman. He was rarely around Miranda’s stepmother, who usually kept to her rooms, but as he looked at her now, an odd feeling swept through him. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come, and he saw only a frightened woman.
“Did you do something to her?” Elizabeth went on, her voice almost a shriek.
“Elizabeth! Dear, what are you saying?” Joseph turned to his wife with a horrified look. He put his hands on her arms and turned her aside, leading her over to a chair. “Please, I am sure there is nothing to worry about. Miranda can take care of herself. She often goes off on her own. She will turn up before supper.”
He returned to Devin, saying in a low voice, “I apologize. My wife is not feeling well, and she worries so over the girls. She has been, well, very anxious for weeks now. I’m not sure why. Let’s go out and see if we can track down that girl.”
But Elizabeth would not be left behind. She insisted on going with them as they looked for Miranda. They went first to Veronica’s room, where they were informed that she had not seen her stepsister all day. Devin went from door to door throughout the house, his fear swelling with each passing moment as he opened and closed the doors on empty rooms. Something had happened to her. He had been careless, unthinking, and Miranda had paid the price for it.
Miranda’s scream pierced the air as she pitched forward into utter darkness. For one blind, panicked moment, she was certain that she was dead. Then she slammed into a hard wall and slid along it, her feet stumbling on the stone stairs. Her legs buckled under her, and she came down hard on her knees and banged her side into the wall once more. She stopped, crumpled against the wall, and for a long moment she just lay there, stunned.
Gradually the pain in various parts of her body pierced through the shock that had overtaken her. Her head hurt, her legs were twisted in an untenable position under her, and the palms of her hands stung, as did her left arm. Gingerly she moved, reaching up to brace a hand against the unseen wall as she swung first one leg, then the other, out from under her. She breathed a sigh of relief when her feet met stone steps and not mere air beneath them. A little more comfortable, she leaned against the wall, wrapping her arms around herself in an attempt to stop the shivering that had seized her entire body.
Someone had attacked her! It took some time to get her mind around that thought. But clearly someone had lured her to this cellar door with a note, then jerked her inside and pushed her down the stairs. The assumption must have been, of course, that she would die. And so she would have, if the push she had been given had not propelled her to the side as well as forward, so that she met the wall beside the stairs instead of hurtling straight forward down them.
Miranda wished she could stop shivering. It was cold and damp in the cellar, and combined with the cold clutch of fear, she was chilled through and through. She huddled against the wall in the darkness, trying to think. How had this happened? More than that, who would want her dead?
Her mind went unbidden to her stepmother’s warnings the other day. She had dismissed them out of hand, assuming they were simply the sort of unfounded anxieties Elizabeth often suffered from. But now she could not help but think of them, take them out of the back of her mind and look at them. The note had come from Dev, directing her to this place of likely death. And who would benefit the most by her death? Well, her father and Veronica, if the truth were known, but she would have believed them as capable of trying to kill her as she was of flying. Dev, while he might not inherit the total of her fortunes, had been given a large lump sum under the terms of her will, enough, as Elizabeth had pointed out, to make it worth his while to get rid of her—especially if it would also get rid of the unwanted burden of a wife.
Tears sprang into Miranda’s eyes, and she let out a choked sob. Was it possible that Dev had been merely acting a role the past few weeks, pretending to be happy with her, pretending to have broken it off with Leona, all so that he would look blameless when she was found dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs?
Miranda pressed a trembling hand to her mouth, on the verge of giving way to hysteria. She held herself quite still for a moment, tensing every fiber of her being. It was not Dev! It simply could not have been Devin!
She gritted her teeth and took a firm hold of her emotions. She was not going to break down. She refused to give way to this fleeting moment of doubt and fear. She was too strong for that.
Sternly she shoved aside her raging fear. It was not Dev who had done this to her. That was ridiculous. Her heart knew it, even if her head had panicked for a moment. She knew Devin. He had not lied to her. He had never lied to her. He had been honest from the first when he told her that he did not want to marry her. He had not been playing false with her the past few weeks. She was certain of that. Whoever had done this to her, it was not Devin.
And she was acting like a fool, sitting here, trembling and doubting Devin. She had not even climbed the stairs to see if she could open the door and leave.
She stood up carefully, mindful of the fact that on the other side of the stairs there might very well be empty air all the way down to the bottom of the cellar. Keeping both hands on the wall, she began to inch her way back up, feeling with her foot for each step and sliding it upward. It was utterly dark except for the tiny line of light that showed between the top of the door and the door frame, barely enough to pinpoint where the door was. With every step she took, she was reminded of her aches and pains. The sleeve of her dress was in tatters on the left side where she had scraped along the rough stone wall, and there was a large rent in the left side of her skirt, as well. Her upper arm was scraped and stung like mad, for she had lost a good bit of skin from it to the life-saving wall, as well. Seemingly every muscle and bone in her ached from the jarring fall, and she was sure that the next day she would be a study in black-and-blue bruises.
Finally she reached the door and felt for its handle. All she encountered was an old-fashioned iron ring. She hooked her hand through it and pulled, but as she had expected, the door did not budge. Whoever had shoved her down the stairs had locked the door behind him, too. It would have been foolish of him to do anything else, of course.
She leaned against the thick wooden door, fighting off another swell of panic. How long would it take someone to find her? She had not told anyone where she was going, only saying to Hiram that she had an appointment. It could be hours before anyone even realized that she was missing, given the size of the vast house. They might not begin to worry until she did not show up for supper. Then they would have no idea where to look. She had slipped the note into her pocket; there would be no hope of anyone finding it and following her to the cellar. And who would ever suspect that that was where she had gone?
Panic rising inside her again, she began to pound on the door and kick it, screaming at the top of her lungs. After a few minutes she sagged to the floor, exhausted. Her effort had been useless, she was sure. The door was very old, but sturdy, built of thick planks of wood, and the cellars were made of even thicker stone. She was certain that all the noise she had made had been immediately swallowed up. She drew a few deep calming breaths and tried not to give way to despair.
Devin would come looking for her when he did not find her at home. He would not give up until the house and surrounding area had been thoroughly combed. And there was a whole houseful of family and servants to look for her. She would be found eventually. It might take a while, and it was not pleasant sitting alone in the dark, dank cellar, but she could endure it. It was only a matter of time.
In the meantime, she decid
ed, she would occupy herself with considering who had done this to her.
The note had been a trick, obviously. It had looked like Devin’s handwriting, but there had been very few words, and she was not that familiar with his handwriting, having seen it only a couple of times. It was a distinctive hand, probably easy to copy, with its bold, spiky letters. Someone had sent her a phony note, then waited for her to come running, counting on her love for Devin. But who? And why?
No one would gain by her death except her father, Veronica and Devin, and she refused to believe that it was any of them. There must be some other explanation. Yet she could think of none.
She leaned back against the door, bracing her elbows on her knees and dropping her face into her hands. Dev would come for her, she told herself. He would come.
Miranda did not know how long she sat in the chilled, damp dark. It seemed like a lifetime. She passed from determination to despair and back again half a dozen times. She thought about her life, her family, about Dev. She remembered the first time she met him and all the times they had been together since then. In retrospect, it did not seem like much time. Yet she loved him as she had never loved anyone else. She had known instinctively, she thought, that very first time she saw him. She remembered the sudden clutching in her gut when she had looked into his eyes and the strange feeling that she knew him. She had known him. She had known him on some basic, primal level that had told her this was the man for her, the man she loved.
Others would doubtless have told her that she was mad to marry him as she had, based only on that instinct. They would have said that she had been swayed by his wicked good looks and that it was infatuation, not love, she felt. But Miranda had known differently. She had loved him, if not quite from the first, at least from the night of Rachel’s party, when he had dizzied her with his kisses and then she had looked at his paintings and seen into his soul. She had known then that there was no one else for her. Everything that had happened since had only made her love him more.
She was not as sure of his love for her. He wanted her, she knew that. He had committed himself to her. But he had never told her that he loved her. That emotion, she feared, was still given to Leona.
But someday, she told herself, he would realize that it was she he loved. She would erase Leona’s image in his mind and replace it with her own. Provided that she ever got out of this cellar, of course, she reminded herself wryly.
She was slumped back against the door when she heard a noise. It took a moment for it to register; then she stiffened, sitting up straight. It was muffled, but surely that was the sound of a voice.
Miranda jumped to her feet, wincing at the pain in her ankle, and began to beat at the door again, shouting. She paused to take a breath, and as she did so, she heard a muffled call outside the door. It was Devin, and it was her name that he yelled.
Miranda screamed back. A moment later something heavy thudded into the door. It thudded again and again, but the door barely rattled in its frame. It had been built to last an age. She heard Devin’s voice again, cursing colorfully, and she smiled. A few minutes later there was a creaking sound, a grating of metal on metal, and she realized that he must have turned a key in the lock.
Miranda stepped aside just in time as the door swung open with a bang. For an instant Devin was silhouetted in the door frame, ducking his head to come inside, and then he was on the step with her, his arms going around her like iron and holding her to him.
“Miranda,” he breathed into her hair. “Miranda, thank God. Thank God. I thought I had lost you forever.”
“It’s my fault,” Devin said, pacing up and down his bedroom floor.
It was three hours later, and Miranda was ensconced in Devin’s huge, sheltering bed, having taken a bath, been fed, and had her various scrapes and scratches patched up. Devin had insisted on her drinking a restorative brandy, so now she felt pleasantly warm and slightly tipsy as she watched him stride restlessly across the floor. They had spent some time explaining to each other exactly how they had gotten into their relative situations, with Miranda telling him of the note and the push down the stairs, and Devin sharing how one of the housemaids had happened to see Miranda walking behind the house close to the door, thus saving them a good many hours in their search for her—and saving Miranda a long, cold wait in the dark. Devin had looked at the note in Miranda’s pocket and immediately declared it a forgery, but Miranda had already figured that out. Unfortunately, it yielded no clues. It was merely a piece of notepaper, which might be found anywhere about the house—or any other house, for that matter. There was nothing to say who had penned it, or even whether the person lived inside the house with them—a harrowing thought—or was a complete stranger who had somehow managed to sneak in.
“But why would anyone want to do away with me?” Miranda had asked reasonably.
Devin’s response had been his terse statement that it was his fault.
“I beg your pardon,” Miranda responded. “How is it your fault?”
“I knew there was something going on,” he said flatly. “I should have been more careful. I should have watched out for you better. The thing was, I thought it was me they were after.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who. Whoever did this…and the railing in the library…and the rock on the cliff.”
Miranda shivered. “So you think all those things were planned, too?” During her long, cold hours of waiting, she had been forced to agree with her stepmother’s analysis of the “accidents.”
“Of course. Rocks do fall from limestone cliffs. I have seen them lying about before. But how likely is it that one would happen to fall right when you were riding beneath it—especially just after the railing in the library had been sawed through so that you fell?”
“It was sawed? It wasn’t just rotting wood that broke?”
“No. That wood happened to be solid. I was pretty certain of that, for I had been up on that balcony only a couple of days before, looking at the wood, and I knew there had been none of the telltale wormholes in it. That is why I went up there to check after you left. And I found that it had been sawed almost completely through at both ends.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Miranda asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to alarm you. And I didn’t realize that you were in danger. I thought it was an accident that you had been the one leaning on the rail. I assumed it was intended for me.”
“Why?”
“Because of the other attacks. The ones in London. The night we met, and the other time at Vauxhall Gardens. Both times, they came after me. So when the railing was tampered with, I thought they intended to harm me. The same thing when the rock came crashing down. I was in the same party, and I assumed that they were inept and had pushed it too late to hit me. I tried to watch over you because I was afraid that you might get hurt simply by being around me, as you were those two times, but I did not realize that you were the target. I still have absolutely no idea who has been doing it or why. Was I wrong? Were they really after you the other times? Or was it me they wanted to harm, and they later decided that they could harm me by hurting you?”
“But who would want to harm you?” Miranda asked.
He smiled ruefully. “Any number of people, I’m afraid. That first night, I thought they were overzealous bill collectors, frankly. Some ruffians that someone to whom I owed money had sent to frighten me into paying. The second man seemed much more intent on killing me, however, and I don’t know how that would benefit a bill collector.” He paused, looking at Miranda. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Miranda responded. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. You looked quite odd for a moment.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose it was thinking of that man who came at us with a knife.”
Miranda hoped that her voice had come out normally. The truth was that when Devin had mentioned the man who had come out of the dark a
t them with a knife, it had struck her like a bolt of lightning: their attacker that night was the same man whom she had seen her stepmother talking to not long ago down by the old orchards!
She felt cold, as if all the blood in her had drained away somewhere. She had to struggle to pay attention to what Devin was saying. “But there are many people I have offended over the years,” he was continuing. “It could be any one of them. I have scarcely led an exemplary life. What I can’t figure out, though, is why any of them should wait until now to try to do me in. On the other hand, if it is you they are really after, then why did those men attack me the first night? You were not with me. I had never even met you. Even more to the point, why would anyone wish to do you in?”
Miranda did not answer. The answer, she thought, was sitting right in front of her. If Miranda died, her estate went to her father and her stepsister. Elizabeth would not inherit directly, but she would be giving her daughter a rather large present. And with Miranda gone, when Joseph died, Elizabeth and her daughter would inherit all of his money, not just part of it.
But she could not bring herself to believe that her stepmother had actually hired someone to kill her. Elizabeth had been the closest thing to a mother Miranda had ever known. Had Elizabeth been merely pretending to love her all these years? Had she secretly wished her out of the way? She remembered how Elizabeth had come to her the other day, warning her against Devin. What better way to throw any possible suspicion away from herself?
