Call Down the Moon (33 page)

Meggie wanted to scream with frustration. She’d spent the last hour explaining everything to Sister Agnes in great detail. Still, there was no point getting herself more upset than she already was. She took a deep breath and released it.

“Hugo lied to me, Sister. He lied from the very beginning about why he wanted to marry me. He didn’t love me in the least, he wanted my inheritance. It is no wonder he didn’t care about my background—he needed the money too badly to have time to worry about that. How am I
supposed
to feel?”

“As you said, betrayed,” Sister Agnes said calmly. “But isn’t the point that
you
agreed to marry
him
? You didn’t love him in the least, which you made perfectly clear to me as well as to him, I believe. You wanted your freedom, as I recall.”

“Yes, Sister, but at least I was honest with him and with you. I didn’t make up a huge story about love at first sight and all that other drivel he fobbed off on me, not to mention everyone else, including his mother.”

“Do not be so sure it was all drivel,” Sister Agnes said with a smile. “You forget that I was right here the very first time he saw you, and if ever there was a man who looked as if he’d been struck by lightning, it was he. That was one reason why I believed him to be a man who thought himself in love when he came to ask for your hand. I do not believe you were indifferent, either.”

Meggie colored hotly and looked down. Her feelings had been caused by sheer lust, it was true, but she could not say that she’d ever been indifferent to him, nor he to her in that way.

“Meggie. Your husband may have deceived you, and for that sin he will have to ask God’s forgiveness as well as yours. But does God Himself not give us chance after chance to redeem ourselves? None of us is perfect, after all.”

“I wasn’t asking for perfection,” Meggie replied, hot tears filling her eyes. “I was only asking for honesty. Hugo had chance after chance to tell me the truth, and yet he chose to continue to lie to me. How am I supposed to believe that he ever loved me, given that?”

“Has it not occurred to you that after you were married he really did fall as much in love with you as you did with him, that he was afraid of losing you if he told you the truth? Think, Meggie. Search your mind for signs that he felt remorse and your heart for the compassion to understand and forgive him.”

Meggie did as she was asked, looking for something, anything that told her Hugo had at least not lied to her about his feelings, and that he fully regretted what he’d done. She’d been so overwhelmed since Foxlane’s revelations, so hurt and distraught and angry, that she hadn’t been able to think with any coherence at all. Now Sister Agnes’s clarity of vision helped to clear her own, and forced her to look even deeper, beyond her confusion to the wellspring of her heart.

Words came drifting back to her, spoken in those last moments of trust between them before the cataclysm tore their lives apart.

Mea maxima culpa … I have not been entirely honest with you. Will you hear me out, try to forgive me for the transgressions I have made? My love … my love…

They echoed over and over again in her head, reminding her of his tenderness. She remembered the haunted look in his eyes as he’d tried to make a beginning at confessing, for surely that was what he’d intended to do?

“I—I do remember something,” she whispered. “He was going to tell me the truth, but we were interrupted. I’d forgotten until just now.”

“I wonder what else you have forgotten, my child. You have spoken freely of your disappointment to learn of your husband’s past behavior, your disappointment that he is not the man you thought him, and yet you have also spoken about the happiness you have experienced with him. Is it not possible that he has changed since marrying you, that he really is the person you thought him? Love can work miracles.”

“It is possible, I suppose.” With her whole heart she wanted to believe Sister Agnes.

“I should think it is more than possible. Think about the woman you have become, about how love and completion have changed you for the better. Why would they not do the same for your husband?”

“I—I don’t know. I understand what you mean, but I cannot seem to move beyond the lies, the real reason Hugo married me. Shouldn’t that be important?”

“Tell me this, child. Have you examined your own conscience to see if there are not perhaps things you have kept from your husband, small untruths you might have told him for reasons of your own?”

Meggie bowed her head. Sister Agnes was right. Meggie had allowed Hugo to think her stupid, uneducated. Worse, she had never told him about her gift, and why? Because she’d feared that he’d be disgusted if he knew the truth, that he would cease to love her. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “There are things I have kept from him because I was afraid he would turn away from me.”

“Hmm. ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone,’” Sister Agnes said. She touched her fingers to her cross in the involuntary gesture Meggie had seen her make so many times before when reaching for wisdom.

“Do you have so little faith in God’s plan for you both that you can think only of what brought about this marriage, rather than seeing what you have received from it, what you are destined to receive in the future? God must enact His divine plan in some earthly way, and I see no flaw in how cleverly He managed to bring you and your husband together.”

Meggie covered her face with her hands, trying to stifle a sob of infinite relief as Sister Agnes’s words sank in.

She didn’t know what to say. She really didn’t. She felt the biggest fool, for Sister Agnes was right, of course. If Hugo hadn’t gambled away his money, he never would have wanted to marry Meggie for her money. She would still be living an empty life, and Hugo would not have Lyden, nor would the tenants have him to see to their safe future. The aunties would have nobody to brighten their days, and all in all, everyone would still be miserable. God must have had a plan, after all. Who was she to argue with Him?

Meggie looked up, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I suppose I’ve been very silly.”

“My dear, dear child, you have not been silly in the least. We are all entitled to our feelings, good and bad, and we are equally entitled to our doubts and disappointments. The trick is to relinquish those feelings and disappointments when they do us no good. We are responsible to ourselves and others for getting on with life, and that is what I believe you must do.”

Meggie nodded. “I do love Hugo,” she said, gulping back another sob. “I just wish I understood him better. I seem to understand everyone else too well, and him not at all. I thought he was so responsible, so caring about everyone, but then to learn about all his past misdeeds…”

“Meggie, have we not just been through all of this?” Sister Agnes said sternly.

Meggie nodded sheepishly. “It is just that everything was in that dreadful Foxlane’s mind, you see, and oh, Sister—the images were so
awful.”

To her enormous surprise, Sister Agnes burst into peals of laughter. “That is what you get for nosing around in other people’s heads,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Oh, dear me, oh my goodness gracious. I am grateful I am not saddled with your gift, Meggie dear.” She wiped her eyes again. “Poor, poor Lord Hugo, defenseless to protect himself.”

“I don’t know what you find so amusing,” Meggie said, annoyed. Of all people, Meggie expected the nun to take Hugo’s wayward behavior seriously.

Sister Agnes sobered abruptly. “Meggie. My dear child. Forgive me, for I think I have been insensitive. The truth is that you are yet young and you have much to learn. You might be able to read other people’s thoughts, but that does not mean that you always have the wisdom to interpret correctly what you discover. First, you must remember the source from which you took your information, and second, you must remember that you do
not
know all there is to know about your husband’s past.”

She sighed, fingering her cross again. “I wonder if I should not tell you something most pertinent that I learned when the dowager duchess last came to see me. I hope I am not speaking out of turn, but I do believe you might understand your husband’s behavior much better if you know what he suffered as a child.”

“Please, Sister, anything you can tell me would be truly helpful.”

“Very well, but you must agree that this information stays strictly between us, because your husband has no knowledge of the actual facts that surround his father’s unfortunate death. His mother and brother would like to keep it that way.”

Meggie knew only that Hugo’s father had died in an accident when Hugo was a young child. Hugo had also made it clear to her that the subject was not open for discussion. “I will keep my silence,” she said with alacrity.

“It all begins with an unfortunate mental illness the duke suffered from, a severe melancholia that came and went and created a terrible chaos when it exhibited itself—he had severe mood swings, and his behavior was unpredictable. Oh, dear. This is not easy to speak of.”

She looked at Meggie with a sadness coupled with a hesitation that made Meggie sit up straight and clench her hands together. “Go on, Sister. Please.” She tried to steady herself, sensing something truly awful coming. She could feel the dread inside Sister Agnes, the deep distress. “Please go on,” she urged, knowing neither of them could leave it there, not now that the story had begun.

“Yes. Yes, of course I must.” Sister Agnes drew in a deep breath. “The truth is that the duke committed suicide, Meggie. The poor dear man took his own life.”

Meggie, taken completely aback, stared at Sister Agnes. “Hugo’s father
killed
himself?”

“I am sorry to say he did, my child. Let me tell you a bit more about it though, so you can better understand exactly how it all came to pass…”

H
ugo didn’t even bother to tie up his horse. He threw the reins over its neck and dismounted, running straight for the door of the sanitarium. His only intention was to find Meggie and drag her out of there before she could draw another breath.

He’d spent the entire journey between Orford and Woodbridge praying—not a behavior he was accustomed to indulging in, but praying nonetheless and with the utmost sincerity. If he’d thought God wanted his firstborn child, he would have happily handed it over in exchange for Meggie and her forgiveness.

Anything—he’d do anything to get her back, anything to regain the peace he’d found with her, the fulfillment, the simple happiness.

The trouble was that he’d already battered his soul to the devil a long time before, so it wasn’t his to barter again to God. His heart, yes. He could still barter away his heart as he pleased, and a great aching bleeding miserable heart it was, belonging entirely to Meggie, whether she wanted it or not.

He knew that the likelihood of her wanting it was slim, but he still had to let her know it was hers. She could roast it for breakfast if she so chose. He couldn’t bear the idea that she thought he didn’t love her, that he had lied about that, too.

No one was in the hall, so he took himself straight to Sister Agnes’s office, reasoning that she would know where on the grounds Meggie was.

The door was slightly ajar, and he was just about to knock when he heard the sound of Meggie’s voice. His knees nearly collapsed as relief flooded through him. She was there. Safe. Thank the good Lord above, Meggie was safe.

“Go on, Sister, please. Please go on,” she was saying, a note of urgency in her voice.

Hugo dropped his hand, not sure whether he ought to interrupt at this point. Perhaps it would be wiser to wait. And if he was to be perfectly honest with himself, he wanted to hear exactly what was on her mind…

“Yes,” Sister Agnes replied, her voice low and heavy with some strong regret, “yes, of course I must. The truth is that the duke committed suicide, Meggie. The poor dear man took his own life.”

Hugo’s heart nearly stopped.
What poor man—what duke were they talking about, for the love of God? Not his
father?
Never his father. It had to be someone else, some other duke.

“Hugo’s father
killed
himself?” Meggie said, her voice filled with shock.

“I’m sorry to say he did, my child…”

Hugo reeled back against the wall, his hands pressed hard over his temples as if he could block out what he’d just heard. No. Oh, God no. It couldn’t be. Couldn’t be. Someone would have said something—his mother, Rafe? Surely someone would have told him? The nun was wrong, that was all there was to it. She had to be wrong … his father had been a good man, a strong man. A sane man.

Oh, please God, please show some mercy. Tell me it’s all a mistake.

But God had no mercy. None at all.

“Apparently the duke had been suffering from one of his unbalanced incidents, and he took his gun out into the field and … well, the painful fact is that he shot himself in the head,” Sister Agnes relentlessly continued.

Each word pounded just as relentlessly into Hugo’s head. Each one ripped at his heart, shredded his very soul. His father had died of a shooting accident. A shooting
accident.

“The most tragic thing was that the elder son witnessed his death. The duchess had no idea until recently, as he never spoke of it. She has suffered terribly from guilt for all these years, but now she struggles with the knowledge that she could not protect her child…”

Hugo couldn’t bear to hear another word. He stumbled sightlessly down the corridor, fighting to pull air into his lungs. Somehow he made his way outside where he was immediately sick, heaving over and over although there was nothing in his stomach.

Trembling violently, he finally straightened and leaned back against the wall, with his head resting on the cool stone and tears pouring down his cheeks, blinding his vision.

His poor mother. She’d known the truth and suffered from it, carried a mountain of guilt. No wonder she’d gone white in the face when he’d made that stupid comment about putting a gun to his head and shooting himself …

And Rafe, Rafe had seen it all … Dear Lord in heaven, Rafe had witnessed the whole damned thing and never said a word to anyone. He’d probably wanted their father to have a Christian burial instead of being interred at a crossroad with a stake through his heart, for committing suicide.

Suicide.

I cannot go on, it is all too much … Best to finish myself…

Hugo shook his head over and over again, trying to block out the images that crowded into his brain—memories hidden so deep so long ago, when he’d been only five, that they had ceased to exist for him. But now, like a dam unstopped, they came pouring forth unchecked. Each nightmare moment was as clear as if it had all happened yesterday.

The library, the forbidden room. He’d been playing, that was it. Playing soldiers, lost in an imaginary world where everything was safe, where nothing could harm him, where he could control events and their outcome, where fathers didn’t shout and mothers didn’t cry.

Then he’d heard his father coming and he’d run to hide behind the curtains of the window seat. Oh,
God,
he remembered it all now—how his father had come in and locked the door behind him, and he’d started to pace and rage, saying things Hugo couldn’t fully understand, but which terrified him anyway. And then, while Hugo cowered silent as a mouse behind the curtains, his eyes squeezed shut, barely daring to breathe, his father had stopped raging and begun to weep.

It is all too much, I cannot go on. Best to end it quickly. Best to finish myself, put this misery to rest. Eleanor, the children, they’ll be better off without me—I am no good for them, no good for anyone. I’ll do it. This time I’ll do it.

A long silence had followed, and then the sound of the door finally unlocking, his father’s footsteps going out, and the door softly closing behind him.

Hugo hadn’t been able to bear locked doors ever since.

Or the hoot of the owl. He suddenly remembered why. That was how his father used to say good night to him, softly imitating the owl’s plaintive call.
Hoo hoo-hoo, hoo hoo-hoo, time for all little boys to go to bed.

And then he’d kiss Hugo, give him a pat on his bottom, and send him upstairs to the nursery.

Hugo groaned, feeling as if his belly had just been sliced open. He blindly started to run, desperate to get away from the memories, as if he could outdistance them if he went far enough, fast enough.

The next awareness he had was being in a copse. He had no idea how much time had passed or exactly where he was, only that he was doubled over on the ground, with his arms wrapped around his waist as if he could keep his guts from spilling out.

Something cold and wet poked into his neck, and he reached his hand out to push it away. His fingers encountered warm fur.

Hadrian, he vaguely registered through the tempest that tore through him, threatening to destroy his very foundation. It was Meggie’s wolf Hadrian, a solid reminder of reality, enough to shock him back to the present.

He wrapped his arms around the animal, burying his face in the soft, sweet-smelling fur as if the wolf could somehow anchor him, save him from destruction. But he knew in the deepest part of his heart that he needed more than Hadrian if he was going to survive. He needed his wife.

“Meggie,” he cried, lifting his head to the heavens and releasing a keening wail that came from the deepest part of his soul, “oh God, Meggie, my love, I need you … please, come to me? Please—please come to me…”

Meggie lifted her head in the middle of Sister Agnes’s sentence, listening. She was aware only of the slightest whisper inside her head, no more than a rustle, but she felt a desperation behind it. It was a call from somewhere that she couldn’t place. She frowned.

“Meggie, what is it, child? You look preoccupied.”

“Forgive me, Sister. I was paying attention, really I was—it’s just that something … well, something interrupted. I don’t know what exactly.” She rubbed her fingers against the sides of her head.

“Never mind, my dear. I was only saying that in the course of my work here I have observed that very often people are deeply influenced by events in their past that they might not even be aware of, but which still exert a strong influence on them. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Meggie nodded, trying to concentrate despite her distraction. “Are you saying that because Hugo lost his father in a tragic fashion when he was very young, he felt angry and abandoned and decided to misbehave as a result?”

“In a way. Your husband might not remember very much at all about his father, but he is bound to have been affected by his father’s irrational behavior, as well as his untimely death. Meggie, for goodness sake, what has gotten into you? You look as if your chair is on fire.”

“I—I don’t know,” she replied. “I feel as if there’s something very important I should be doing, but I cannot think what it is…”

As the words came out of her mouth, Hadrian came tearing through the door and jumped up on her. With paws on her shoulders and yellow eyes boring into hers, he communicated every bit of urgency that she’d been feeling.

“What—Hadrian, what on earth is it?” she asked, fully focused on him. “Tell me. I’m listening.”

He gently took her sleeve in his teeth and pulled, insisting she come with him.

“I have to go,” she said to Sister Agnes. “I don’t know what’s happened, but I have to go now.” Without waiting for a reply, she leapt up and tore out after Hadrian who had already turned and run out of the room.

He didn’t stop, loping out of the house and across the lawn, heading directly for the woods. As Meggie followed, she saw Hugo’s horse grazing freely, Hugo nowhere in sight.

Meggie, my love, I need you … come to me … please, come to me?

She didn’t stop to think, even to wonder why Hugo was at the sanitarium. She knew now with absolute certainty that he was in terrible trouble and needed her. She ran faster than she ever had in her life, praying he wasn’t injured, that his life was not in danger.

“I’m coming, Hugo,” she cried when she was forced to stop, nearly doubled over from the stitch that grabbed at her side. Hadrian paused and looked back at her impatiently, his burning golden gaze demanding that she hurry. “I’m coming, just wait, you have to wait for me,” she panted, then took a few deep, steadying breaths and hurried on.

In the end she spotted Hugo easily, even before Hadrian reached him. He sat with his back huddled against a beech tree, his knees pulled up, his forehead lowered on them, his shoulders hunched and shaking. Thank God, she sobbed in relief when she saw that he was physically in one piece. But relief was instantly replaced by fear. It was not his body that was in danger but his mind. Hugo was in terrible emotional pain. Some dreadful torment was tearing him to pieces.

She ran to his side, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms as tightly around him as she could, pulling him close against her.

“I’m here, my beloved, I am here,” she whispered against his cheek. “You are safe. Safe, my love, my darling. Safe with me.”

His arms went hard around her back, practically crushing the breath out of her. “Meggie,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Meggie, my Meggie. You came. You really came.”

“Yes, of course I came. What else would I do, Hugo? I love you.”

He moved his hands up her back and buried them in her hair with a groan. “Thank God for that,” he said, his voice ragged. “Thank God at least for that.”

“What is it? What happened?” she asked, trying to sound calm despite her panic. She pressed her cheek against his, trying to sense something, anything that might give her a clue, but all she could feel was his desperate unhappiness. He’d had a terrible shock, that much was clear.

“Did Mr. Foxlane come back after I left?” she asked tentatively feeling him out. “Or Lord Waldock, perhaps? Did you receive bad news of some kind?”

He muffled an acerbic laugh against her neck. “Bad news? I suppose you might say that. I just learned that my father killed himself, that every last damned glorious thing I’ve ever believed in my life about him was a pack of lies, Meggie. A pack of lies.”

“You overheard Sister Agnes and myself,” she said, her blood turning to ice. She couldn’t believe it. Of all the dreadful things that might have happened, that had to be the worst.

“Yes,” he said tonelessly. “I came to find you, to talk to you, tell you how much I love you and how much I regret your learning the truth the way you did. Instead I discovered that for the last twenty-one years I’ve been laboring under a gross misapprehension.” He shuddered heavily. “I can’t—I can’t somehow seem to take it in properly.”

“Hugo—oh, Hugo, I am so sorry, so very, very sorry,” she murmured, kissing his cheek, his hair, and smoothing her hands over his back. She tried to somehow draw him close enough to protect him from the savage pain that rocked him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. “I don’t think I’m entirely in my right mind, Meggie. Perhaps I take after my father after all.”

She felt the tears on his face where her cheek pressed against his, felt the anguish in his heart where her love claimed its own part. “You are entirely in your right mind,” she said softly. “You always have been. How can you possibly expect to take such news with equanimity? No one could.”

He released a broken sigh. “No. I suppose not. Memories—I have so many damned memories that have come out of nowhere, like one giant nightmare that wants to suck me under with it.”

He shakily recounted what he’d remembered, Meggie listening carefully. When necessary, she added details she’d learned from Sister Agnes in order to help him complete the picture of what had happened that terrible day.

Nearly as shaken as he by the time they’d finished, she kissed his hair, then both his eyelids, tasted the salt of his tears. “The nightmare is in the past, my darling. Now that you’ve finally remembered you can wake up, wake up and be free. Please believe me when I tell you that it is not your burden to carry—you told me much the same thing when I learned the truth about my parents. You said it was my story but not my fault, and surely the same holds true for you?”