Call Down the Moon (4 page)

He scowled darkly and poured himself another drink, then sank into a wing chair.

Well, maybe he should go ahead and follow her suggestion since she set so much stock in marriage. Why the hell not—a wife to go along with his fine estate, the perfect window dressing to present to his family.

The London Season was to begin shortly. There would be eager young misses enough, misses more than willing to throw their various over-embellished caps at him. He’d seen it all before. He was young, handsome, and charming, his family connections impeccable. He had a fortune and an estate. In short, he was highly desirable, despite his questionable past.

The prospect of a Season seemed endlessly dreary, but then so did the prospect of marriage. He smiled bitterly to himself, thinking that respectability carried one hell of a price. Still, if the seal of his family’s approval was what he really wanted, then he was condemned.

London it was.

Meggie lay on her narrow bed, gazing up at the ceiling and dreaming of the world outside the walls of the Woodbridge Sanitarium. She’d gone into the bustling town that afternoon to buy some colored thread for her tapestry and had dawdled outside the market, watching the throngs of people going about their business.

She’d smiled from her anonymous seat on a bench as a young couple walked past her. They were deep in conversation, their fingertips occasionally reaching out to meet surreptitiously, their faces filled with private happiness, and utterly content in each other’s company, completely in love.

A lovely warmth had emanated from them, washing over her like an embracing wave. After they’d disappeared, the warmth had vanished like a cloud passing over the sun, leaving a chill in her lonely heart.

Meggie rolled onto her side and reached her hand down over the side of the bed to bury her fingers in Hadrian’s thick dark fur, taking comfort in the contact and Hadrian’s contented sigh as she gently scratched behind his ears.

“Oh, well,” she whispered, “it’s no good pining for what we can’t have, is it? You and I will have to make do with each other and what little comfort we can find within these walls.”

The wolf grunted, and Meggie knew he agreed. Hadrian nearly always agreed with her, except on the matter of the frequency of their walks. He suffered from his confinement as much as she did, but there was little she could do about it. Long domesticated, releasing him back into the wilderness would mean his certain death, and that she couldn’t bear to think about.

Hadrian had been her dear companion of five years. Meggie had rescued him from a trap in the woods, his poor tiny paw broken and bloodied by the gruesome steel teeth. Sister Agnes had reluctantly allowed her to keep him, and Meggie had nursed him back to health.

Of course, Sister Agnes hadn’t realized at the time that Hadrian was a wolf pup, Meggie thought with a small smile. By the time his eyes had turned yellow and given the matter away, it was too late for Sister Agnes to object to his presence.

Hadrian was a model of perfect behavior, never threatening anyone. Meggie was careful to keep him away from visitors, though, just in case they panicked at the sight of him. The patients she never worried about, as they seemed to take comfort from his presence. Hadrian had an affinity for the sick and troubled, much as she had.

They were utterly devoted to each other, and Hadrian filled a void in Meggie’s life that would otherwise have remained empty. If she was condemned to live a life without ever knowing the fullness of human love, at least she had the unwavering love of this fine animal.

They were two of a kind, both separated from their pack, both suspect in a world that didn’t understand them. And they both would have given their eye teeth for freedom.

A tear trickled unbidden down Meggie’s cheek. She didn’t know what had come over her—she’d been unsettled for days. It wasn’t like her to feel sorry for herself or to indulge in tears, for that matter. What was couldn’t be changed any more than she could change the color of her hair or the circumstances of her birth.

She clutched her arms over her chest, wondering for the thousandth time what the real story behind her birth was. Dear Aunt Emily had prevaricated every time Meggie had asked, saying only that Meggie’s father had died months before Meggie’s arrival, and her mother had followed him after giving birth to her only child.

Meggie knew there was more to it than that. She’d gone so far as to try to use her talent to discover the truth. She would pry into Aunt Emily’s head as well as the head of everyone else she came across, but had never heard anything but unintelligible garble. It was as if she wasn’t supposed to know.

What she had heard were the whispers in the village when no one thought she was listening. Then later she’d overheard the nuns in the orphanage discussing her tainted origins in scandalized tones. Sadly, Meggie never heard the details, just the condemnation.

Bastard…

Considering that stigma, Meggie didn’t understand why her foster mother had bothered with her in the first place, but then Emily Crewe had been a good woman who believed in doing her Christian duty. Meggie could only suppose that since Aunt Emily had been a childless widow, taking on an abandoned infant must have seemed the right thing to do.

Those first nine years with kind Aunt Emily had been happy, especially compared to the following eight at the orphanage. Of course anything would seem happy in comparison to the orphanage, Meggie thought with a shudder. The memories of dark, dank rooms and perpetual cold, of a stomach that constantly ached with hunger, of cries smothered in her pillow at night, of continual punishment for crimes real and imagined could not be stopped. But then everything Meggie did had been a crime except praying, and half the time she didn’t do that right, either, according to the nuns.

So really, what right did she have to complain about her present lot in life? The sanitarium was bliss in comparison.

She only wished she could erase the thoughts of Lord Hugo Montagu that continued to plague her and rob her of her much-needed rest. They came uninvited, usually as she was drifting off to sleep. They were always the same—she looked over to see his tall figure standing in the window, his hand flattened against the glass as his sapphire gaze bored into her and took her very breath away.

Only she’d managed to embellish the reality beautifully. Now she heard his voice as well, deep and compelling, calling to her.
“Meggie … Meggie, my love. I need you, Meggie … please, come to me.”

“Yes,”
she would answer in her head,
“yes, I will come to you. Just wait, Hugo. You have to wait for me…”

And her body would shake with a longing she didn’t know how to control.

Meggie stuffed her face into her pillow with a groan. She really couldn’t go on like this. Life had been difficult before, but at least her existence had been peaceful enough, not invaded by an absurd desire for a man who was no more than a fragment of memory that she’d turned into an overblown fantasy.

“Meggie Bloom,” she whispered, “you must take after your mother—your good sense clouded by uncontrollable physical urges. If you’re lusting after a man you’ve never met and will never see again, girl, goodness only knows what you’d do if confronted with the real thing. Maybe it is a good thing you’re locked away, after all.”

A tap came at the door and Meggie quickly sat up, anticipating what a summons meant at this late hour.

“Yes? Who is it?” she called, already knowing. She could feel Rose’s presence through the heavy wood, driving straight into her tired head.

“Meggie?” Rose’s voice came as urgently as her panic. “It’s Rose—come quickly! Lady Kincaid has taken a bad turn. I’m sorry to disturb you, but you’re the only one who knows how to calm her, and she’s tearing her room to bits and upsetting the other patients something fierce.”

“I’ll be right there,” Meggie called, instantly jumping to her feet and pulling her night rail over her head. She replaced it with the spare work dress she’d carefully laid over the chair. She splashed cold water over her face to bring herself to full alertness, then slipped on her shoes and threw a shawl over her shoulders. Hurrying down the passageway, she started toward the women’s wing.

Rose, a young local girl who was rather dull witted met her halfway, her white cap slipping sideways on her head. “I don’t know what set her off, Meggie, I really don’t. I was sitting outside with everything all quiet-like and everyone sound asleep, when her ladyship suddenly set up the most frightful yelling and carrying on, flinging things across the room so’s that I couldn’t even get in there.”

All this Rose breathlessly imparted as the two of them ran full speed down the hallway, their skirts hitched up about their knees.

Meggie could hear Lady Kincaid already, her screeches echoing down the staircase as Meggie and Rose tore up it.

“Something must have happened. Can you think of anything, anything at all? She was calm when I left her this evening,” Meggie panted.

“No, not so as I could say. Oh, well, mebbe, now that I think about it. She asked for her mam, and I told her that her mam was long gone to heaven and she should settle back and get some sleep. That was two hours ago.”

Meggie stopped in her tracks, thoroughly exasperated. “Rose, how many times do I have to tell you that the truth doesn’t necessarily serve in these cases?”

“I cannot lie, Meggie,” Rose said, her eyes wide with alarm. “It’s true, her mam did die many years before.”

“Yes, but Lady Kincaid doesn’t know that. You have to remember she’s living in the far past when her mother was still alive. All she needs is a little reassurance.”

“You wanted me to tell Lady Kincaid that her mam was going to walk into the room any minute? She’d have known it for a lie in no time, Meggie! God would damn me for sure for telling such a mistruth.” Her eyes filled with tears.

Meggie felt instant remorse for having snapped at Rose, who couldn’t help being simple. Meggie could feel with perfect clarity Rose’s confusion with a concept outside of her limited comprehension.

“Never mind. Did you summon Sister Agnes?” Meggie asked. She was already anticipating the black, wild whirlpool of the violent spells from which Lady Kincaid suffered.

“I thought it was best to come fetch you, Meggie. You know how Lady Kincaid is when she gets like this—no one else is any good at fixing her fits. Did I do the right thing in leaving her to you?”

“I suppose. There’s really no point in disturbing the good sister. She needs her rest.”

Meggie sighed heavily, thinking of the task ahead. It was going to be another long, trying night spent sorting through the tangled fabric of Eunice Kincaid’s lost wits. Meggie’s task was to find the particular thread that had unraveled this time and pull it back into place, or at least enough into place to grant the rest of them a bit of peace.

H
ugo lurked behind one of the potted palms that decorated the wall of Lady Cumberland’s ballroom, stealthily peering out at the assembled company. Respectability was deadly dull. Being on his best behavior had done nothing but depress his spirits and make him question why he’d ever conceived the notion of reforming in the first place.

He certainly questioned why he’d decided that taking a wife was a good idea. Not a single eligible miss had left anything but a sour taste in his mouth. One dreadful female in particular had made his life a living hell, pursuing him as if he were a prime piece of beef that she intended to consume with gusto. This was the main reason why he was trying to fit in with the greenery.

He ought to have pleaded the headache and sent his excuses to Lady Cumberland. Actually, he ought to have shot himself and put himself permanently out of his misery.

What had become of the Hugo he’d once known and loved—the Hugo who was gifted at having fun, being irreverent, and cared for nothing but what new diversion lay ahead? This Hugo he found a tedious bore, a man reduced to asinine behavior. Since when did he cower behind potted plants evading determined ingenues?

He batted a frond out of his face, thinking that he ought to throw the entire idea of marriage out the window and be done with it. Nothing was worth this misery.

“Ah, Montagu,” said a voice from behind him. “So this is where you have been hiding. Disguising yourself as tropical foliage, are you?”

Hugo turned around to find his old friend Michael Foxlane gazing at him with lazy amusement. “Oh, hello, Foxlane,” he said uneasily. He’d deliberately avoided the man for months. Michael Foxlane had a well-developed taste for the gaming tables, and Hugo had lost his shirt to him too many times. “What are you doing here?” he asked, forcing a smile to his lips. “You loathe this sort of amusement, if it can be called by such a name.”

“I am obliging my aunt Hermione,” Foxlane said with a careless shrug. “She is chaperoning a cousin about town this Season. I agreed to come along and dance with the creature. Miss Amelia Langford is her name.” He shot Hugo a sly look.

“Good God,” Hugo said, staring at his friend who had just intoned the name of the very woman he was trying to escape. “Do you mean to say she is connected to you?”

His tormentor possessed buck teeth, bad skin, and a complete lack of brain, but she also possessed a long pedigree and a large fortune. These last two had gained her an entree into the most exclusive level of society. So everywhere Hugo went, so did Miss Amelia Langford.

He covertly looked about to see if she had spotted him.

Foxlane grinned. “She’s set her cap at you, my friend. I heard all about your incredible charms on the way over here. She means to have you, make no mistake about it.”

“There is no need to remind me of Miss Langford’s ambitions. She has made her intentions perfectly plain,” Hugo said with a rueful smile, silently cursing his bad luck that Foxlane was related to the cow. Now he’d have to be polite to her.

“Well, if you will put it about that you are hanging out for a wife, you have to expect to be pursued,” Foxlane retorted. “The word is all over town. There’s even a wager in White’s betting book that she—or rather her fortune—will have you snared by the end of the Season.” He scratched his cheek. “We are all wondering what has come over you—you’ve been ignoring your friends, Montagu. Is this what comes from acquiring a place in the country? If so, remind me to keep my money in my pocket.”

“Oh, you’ve heard about that, too, have you?” Hugo tried unsuccessfully to repress a stab of guilt. As much as he enjoyed the company of his friends, they were strong reminders of his past pleasures—and past downfall. “I confess it has kept me busy,” he said, even though he had not once been to Suffolk since buying Lyden Hall. Lyden could wait.

“Busier than acquiring a wife?” Foxlane raised one eyebrow in clear skepticism. “From everything I’ve heard, you’ve been in town these past two months, and still you ignore us. Perhaps your pockets are so empty that your only hope is marriage to an heiress?”

“To the contrary,” Hugo said, annoyed that his friends had assumed that to be the case. “My pockets are very nicely lined, thank you. It is merely time for me to settle down and establish my nursery.”

“You?
Establish your nursery?” Foxlane nearly choked. So did Hugo when he heard what he’d said. Starting a nursery was the least of his desires. What did he want with a bunch of sniveling brats yapping about his heels? He hadn’t even considered that consequence of marriage and the thought was enough to make his blood run cold. “What I meant is that I wish to give the
appearance
of intending to establish a nursery so that my mother will cease to bother me over the issue,” he said, backtracking quickly. “Surely you can understand my motives? As I recall, your own mother has been after you for years in pursuit of the same noble cause.”

“Ah,” Foxlane said, pressing one long finger against the side of his equally long nose. “I believe I begin to understand. This quest for a wife is all a subterfuge then, designed to placate your dear mama. And why not?” He clapped Hugo on the back. “When you produce no bride, it will not be for lack of trying.”

“Precisely,” Hugo said, feeling more in accord with Foxlane by the moment.

“And Cousin Amelia is the perfect choice for such a ploy,” he said, nodding thoughtfully. “No one believed you planned to marry her for anything but her fortune, but since you say you don’t need it … well, then. You have tried admirably for all the right reasons, but in the end you won’t be able to bring yourself to marry her for any of them. Or anyone else.” He chuckled. “It is a very clever plan.”

“Exactly,” Hugo said, thinking that it
was
a clever plan. He ought to have conceived it long before instead of torturing himself for eight long weeks.

“Oh! There you are, Lord Hugo. I have been looking for you everywhere! You promised to waltz with me this evening, if you recall.”

The familiar high-pitched voice made Hugo cringe. He turned to see Amelia Langford eyeing him with her usual carnivorous expression.

He
had
promised, he remembered with a sinking heart. It had been at Almack’s the week before. At the time, he’d been desperate to escape her company and the promise to waltz with her seemed the only thing that might shake her off.

Naturally she’d come to claim her prize. How foolish of him to think he might avoid her. “Good evening, Miss Langford,” he said with a curt bow.

She touched her fingers to her mousy curls, overdone as usual. Everything about Miss Amelia Langford was overdone, including her confidence that her money could claim her anything she wished, despite her unfortunate appearance. “I have been looking forward to the occasion all week,” she said, fluttering her invisible eyelashes.

“And I,” Hugo said, trying to ignore Foxlane’s knowing smile. “Shall we?” He offered his arm, hearing the strains of the waltz start up. Amelia Langford had timed the situation perfectly so that he could not possibly refuse, and Hugo resented her intensely for it. He’d never known a woman so controlling, not even his mother.

He endured the waltz and her vapid conversation, answering her only when absolutely necessary. “Yes, Miss Langford, the weather has been fine … No, I did not notice Lady Anne’s unhappy choice in dress … Indeed, did Mr. Pompheron really say such a thing…” and all the while wishing himself anywhere but there.

It was Foxlane who finally rescued him. “Come along to White’s,” he murmured when Hugo had finally shaken off Amelia’s clinging arm. “We can catch up with each other in amiable surroundings. I declare, I cannot bear another moment of this tedious nonsense myself. I have done my duty and so have you.”

Hugo seized hold of the life raft offered him without another thought. Anything. Anything but another instant of torture. He claimed his hat and cloak and willingly followed Foxlane out the door.

“Deal another hand,” Hugo said, wiping at the cold sweat that beaded on his brow. He didn’t know how this catastrophe had come to pass, only that the hours had slipped away until dawn was breaking over the horizon.

What had started out as an evening of light enjoyment with some friends, a few hands of cards, and a few bottles of good brandy had turned into deep play. Hugo was in imminent danger of losing everything he had gained back in Paris—and more.

He took another pull from his glass with a badly shaking hand. It was his own stupidity that had brought him to this table, his arrogance that had made him believe he could gamble with the best and walk away with his pockets fuller than before. After all, he’d given up the habit, hadn’t he? He’d only set out to have a bit of fun.

“Are you sure?” Arthur Waldock cast him a look of grave concern. “I have taken enough off you tonight, Hugo. Let it rest.”

“Let it rest?” Foxlane interjected. “Have you ever known Hugo Montagu to back down when he is in a tight spot? Good Lord, man, I once saw him win fifty thousand on a single hand of vingt-et-un when he was in just this position. He has the luck of the devil when it comes to turning a bad situation around. Do not deny him his chance to take it all back from you and then some.”

He rubbed his chin and gave Hugo a look of encouragement, his eyes flashing with excitement as if he already smelled blood. Michael Foxlane thrived on living on the edge, and he had never much cared who fell off as long as it wasn’t himself.

Hugo should have remembered that before he’d allowed himself to be lured away, but it was too late now. He attempted a cocky smile in return. “Are you afraid to lose what you have gained, Waldock?” he said, trying to sound unconcerned.

“But what have you left to put up?” Waldock said, frowning. “I have enough of your markers here with which to sink a battleship and you along with it, Hugo. Why don’t you go home and sleep this night’s work off? You can have another try at your luck tomorrow.”

As far as Hugo was concerned there would be no tomorrow, not if he didn’t recoup his disastrous losses. He really would rather shoot himself than face the inevitable scorn of his family and prove them right about his weakness of character.

He took a deep breath. “Lyden Hall,” he said his heart pounding. “I’ll put up Lyden, worth sixty thousand pounds. It is free and clear, and I’ll risk it on one hand of vingt-et-un, winner take all. The game has brought me luck before—perhaps it will again.”

Waldock shook his head, then shrugged. “Very well. Have it your way. I have nothing to lose that I didn’t have before walking in here tonight.”

Foxlane nodded, his teeth drawn back from his lips in an almost feral expression. His forehead too was covered in a fine film of perspiration. “You’ve always had the golden touch when you put your mind to it, Montagu. Let’s see what you can do. With luck you can bid farewell to my cousin once and for all.”

“It was never about Amelia Langford,” Hugo said, running his hands over his eyes for a brief moment. If the cards came up wrong, it might be all about Amelia Langford after all, and in a way he’d never even considered.

“We’ll use a fresh pack for luck,” Foxlane said, snapping his fingers at one of the passing footmen. He cut the cards and dealt.

Hugo received a ten of spades down and a five of clubs showing. His heart sank—Waldock’s showing card was an ace of diamonds. The odds were heavily against Hugo, but he had no choice. He nodded, and Foxlane dealt him another card, the four of hearts, bringing Hugo to nineteen.

Hugo took a long drink of brandy. He forced himself to focus. Gritting his teeth, he tried to suppress a surge of nausea as Waldock nodded at Foxlane.

Foxlane dealt. A six of spades. That gave Waldock either seven or eighteen, depending on how he counted the ace.

Everything now hinged on what Waldock’s hidden card was.

Waldock met Hugo’s eyes for one brief moment before turning it over. The four of clubs.

“Twenty-one,” Foxlane said, in a voice of suppressed excitement. “Montagu?”

Hugo shook his head and flipped over the ten of spades.

“Nineteen. Bad luck, Montagu. Congratulations, Waldock.”

Hugo released a long hiss from between his teeth as bile rose in his throat and his world spun in a long downward spiral into blackness.

His last thought before he passed out was that he was ruined.

Again.

Hugo hazily opened his eyes and winced against the immediate stab of pain behind his forehead. His mouth tasted like the bottom of the Thames and felt as if it were coated with cat hair. He groaned and rolled over, burying his aching head in the pillow. He couldn’t remember a damned thing about why he was in such an appalling condition, but he knew that whatever he’d done, it had been a bad mistake.

He hadn’t felt so awful in a good year, not since the night he’d left Paris for London to forcibly terminate his exile abroad. He tried to rally his muddled thoughts, but he couldn’t even remember how he’d gotten home, let alone where he’d been. The last thing he recalled was leaving Lady Cumberland’s ball in fine spirits, Foxlane at his side.

Foxlane. Hugo struggled to sit up, one hand clasped to his throbbing brow, straining for memory. White’s. That was it, they’d gone to White’s. But from there … where? On to Boodle’s, that was it, he thought with triumph. They’d gone to Boodle’s and met up with a group of friends he had been elated to see again.

After that it was all a blur. Nothing but a black hole and a feeling of terrible dread that lay at its center.

He wished to hell he could remember why.

A discreet knock came at the door and he mumbled for the intruder to enter.

“Good afternoon, my lord,” Mallard said, quietly nudging the door open, a tray balanced in one hand. “It is gone two o’clock, and I thought you might be prepared to rise.”

“Two bloody o’clock?” Hugo said, severe alarm turning his blood cold. “What time did I get in?”

“At seven this morning, my lord. Lord Waldock delivered you and left us to put you to bed. He asked that I give you this note when you woke.” The valet rested the tray across Hugo’s lap and handed him a folded sheet of parchment, then opened the curtains, but only partway.