Call Down the Moon (14 page)

“Yes, that is what I am saying, my lord. However, if you make the investment, I can nearly guarantee that Lyden will pay back double your money in a bit of time—perhaps even within the year. The income from the estate would also be vastly increased as a result.”

Double his money? Hugo rather liked the sound of that. Once he married Meggie, he’d have four hundred thousand pounds—well, two hundred thousand, anyway, after paying Waldock. Fifty thousand wasn’t so very much to put out, not if he’d see the return within a year.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “It wouldn’t do to let the tenants suffer or to let Lyden slip any further downhill. Double my money, you say, as well as increase my income?”

“Indeed, my lord,” Coldsnap said, leaning forward with an eager expression.

“Well, I do believe in wise investments, and I have the money at hand. I am always interested in building my financial holdings.”

“Ah,” Coldsnap said, nodding with satisfaction. “So you are a man of business. I am pleased to hear it. Forgive me, my lord, but so often men of your … status, shall I say, are interested only in spending money, not in making it. I have seen more cases of lives wasted, if not ruined, by self-indulgence.”

Hugo colored, feeling as if Coldsnap had somehow seen through him. “That is not the case here,” he replied tightly.

“Indeed not, my lord. You are clearly a man who understands the meaning of responsibility. My heart is gladdened to say that you take after Lord Eliot, and I cannot say enough fine things about him, God rest his soul.”

Alarmed to see a mist forming behind Reginald Cold-snap’s spectacles, Hugo smiled weakly. “I am complimented by your good faith.”

“Lyden is indeed fortunate to have you,” Coldsnap continued, moving his handkerchief to his nose and sniffing loudly. “It will be a joy to have you and your wife here, Lord Hugo, it will indeed.”

“Thank you,” he said dryly. “You are very kind. I hope my wife and I will prove ourselves worthy of your confidence.”

Oh,
God.
What had he gotten himself into? Not only had he inherited two batty spinsters, he’d also inherited a myopic steward overflowing with sentiment. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the lunatic—though extremely desirable—wife he was about to acquire.

Coldsnap leaned a little closer, his needle nose positively twitching. “Speaking of confidence, my lord, tell me. Do you ever invest on the ‘Change?”

Hugo had never invested in anything but pleasure before buying Lyden Hall, but he saw no reason for Coldsnap to know that. He rather liked being regarded as a man of business. “On occasion,” he lied. “Why do you ask?”

Coldsnap lowered his voice to a near whisper. “If you are interested in lucrative investments, then I would advise you to listen to Ottoline and Dorelia Mabey. Lord Eliot told me they have a genius for the ‘Change.”

“You cannot be serious,” Hugo said, hiding a derogatory smirk in his napkin. The Mabey sisters couldn’t hold two thoughts together, let alone know a sensible investment from a hat pin.

“I am perfectly serious,” Coldsnap said. “Lord Eliot followed their every suggestion.”

“Did he?” Hugo replied, wondering if Linus Eliot had possessed any common sense at all. If Eliot really had allowed the Mabey sisters to rule the roost, let alone been mad enough to listen to their advice on finances, it was little wonder that Lyden was now in trouble.

The whole truth became obvious to Hugo: The real reason for the trustees’ hard line was that they’d been trying to salvage what they could from what Eliot had left behind, not that they were greedy, as Coldsnap had implied. No wonder the price of Lyden had been severely reduced. Eliot had left no money to support it.

Oh, well. No need for
him
to worry. He’d be a rich man in a matter of hours. All in all, he’d done very well for himself, the small matter of Lyden’s present financial difficulties aside. He would show everyone what a clever man of business he really was by bringing Lyden back from the brink of collapse. With a little effort, he could make it one of England’s showplaces.

He wiped his mouth and tossed his napkin aside, feeling much better, even magnanimous, now that he’d eaten. “When do you need this money?” he asked.

“As soon as humanly possible,” Coldsnap said. “That is, when you can, my lord. May I make expenditures based on your promise, then?”

“Naturally,” Hugo said. “What is the use of having money if not to put it to some good use? Forge ahead, my good man. Let us reclaim Lyden’s former glory, shall we?”

Coldsnap actually leapt to his feet. “Let us indeed, my lord. We will meet the challenge and we will emerge victorious!” he cried, as if he were Henry the Fifth about to launch the battle of Agincourt. “You have a few hours to spare until your marriage—why do we not make a beginning at surveying the property? I will introduce you to some of those whose lives you are about to restore. What more worthy a gift to your tenants on your wedding day than this news? They will forever be grateful, not to mention forever loyal to you!”

“Yes,” Hugo said, seeing a pleasing image of himself riding about in style, heaping beneficence on his tenants. It
was
a worthy gesture. He could more than make up for his undignified arrival yesterday with such a gesture. This would be his proper homecoming.

Yes. That was it. He would take one of his perfect white geldings and prance elegantly about, accepting his tenants’ homage most graciously on this, the day of his wedding.

He couldn’t have choreographed anything more perfect himself. “Do let us get started,” he said to Coldsnap. “We haven’t all that much time.”

“Indeed not, my lord.” He beamed at Hugo. “You will give great happiness, I assure you.”

Hugo, by this time feeling so filled with happy visions of his future along with
bonhomie
toward Reginald Coldsnap for having provided the means for a triumphant arrival, stood and merrily slung his arm around the older man’s gaunt shoulder.

“Proceed, Coldsnap,” he proclaimed. “We shall announce the good news to all concerned that they have a new lord, one who will return them to prosperity. Organize some kind of celebration in the village tonight for my tenants so that they know it for truth—a feast, perhaps. Say it is in honor of my wedding.”

“A splendid idea,” Coldsnap said with satisfaction. “I will confer with Cookie and the Misses Mabey about what can be put together at such short notice, then meet you outside. Oh, it is a fine day, sir, a fine day indeed.”

Hugo rather agreed with him.

“L
ift them up, Ottoline, lift them up,” Dorelia mumbled through a mouth full of pins.

Ottoline obliged her sister, yanking Meggie’s arms above her head while Dorelia fiddled with the side seam of the white lace and satin dress she was attempting to fit to Meggie’s body.

“Mmmph,” Dorelia said. “Down again.”

Ottoline yanked Meggie’s arms back to her side.

Meggie didn’t mind being pushed and pulled about, and talked about as if she were not there. She was too busy thinking about what would happen once the dress came off again. If she could stay awake, that was.

She’d hardly slept the night before, not very surprising considering what had happened to her in only a few short hours. One minute she’d been plain old Meggie Bloom going about her daily chores as usual. The next minute she found herself affianced to a duke’s son, swept away to his grand estate, dressed in silk, and fed lobster and meringues. Not to mention being kissed good night as if she were the most beautiful, desirable creature on earth.

And she’d thought such things only happened in fairy tales.

Meggie smiled to herself. At some point in her life she must have been very, very good for God to be rewarding her so, although she couldn’t recall when that might have been.

“Lovely, lovely,” Dorelia said, hopping up from her knees and admiring her handiwork. “Oh, the memories this brings back of darling Lally’s wedding day. She looked so charming in this dress, do you remember, Ottoline?”

“Really, Sister, do you think I am losing my wits? Naturally I remember. I also remember how pale and nervous she was, unlike our dear Meggie here.” Ottoline regarded Meggie thoughtfully. “Of course it was little wonder, Lally having been sheltered all her life,” she added with the raise of an eyebrow. “The dear was a complete innocent. She even swooned before entering the chapel. If
you
remember, Sister.”

Meggie blushed furiously, wondering if Ottoline somehow knew about the fevered kiss Meggie had exchanged with Hugo.

“Ottoline!” her sister said in a reproving tone. “Not all brides swoon before their wedding. In any case, Lally’s nerves were always delicate. Meggie has not enjoyed a life where she could indulge in the same delicacy of disposition.”

That was true enough, Meggie thought to herself. Heaven forbid if the nuns had ever caught her displaying anything but fortitude.

“
I
consider Meggie’s demeanor to be suitably serene,” Dorelia continued. “Why should she be nervous when she knows she has made a wise choice?”

Meggie prayed that was the case. She’d spent a portion of her sleepless night quaking with fear that she didn’t have the first idea what she was doing.

Ottoline took the slippers Dorelia handed her and brushed the toes with her sleeve. “Did I tell you, I saw dear Hugo leaving the house with Reginald. He gave every appearance of being cheerful, so perhaps I was mistaken about a certain surliness of temperament.”

She put the slippers on the ground and nodded toward Meggie, which Meggie assumed meant she was to step into them. Fortunately they just fit. Meggie envisioned Ottoline happily removing a toe or two if they’d proved too tight.

“Cheerful? It
is
dear Hugo’s wedding day,” Dorelia pointed out to her sister. “He has every reason to be cheerful. We shall have to wait and see about his temperament. Time will tell, time will tell.”

Meggie had wondered about Hugo’s temperament herself. She had noticed a tendency toward moodiness, but she had attributed his bouts of irritation to exhaustion. Oh, she did wish she could tell at least a little something about what went on inside his head.

Still, she’d learn about him soon enough, and in the normal way that people went about discovering each other’s nature. She supposed her failure to read him really was for the best, maybe even the blessing Sister Agnes seemed to think it was.

“Now for the finishing touch,” Ottoline said, pushing Meggie down into a chair without ceremony. She placed a delicate lace veil on Meggie’s head, arranging it so that it trailed down Meggie’s back.

Dorelia clapped her hands together in delight. “Perfect. Where is the wreath of flowers I made, Ottoline?”

“Outside on the balcony where you put it yourself not an hour ago,” her sister replied impatiently. “Ha! You worry about
my
wits going wandering?”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Dorelia snapped, retrieving the wreath and securing Meggie’s veil with it. “Yes,” she said, regarding the effect with pleasure. “Very nice indeed. I
am
clever, even if I do say so myself.”

“What about me, may I ask?” Ottoline said, scowling. “I had every bit as much to do with the final result as you. Really, Dorelia, sometimes I think you should have taken to the stage where you could have stood in the spotlight all day and night.”

Meggie ignored their squabbling, standing up and walking to the cheval glass that stood against the far wall.

A woman gazed back at her who bore almost no resemblance to the Meggie Bloom she knew. Which was just as well. The Meggie Bloom she knew would have been digging in the asylum garden just about now, or calming a distressed patient, or cleaning food off the walls where the same distressed patient had just finished flinging it.

On the other hand, the woman who looked back at Meggie was someone she knew not at all. This woman had lived a life of refinement. She knew all about table settings, calling cards, and what dresses to wear at what time of day, had servants to put those dresses on and take them off and clean them and press them and put them away again. This woman was an aristocrat.

Yet there was something oddly familiar about her…

Meggie suddenly realized what it was. Ottoline and Dorelia had done their best to recreate history. Meggie knew because she’d noticed a portrait hanging on the wall as she’d gone down to dinner the night before. It was a painting of a young fair-haired woman in exactly this dress, gazing into the distance as if she was dreaming about the most blissful—and private—things.

Meggie looked just like Lally Eliot in the portrait painted a good thirty years before, complete with the wreath on her head.

She smothered a laugh. Dorelia and Ottoline Mabey were too dear for words. They had loved their younger cousin, that much was obvious, and in their own way they honored Meggie by trying to cast her in Lally’s exact image, or as close to it as they could get.

Meggie could only be honored in return.

“Thank you,” she said, turning from the glass. “You have been very kind.”

“Ah, child.” Dorelia’s wrinkled face broke into a great smile. “You are our family now, and we are so pleased to stand at your side on this great occasion. It is a shame you do not have a mother to be here with you, but that cannot be helped.”

“Who
was
your mother, dear?” Ottoline asked, her brow crinkling. “I have been putting my mind to the question, taking into account your being orphaned, but there are so many Blooms running about this part of Suffolk that sorting one out from the other becomes impossible.”

Meggie looked down at her hands. The last subject she wished to discuss on this happy day was her mother. “Her name was Margaret,” she said reluctantly, her voice low.

“Margaret?”
Ottoline’s fingers fluttered on her chest. “Is that so? What was your father’s Christian name, child? Which branch of the Blooms did he come from?”

“I don’t know his given name,” Meggie said simply. “I don’t know anything about him except that he died before I was born. I don’t really know anything about either of them.”

She declined to say that not only did she not know her father’s Christian name, she didn’t even know his surname.

“Dear me,” Dorelia said. “How very unfortunate. You know nothing? Nothing at all?”

Meggie sensed alarm from both of them, which she supposed was understandable. “Only that my mother was all alone in the world after my father died,” she replied. “No one told me anything else.”

“How extraordinary,” Ottoline said, exchanging a quick, glance with her sister.

“I don’t suppose
you
know anything about her?” Meggie asked, wondering why they both looked so uncomfortable.

“Know something?” Ottoline said, twisting a finger in her hair.

“I
never knew a Margaret Bloom, did you?” Dorelia said, glaring at her sister.

“Never did, never did,” Ottoline agreed. “Well, never mind. As I said, the region abounds with Blooms. Always has. Yes indeed, it always has.”

“Please,” Meggie said, looking back and forth between them. “If you do know something about my mother, will you tell me? I can’t help but feel you are keeping something from me.”

“What you feel are nerves, dear,” Dorelia replied brusquely. “I didn’t think you would display them, but there they are, and little wonder, since it is time for the ceremony to begin.”

Meggie, effectively distracted, clenched her hands at her side, her mouth going dry. “Now?” she asked. “Right now?”

“Yes. The chapel is only a short distance away, but we really ought to make our way.”

“The chapel?” Meggie repeated in confusion. “Are you sure? Hugo told me last night that we were to be married in the drawing room.”

“The drawing room indeed,” Dorelia said, waving her hand as if a bad smell had violated the air. “It is time you begin to disregard most of what your husband tells you and start listening to those who know better.” She sniffed loudly. “You are being married in the family chapel.
Now,
dear. We really should be going, as it doesn’t do to keep the vicar waiting.”

Meggie’s heart overflowed with gratitude. She would be married in a church, after all. Her vows would be sanctified at an altar. On top of all that, she actually wore a white dress and veil and a wreath of flowers on her head.

She couldn’t have asked for anything more. All her dreams had come true at last.

It wasn’t as easy as he’d thought, Hugo realized as he stood at the altar.

He wished he were still out playing indulgent lord to his needy tenants.
That
had been satisfying. He had received enormous gratification without having to expend any effort, other than making promises for the future. His tenants had applauded him, made him feel important, practically kissed his hand as he’d rode along.

No wonder Rafe enjoyed his estates so much. He obviously reaped the same sort of adulation ten or twenty times over if one took in the measure of his properties and multiplied the number of adoring tenants.

Standing here in this chapel, on the other hand, did not feel so fine. Not only was there not an adoring person in sight, but the bloody Mabey sisters had arranged his wedding in a church. Very well, a chapel, he amended sourly. It was the same damned thing in the end.

Taking meaningless vows in front of a God he didn’t take much note of and had even less faith in was like blasphemy. Well, if not blasphemy, at the very least a church wedding seemed absurd, a charade. He was marrying strictly for practicality. Nothing more came into it. Meggie—well, Meggie herself he could handle.

Oh, and he’d handle her well, he thought with a lazy grin, and when that ceased to be interesting, then he’d see to it that she lived a life of comfort tucked away in a comer of Lyden with a caretaker to see to all of her needs.

Where the devil was she, anyway? Trust Meggie to forget her own wedding. She’d probably forget her own lovely head if it wasn’t attached to her equally lovely shoulders. He drifted off into a daydream about Meggie’s shoulders and what lay immediately below them.

Reginald Coldsnap cleared his throat and nudged Hugo in the side.

Hugo looked back at the door. His heart nearly ceased beating in his chest.

Meggie stood there, an angelic vision in white again. Only this time the nimbus about her head revealed itself as a backlit wreath of flowers; the ethereal effect heightened by the veil that fell from her head and about her shoulders. Her dress, fashioned from some diaphanous material, caught the same light streaming in from the open door of the chapel.

But Hugo now knew that although Meggie Bloom might look like an angel, there was absolutely nothing angelic about her. He really didn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky—a few vows and Meggie would be all his to take to bed and educate. That would be one sort of education that Meggie Bloom would absorb readily, he was sure of it.

He smiled as he stepped forward to meet her, holding his hand out to her.

She took it easily, handing her posy to one of the two Mabey sisters who had appeared out of nowhere. He supposed they’d been hiding behind Meggie’s veil as she walked up the aisle. And then she smiled at him in return. This time it was not one of her empty, mindless smiles that made him think no one was home behind her pretty face, but a smile of real joy that shone through her eyes and sent a jolt straight through him, leaving him breathless and off-balance. Just like being struck by lightning, he thought uneasily, and struck not for the first time, but for the second.

If he’d had more faith in God he might have taken it as an omen, but instead he put the experience down to nerves. Forcing his gaze from Meggie, he fixed it firmly on the vicar.

As soon as the man started his drone, Hugo forgot all about Meggie and her smile and her eyes and her body. All he could think of was the permanence of what he was about to do.

Meggie might be lovely to him now, but what happened when the physical attraction wore off, as it always did with time? What happened when he grew weary of her tiresome prattle—or even worse, what happened when her brain disorder became obvious not just to him, but to everyone else? Suppose her condition deteriorated? He might end up with a dribbling, screaming full-fledged lunatic on his hands. He might have to lock her in the west wing and throw away the key. He might even have to lock his children away with her if they turned out the same way.

A sweat broke out on his brow. Four hundred thousand pounds, he reminded himself. Salvation from ruin. Yes, that was it. Much better.

“Lord Hugo?”

He looked at the vicar blankly. “Yes?”