Call Down the Moon (6 page)

A likely story. But he would deal with his mother when the time came. She had gone to Rafe’s estate in Ireland to be present at the birth of her first grandchild. When she eventually returned from Ireland he’d have solved all of his financial problems and she’d never be the wiser. A lunatic wife was a small price to pay.

“As you say, Lord Hugo. You surely know your mother better than I, although I pray you are correct in anticipating her reaction.” Sister Agnes released a sharp breath as if she still wondered whether she was doing the right thing. “Meggie usually works in the vegetable garden at this time of day. If you go out the front door and turn right, you will find a path that leads around the building to the back. Follow it as far as it goes. You will see the garden directly in front of you.”

Hugo jumped to his feet. “Thank you, Sister. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

“Do not disappoint me. Should you upset the girl in any way, I can promise you that you will have me to answer to.”

Hugo hoped to hell that wouldn’t be the case. His sole intention was to get Meggie Bloom to say “I will” as quickly as possible.

Meggie dug her hoe into the side of the row of lettuce, carefully cultivating the soil and freeing it of weeds. She always looked forward to her gardening chores. They freed her to think her thoughts, rather than constantly trying to screen out the random thoughts of others.

Meggie untied her apron and spread it on the ground. She wished Sister Agnes didn’t insist she wear white, the most impractical color on earth, but at least it separated her from the nuns and the novitiates, who wore black and gray respectively. Still, since Sister Agnes considered primary colors overstimulating to the patients, Meggie had no choice. White it was.

Kneeling, she carefully spread the dirt evenly around each little burgeoning plant, patting it into place with an encouraging word. It was essential to let each one know it was important, valued. She’d seen the results over the years, the part of the garden that was her responsibility bursting with health and double the produce.

She found it so satisfying to watch the earth come alive in the spring, bringing forth new growth. Spring was her favorite time of year, although summer did give her enormous satisfaction, wielding its generous bounties. But summer was easy. Summer only had to reap what spring had sown. Spring had to conquer the small, cold death of winter, and that took real strength.

She loved the autumn almost as much, the brilliant colors of the trees and shrubs a last magnificent showing before winter again claimed its price. Now
that
was bravery, she decided, rising to fetch the watering can. Each cell in each fauna and flora knew this was its final goodbye before dying away.

Really, it took even greater bravery to stir anew and start the cycle all over again. This was the essential nature of life itself.

It had often occurred to her that the patients under her care went through much of the same process. When they arrived, most of them were living in the long, dark winter of the soul. Only the luckiest, most determined ones found the strength to renew themselves, to stretch out and make the journey back into the world, rediscovering the joy of life the way the plants of God’s earth did every year.

“Oh, you really are lovely lettuces,” she murmured, standing back, hands on her hips, surveying her crop with pleasure.

She glanced up in surprise as Hadrian, who had been basking in the sunshine, emitted a low growl from his throat. Hadrian only growled in such a manner when a stranger approached, but she hadn’t sensed anyone coming and she always felt a person’s presence. No, she was absolutely sure they were alone.

Hadrian did not agree. His growl deepened and his body tensed, shifting from the lazy position he’d assumed alongside the fence into a half-crouch, his ears pricking back, his legs stiffening.

Alarmed, Meggie rose, turning and shielding her eyes against the rays of the slanting sun.

She was surprised when she saw that Hadrian hadn’t been mistaken after all. A man walked down the path toward her, but she couldn’t make out who, only that his figure was tall and imposing. His face was obscured by the brim of his hat, leaving his features in shadow.

She stretched out her mind, trying to read something, anything at all from the stranger, but nothing came. Nothing at all … except a sudden awareness of something dangerous and indefinable that struck not at her mind, but at her body. She’d experienced this sense of physical chaos from only one other person before, and that was over two months ago. The memory would be burned into her brain for all time.

She pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. It
couldn’t
be. Oh, dear gracious Lord in heaven, not Hugo Montagu? Impossible.

And yet she knew it was, and not just because every nerve ending in her body vibrated with heightened awareness. She also experienced the same absolute silence in him that she had before, a total blank that left her without any point of reference.

It was only now, without the benefit of her talent, that she realized how much she relied on it. For the first time in her life she felt completely alone in the presence of another person, with not even the vaguest of whispers to guide her.

As unfamiliar as the experience was, in a way it was an enormous relief. Or it would have been if she hadn’t been shaken to the core of her being.

Hadrian growled again as Hugo approached the garden gate.

“Lie down, there’s a good boy,” she murmured, knowing that Hadrian must sense her alarm, and so he should: her knees threatened to give out at any moment. “All is well,” she lied, feeling a complete fraud, which Hadrian must also know. But he still lowered from his wary position to one of quiet watchfulness.

Meggie’s heart filled with gratitude, realizing that she wasn’t entirely without protection—although she wasn’t sure that this was the sort of situation that Hadrian could really protect her from.

She closed her eyes, trying to collect herself, which was impossible as the creak of the garden gate opening sounded a thousand times exaggerated. She finally dared to look, allowing herself only the slightest of squints.

Oh, dear,
dear
Lord in heaven. It really was. In the flesh. In the all-too-real flesh, flesh she’d spent an indecent amount of time fantasizing about.

“Miss Bloom?”

His voice was deep, yet melodic at the same time, and hearing it turned Meggie’s blood to water. She had imagined how he might sound, never expecting to find out. What alarmed her more than anything was that he sounded exactly as she’d expected. She would have found the situation far easier to bear if only he’d come out with a cracked falsetto.

“Yes?” she managed to say. Her legs shook so uncontrollably that she thought she might blow over in the tempest he’d brought in with him.

“Allow me to present myself. I am Hugo Montagu. Will you be so kind as to sit with me for a few moments? There is a pressing matter I wish to discuss with you.”

Meggie swallowed hard. She knew she must look frightful, all disheveled with dirt covering her face. She turned her head sideways and opened her eyes a touch wider, taking him in peripherally, as if that might save her from the full blast of his presence.

Oh, no. He was even more beautiful up close, surpassing her wildest imaginings, and she’d thought she’d imagined him rather well. His eyes blazed like the finest of sapphires, so clear that they seemed to reflect the sun itself. His full, well-sculpted mouth curved in the slightest of smiles as he looked down at her.

She squeezed her eyes shut again, just for a moment, wondering if she hadn’t finally caught the inmates’ disease of fantasizing so clearly that she could make anything seem real.

When she opened her eyes again he was still there.

Meggie couldn’t help herself. Her mouth dropped open and she turned to face him, staring for all she was worth.

“Oh,” she couldn’t help but utter. “Oh, my.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, his voice quiet and soothing, as if he were speaking to a frightened animal. “I did not mean to alarm you.”

“You did not alarm me,” she said, trying to gather her addled wits about her. “It is only that I did not expect anyone. I was talking to—I mean, I was thinking about the lettuce.”

“Yes. The lettuce. Why not? I am sure the lettuce is worthy of all the attention you can give it.”

He smiled, and Meggie felt as if the sun had come out and brightened over half a lifetime of gray skies.

He might as easily have been a god descending from Mount Olympus to grace a mortal with a moment of his divine presence.

“It helps,” she said, feeling so nervous she wasn’t even sure what she was talking about anymore.

“You are … fond of lettuce?”

Meggie nodded. She couldn’t believe they were standing there speaking of something so mundane. She couldn’t believe they were speaking at all.

Fumbling for something to do, she bent down and gently uprooted one of the more mature plants. “Are you fond of lettuce yourself? If you are, this might suit you nicely. You need only to dress it simply. Lettuce doesn’t take well to showy treatment at a tender age.”

He looked down at the tightly folded plant she handed him. “Thank you; it is very lovely. I will dress it with care. As carefully as an ingenue in her first Season. Nothing but the most pristine of colors.” He tucked it inside his coat.

Meggie passed a shaking hand over her brow, feeling as if she were surely dreaming. “Lemon,” she babbled. “You had best dress it in lemon. Lemon does not overwhelm.”

“Indeed not. I will be sure to choose exactly the right shade. And what would you have me top this magnificent lettuce with? Surely it needs a fine bonnet?”

A faint image came back to Meggie of a wonderful salad her aunt Emily had once made. “Er … a mushroom? Peeled, and with the stem removed. It would make a very fine presentation.” She’d never felt so tongue-tied in all her life. If this was the best she could do, she might as well disappear into the lettuce bed itself.

“A mushroom bonnet. Indeed. I will take that into consideration,” he said with a twitch of his lips. “I am sure it will make a most original impression.”

Meggie stared down at the ground, feeling like a complete fool. “As you say. I am no hand in these matters.”

“Miss Bloom.” The touch of his hand on her arm burned through her sleeve, and she shivered as his heat imprinted itself on her flesh.

“Mmm?” she mumbled through a sudden dizziness.

“I wonder if you remember back some two months ago when you and I first spotted each other. You were walking along the path as I was standing at Sister Agnes’s window. Our eyes met—and you turned away very suddenly. Too suddenly. I have wondered why ever since.”

Meggie colored furiously as if she’d been caught out in an indecent activity. “I—I do not recall,” she lied. “But then my memory is short—not reliable.”

“Is it, my dear? Never mind, for that is of no importance. What is important is that I have not forgotten the moment, not for one instant. That is why I am here with you now, why I have come all this way to speak with you.”

Meggie’s eyes shot open in alarm. She had assumed that the only reason he had reappeared was because he had a continuing interest in Eunice Kincaid’s condition and had been told Meggie was the person to whom to apply for details.

“You have come to speak to
me
? But—but why?” she stammered. “I have nothing to say.”

“Oh, but you do. You can say ‘I will.’”

“Say ‘I will?’ I will what?” Meggie replied, confused.

His voice dropped very low, soft as pure velvet. “Say you will marry me, Meggie Bloom.”

M
eggie stared at him, certain she could not have heard correctly. People didn’t just waltz up a garden path and demand to marry someone they’d never met before—especially dukes’ sons who surely had better things to do than playing at proposing to orphan girls with absolutely no prospects. Even she knew that much.

Meggie, my love … please come to me…

She shook her head hard, forcing herself back to reality. That was her private fantasy—nothing more. If she had learned anything in her life, it was that she could not afford to indulge herself in dreams. She was sensible to the core.

She had to be missing something in this absurd offer of marriage that had come out of the blue.

And then with a sudden flash of insight she realized what Hugo Montagu had
really
come for. Marriage, her foot. Her mouth dropped open in horror.

“Do you still have nothing to say?” he asked, looking down at her with a wide smile, revealing two long, tantalizing creases in his lean cheeks.

Meggie’s own cheeks burned with anger. So, he thought he could lead her astray with primrose promises and take what he wanted before abandoning her, did he? Well, she would give him what for. She knew all about rogues. She may never have actually met one before now, but she knew all about what they liked to get up to. She was a product of that particular activity.

“I think you must be mad,” she said, sorely tempted to give him a swift kick in the shin for his impertinence. What was it about her that made men think she was there for the taking? All they ever had was one thing on their minds, and she’d read enough of those minds to know. “Or maybe you’re perfectly sane, which would be an even greater pity.”

“What the … my dear girl, did you not hear me?” he said, looking at her as if she was the one who was mad. “Surely you do not receive proposals of marriage every day? Or did you not comprehend me?”

“I comprehended you perfectly,” Meggie said darkly. “And I think that you should go away before I box your ears. I think you should please go away, that is,” she amended politely. ‘Tour lordship.”

“Ah … so you do know who I am. I wonder how, if you have no memory of me.” He cocked his head to one side.

“It—it came back. Just now,” she said, embarrassed that he’d caught her out in a bald-faced lie. “Sister Agnes mentioned you when you were last here. She said that you came to ask after Lady Kincaid.”

“Yes, that is right, and I asked Sister Agnes to tell me all about you at the same time.”

“You did? Why?” Meggie said, astonished that Sister Agnes hadn’t said a word about it.

“Because Meggie … may I call you Meggie?”

She shrugged. “Everyone else does. Why should you stand on ceremony?”

“Indeed. Ceremony can be so tedious. But to answer your question, I asked about you because I was taken by you from the moment I saw you. Do you understand what that means?”

Meggie swallowed hard. She knew exactly what it meant, far too well for her comfort. “I—I really don’t think it is at all proper for you to speak of such things.”

To her surprise, he burst into laughter. “Maybe it is not proper, but considering what I am asking of you, I don’t see the harm. Again, perhaps you did not understand my proposal. Would you like me to clarify it for you?”

Meggie’s blood began to boil. He obviously not only thought her an easy mark, he thought her stupid to boot. Fine. She would give him a taste of his own medicine and see how he liked being treated like an imbecile.

“I
believe
what you were trying to say is that you want to take me away from this, my home, and you want me to sleep with you. In your bed. Is that not right? Or did you mean something else entirely?”

It was his turn to stare at her. He cleared his throat with an obvious effort. “I … well. Yes, that is part of it,” he said, “but sleeping in my bed is not
all
there is to it.”

“Oh. I suppose you mean the part about the baby that usually comes afterward,” Meggie retorted, starting to enjoy herself. “You do know about that?”

“Yes.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, I do know about that. I have no trouble with the idea of your having a baby, though. Have you?”

“Why ever should I?” Meggie said, thinking him perfectly shameless. She wondered how many bastard children he had already spawned, or if he’d even bothered to count. “However, I have no interest in sleeping in your bed. I am perfectly happy in my own.”

He reached out and picked up one of her hands, looking down at it with an unreadable expression. Meggie assumed he was trying to hide his revulsion at the soil encrusted under her fingernails and the mud that coated her palm. He certainly was persistent if he was willing to dirty himself, she thought, knowing she should pull her hand away, but enjoying the touch of his fingers around hers far too much to break the contact.

It was only for just a moment, after all. She might not feel her hand in his ever again, and he did have a very nice hand, large and warm and firm. An inadvertent sigh escaped her lips.

“Forgive me,” he said softly. “I think I have frightened you, and that was not my intention. Perhaps I should not have approached the subject so abruptly.”

“Oh? How else would you have approached it?” Meggie really could not believe she was even participating in this conversation.

“I should have told you first that I am in love with you, that I have felt this way for weeks now. In all sincerity I couldn’t stay away any longer. I had to come, Meggie, I really did.”

I need you, Meggie…

Meggie firmly shut the treacherous refrain out of her head, gazing at him with no expression. Oh, he was a clever one. He’d say anything to achieve his goal: promise marriage, plead love—she doubted he had any conscience at all. “You are in love with me?” she said, deliberately puckering her brow. “Very deeply?”

“Painfully so,” he said, gazing earnestly into her eyes.

She gazed earnestly back at him, although it was harder to do than she’d anticipated. His eyes really were the most extraordinary color—an azure that made her think of the deep blue of cloudless summer skies. “Does it hurt very much?” she asked, forcing her attention back to the absurd conversation.

“It hurts more than I can say,” he replied, lightly squeezing her fingers. “My heart fell to you in that split second I saw you through the window, and it has ached terribly ever since.”

She smiled brightly at him, even though she badly wanted to kick his shins. “Perhaps you need a bandage. I can fetch you one if you like.”

His mouth tightened. “What I need is for you to say you will be mine. Please. I will be good to you, Meggie. Very good.”

“Good to me?” she said, resting the forefinger of her free hand on her lower lip, hoping she looked like a complete naif. “You have to forgive me—my understanding is limited. What does ‘good to me’ mean?”

“It means you will have everything your heart desires. All you have to do is agree. Sister Agnes would be so pleased if you did.”

Meggie narrowed her eyes, abandoning her game. “Sister Agnes would have your hide if she knew what you were suggesting,” she said with cold fury. “She’d have your hide if she knew you were out here at all.”

“Sister Agnes does know,” he replied, running his thumb over the back of her hand and sending shivers down her poor defenseless spine. “I spoke to her before coming to you and she gave me her full blessing. Who do you think sent me out here?”

Meggie jerked her hand from his grasp and clutched it to her chest. “Oooh—you really are despicable,” she cried, outraged to her core. “Sister Agnes would
never
agree to anything so wicked! Will you stop at nothing to further your disgraceful cause? Do you think me so completely addle-brained that I would believe you?”

He actually colored, and she saw with satisfaction that she’d hit a mark of some sort, although she couldn’t be sure what it was. Oh,
what
she’d give to be able to read his thoughts—or even just his nature.

“Meggie,” he said, looking extremely uncomfortable, “I don’t know what the nuns have told you, but I swear to you, there is nothing wrong with the physical union between a man and a woman. God Himself decreed it should be so.”

Meggie was so amazed at this further piece of audacity that her mouth fell open wide enough to catch flies. First he invoked the blessing of nuns, and now of God Himself, to put a stamp of approval on seduction? “Did He,” she said weakly. “How extraordinarily openhanded of Him. Did Sister Agnes tell you that, too?”

He groaned, looking frustrated and annoyed. She felt deliciously pleased that she’d managed to knock him off his self-satisfied pedestal for one small moment.

He released a long breath and stared down at the lettuce bed. When he raised his eyes to her he looked entirely different, smiling at her as if she were his favorite person on earth.

“If you agree to marry me,” he said in treacle tones, “you will have lots and lots of pretty clothes, and a nice soft bed all of your very own. You may get up from that bed whenever you please and go to sleep in it whenever you please and—and you may have as many chocolates as you can eat. Day in and day out. Lots of
big
chocolates. Wouldn’t you like that?”

He nodded rapidly, up and down, up and down, the way some of the patients did.

Meggie’s eyes widened with dawning comprehension. Could it be that Lord Hugo Montagu was short a few sheets?

“Big chocolates?” she repeated, instantly reformatting their entire conversation to see if it fit this new framework. It did—all too well. She might not be able to read his thoughts, but she certainly knew how to read all the signs of instability. She couldn’t believe she’d missed them earlier. Sister Agnes had even asked her two months ago if Meggie had noticed anything amiss about him. She had said that he is a relation of Eunice Kincaid’s and that mental illness ran in families.

“Oh, my goodness,” she murmured, one hand creeping to her throat in real dismay. She wanted to cry. Hugo Montagu, the magnificent man she’d been pining after for a full two months, was as mad as a hatter, just like his relative.
That
was why he was here. How could she have been so stupid not to realize, given his preposterous remarks?

“Barrows full of chocolates,” he said, nodding even harder in that peculiar fashion. “Wagonloads. And a garden of your very own, so that you are never without heads of lettuce, which you may dress in anything you please.”

“Thank you,” she said politely, finally knowing how to handle him. This was second nature to her after all her years at the sanitarium. “You are very generous.”

He looked vastly relieved, as if they were finally speaking the same language, and she supposed they finally were. “Ribbons too, lovely lemon ribbons for your hair, as many as you like. How does that sound?”

Meggie bestowed a matching smile on him, deciding that he must have just arrived and somehow contrived to wander away when no one was looking.

Poor man. He really did need help. “I am sure lemon ribbons would be lovely,” she said, trying to think how to coax him back to the building without alarming him.

“Barrows full of those, too. Just say you’ll marry me and you may have anything you like.”

Meggie tilted her head to one side, sure of her ground now. “Anything?”

“Indeed. Anything at all. Whatever your heart desires.”

“My heart desires that you come back to the house with me and speak to Sister Agnes.”

“I’ve already spoken with her,” he said, his expression returning to one of thorough exasperation. “I told you, she gave me her blessing. You are free to leave this very afternoon. I have a special license, so there will be no impropriety.”

“I’m sure you have,” she said in her most reassuring voice, her heart aching to see how delusional he really was. A special license to abduct young women? Oh, well—at least he was original. “I still think we had better go see Sister Agnes,” she urged.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Meggie, just marry me and you won’t have to think about Sister Agnes or this place ever again. Furthermore, if you don’t want me to come near your bed until you’re more comfortable with the idea, then that is fine, too. Whatever you wish—just be sensible and say you’ll be my wife, will you?”

Meggie chewed on her lip. She did have an obligation to return him as quickly as possible before the alarm was raised. There couldn’t be any harm in playing along with him just a little in order to achieve her goal. “Very well,” she replied, placing her hand on his coat sleeve. “I’ll be sensible.”

“You will?” He peered at her closely. “Do you mean you really will?”

“Of course I will, but you have to be sensible, too, and do as I’ve asked.” There, that wasn’t entirely a lie. She was being sensible, after all, and returning him to where he belonged.

His handsome face lit up as if she’d just told him it was Christmas morning. He raised both hands to the sky and threw his head back with a shout. “Oh, thank You, God! Thank you—I’ll never doubt You again!”

“Lord Hugo, I don’t think you should excite yourself so,” Meggie said. “It’s really not good for you.”

He looked at her with a huge grin. “It’s extremely good for me
—you
are good for me, Meggie Bloom, best girl in the world. You have no idea how happy you’ve made me!”

Before she had a chance to react, he grasped her by the waist and swept her off her feet, whirling her around in wide circles. She gasped and clutched at his shoulders, feeling as if she were flying. It was not an entirely unpleasant sensation, especially since he was holding her so tightly.

A low, menacing growl broke through the air and Meggie suddenly remembered Hadrian. He’d been so quiet that she’d forgotten he was there, but this unorthodox treatment of her by a sheer stranger was clearly too much for his protective instincts.

Hugo froze with Meggie still mid-air. “Good God,” he whispered. “Don’t move. Don’t move a muscle.”

“Actually, I think you’d better put me down,” Meggie said, feeling positively light-headed. Trust her to be carnally attracted to a madman whose thoughts she couldn’t even access.