Miranda by Susan Wiggs Page B

lass?”
    â€œI don’t remember my own past, save what you’ve told me. But I know nothing of your past, either.”
    And he would never tell her, Ian thought. The one thing he would not do with his pain was share it.
    He grinned at her and winked. “I was an exemplary lad in every way. Surely there is no question of that.” He took her hand and started walking again.
    â€œSomeday, Ian MacVane,” Miranda said, “I am going to get the truth out of you.”
    Not in this life, he thought grimly. Not in this bloody life.
    The pony cart that had brought their belongings from the ship had preceded them to the village. Clearly Duffie and Robbie had made a grand announcement, for townspeople were waiting expectantly just beyond the gate.
    The drystone walls had crumbled low, though when the Scots had first built them to deter raiding Norsemen, the defensive structure had stood tall and sturdy. Now the barrier resembled a set of decaying teeth, weathered by the centuries and the incessant wind off the moors. Rock roses and ivy twined in and out of the stones. In the background stood the steeple of the village kirk. At the end of the lane was a stone cottage with yellow thatching on the roof and a trellis of twisted old roses framing the gate to the dooryard. Agnes’s place.
    Miranda stopped walking again.
    â€œAre you all right?” Ian asked her.
    â€œIt’s just that this is all so lovely. Like a painting or...or a dream.”
    To Ian, the place looked like no more than it was—the village to which he had walked hand in hand with his father each Thursday to buy rye flour and to sell eggs. Little had changed; Crough na Muir was sturdy and drab. Yet unexpected bursts of flowers in the window boxes cheered the place, much like a smile on the face of a plain girl.
    No one was smiling now. The knot of people waiting inside the town gate looked piercingly inquisitive. When last they had seen him, he’d had a rope around his neck and wrists and was being led off by English soldiers.
    â€œAs I live and breathe,” said a wiry man with a gap-toothed grin. He pointed to his chest. “Callum Grundy—I was a friend of your da, and you’re the very image of him.” Callum scratched his head beneath a worn woolen cap. “Never thought a MacVane would tread this path again.”
    â€œâ€™Tis grand to be back, Callum. I know you all from Agnes’s letters, every one of you.”
    â€œAye, you’re the picture of your father, Lord grant him eternal peace,” Flora Hunt agreed. “You have his charming, smooth way, too, laddie.”
    Ian tried not to see it, but the people were gaunt and unwashed, their clothes little better than rags. Under a proper laird, the crofters of the district might have flourished. But Adder had stolen good fortune from them all those years ago.
    Rather than seeing to their welfare, he had merely engaged a factor to extract rents. Occasionally he sent bored English peers to the manor house, once the residence of the laird, but now a brooding hulk on the hill. According to Agnes, the visitors did nothing but drink and hunt grouse on the moors.
    Just for a moment, an old dream flickered in the back of Ian’s mind. Perhaps it was awakened by the nearness of Miranda. There was something about her, a special quality that awakened old hidden desires. He did not like it, did not trust it; he feared she would cause him to care about things better ignored.
    Ian sometimes dreamed that he was the laird, wise and benevolent, devoted to the welfare of Crough na Muir. He was a part of their lives, watching them grow up and marry, mourning with them when they buried their dead, celebrating with them over the birth of a bairn. Rather than living amid strangers, he had a place to belong. A place that belonged to him.
    The yearning for it rose like an ache in his chest, and he was stunned to feel it. He had not dared to want something like