Page 77 of So Wild A Heart

Devin did not return from Darkwater Tarn until the light began to fail him. He had had a long and satisfying day, and as he rode home he thought with pleasant anticipation of showing Miranda the preliminary sketches he had made of the place. When he reached the house and handed over his horse to a groom, he headed straight for the library. It was empty save for Hiram, who was working at a sheaf of papers.

“Do you know where Miranda is?” he asked Hiram, who looked at him blankly. “Miranda,” he repeated after a moment, wondering what was wrong with the man. “Do you know where she is?”

“But, I—Well, I thought she was with you.”

“With me? No, I have been out at the tarn all day. Why did you think she was with me?”

“I—Well, I assumed it was you. She finished a letter to her banker in New York, then she handed it to me and said she had an appointment. Something about the way she smiled, I, uh, I thought she meant it was with you.”

“No.” Devin looked at him. “It must have been with her father or the architect.”

The other man shrugged, but there was a doubtful expression on his face. “I suppose so, my lord. She didn’t really say. It must have been my mistake.”

Devin turned away and went upstairs. He checked her bedroom first, but she was not there. Something about the odd look on Hiram’s face had set off an alarm inside him. The man had been certain that Miranda had been talking about him. Why? Because she had looked the way she looked when she talked about him. That was what Hiram had meant. What other man would she look that way about? Obviously not her father…or anyone else that Devin could think of in this house.

His mind leapt unbidden to the young doctor in the village, and for an instant jealousy surged through him. Then reason reasserted itself. He was as certain of Miranda as he was of himself—probably more so. If she had decided to take a lover, she would have told him so outright. He told himself that Hiram must have been mistaken, but he could not quell the fear that was burgeoning in his chest. He had grown complacent over the last few weeks because nothing untoward had happened. And in any case, he had never thought that the danger threatened anyone but himself….

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.