Call Down the Moon (2 page)

“Oh, I just saw someone passing by,” Hugo said as casually as he could manage. “I couldn’t help but wonder, not knowing what your regulations are.”

“Despite what you might think, this is not Newgate Prison, Lord Hugo.” The nun rose and joined him at the window, slipping on a pair of spectacles that she produced out of some hidden fold in her voluminous habit. She peered out. “I don’t see anyone.”

“She’s gone now. She was young, dressed in white, with fair hair, no cap or veil or anything like that, and—and slim. Slim, and quite tall for a woman. Almost…” He’d been about to say ethereal, but decided that would be inappropriate. “Almost the height of my mother,” he finished.

“Ah,” Sister Agnes said, glancing over at him with an impassive expression. “That would be Meggie Bloom. She came to us from the Ipswich orphanage some six years ago.”

“The orphanage?” Hugo said.

“Yes, she’s had a hard life, poor child. Meggie’s mother died only minutes after she was born, leaving her an orphan, and then the woman who was kind enough to take her in died only nine years later. There was no one else willing to look after Meggie once her foster mother was gone, so the orphanage it was.”

Hugo wondered at what point young Meggie Bloom had lost her mind. She’d certainly had an unpleasant welcome to the world, and it didn’t sound to him as if it had gotten any better along the way. He didn’t wonder that the girl had become unstable.

“So the orphanage sent her here when they could no longer manage to keep her?” he asked, unable to contain his curiosity.

“Yes, it seemed the only solution. But we were happy to take her.”

Of course you were, Hugo thought to himself. You positively thrive on lost souls. The more the merrier.

The nun shot him a quizzical look. “You appear surprised, Lord Hugo. Perhaps you think Meggie is very young to be with us, but she is older than she appears—twenty-three, as it happens. It is unfortunate that the outside world could not find a place for her, but we appreciate her unique qualities.”

Hugo frowned. He understood that the nun had taken vows, one of them being compassion, but for Sister Agnes to describe insanity as a “unique quality” was painting it a bit too brown for his liking. “I would know nothing about it,” he said, putting a quick end to the discussion. “I must be going, I’m afraid. I have an appointment in town.”

“It was kind of you to spare us a small portion of your valuable time, Lord Hugo,” the nun said with an undertone of something that sounded very much to Hugo like irony. “I don’t expect we shall be seeing you again.”

“As my mother rarely succumbs to illness of any kind, I don’t imagine you will,” Hugo said. “Good day, Sister Agnes.”

“Good day, Lord Hugo. May God go with you,” the nun said.

Hugo didn’t hear the valediction, as he was already halfway down the hall before she’d finished it.

M
eggie placed a careful stitch in the tapestry she’d been working on for the last six years and didn’t expect to finish before she died. At least embroidery gave her something to do when she wasn’t busy tending to the patients.

She rubbed her eyes and leaned back, examining the most recent scene she’d been toiling over. The left side of Eve’s torso was coming along nicely, although her face still needed some attention. When the piece was finally done it would be Meggie’s personal depiction of the Garden of Eden. Before the serpent came along, naturally, when Adam and Eve were still in accord with God and each other.

It was foolish of her to be so whimsical, perhaps, but she took a small measure of pleasure from indulging herself in the idea that there once had been perfection in the world—a time when there had been no disease, no hunger, no unhappiness, no loneliness. No madness.

Meggie wasn’t at all sure what she was going to do when the time came to tackle Adam. She had next to no knowledge of how a man’s unclothed anatomy looked, beyond a hazy memory of an illustration or two she had seen in a book in her foster mother’s house. In that book all the men had been wearing fig leaves or carefully draped pieces of cloth. She’d better bestow a fig leaf on Adam, even if it wasn’t historically accurate, or she’d really be in trouble. What she needed to concentrate on were the strong lines of the torso, the powerful musculature of the arms and legs…

She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering in perfect, magnificent detail the dark-haired stranger who had gazed at her through Sister Agnes’s study window that afternoon and had so deeply unsettled her. Now
he
might make the perfect model for Adam if she just stripped him of his clothes…

Meggie shook her head sharply, refusing to let her thoughts wander in that direction. His image had been plaguing her ever since, but to go so far as to imagine him wearing nothing but a fig leaf—that was truly wicked. One did
not
go about unclothing men, even in one’s mind.

She glanced up as Sister Agnes yawned and stretched her gnarled fingers toward the warmth of the fire, her gaze focused on the flames. Meggie knew from experience that the nun was about to vanish into deep thought. Sister Agnes could either be completely alert, aware of every last detail of what happened in her small dominion, or completely lost in contemplation over what improvements she might bring to bear on it.

Meggie smiled fondly at the elderly woman. She would never forget the day she’d appeared dirty, dusty, and exhausted at the Woodbridge Sanitarium all those years ago. She had been so frightened, thinking that her life was going from miserable to unbearable, since the Mother Superior of Ipswich Orphanage had warned her Comrade-in-God about Meggie’s depraved character.

Instead, she was greeted by a woman as warm as she was wise. Sister Agnes had actually embraced her upon her arrival—embraced her! Meggie had nearly keeled over with shock. She hadn’t been embraced in more than eight years. She’d hardly been touched in any way, except in punishment. Touching wasn’t allowed at the Ipswich Orphanage.

Sister Agnes took her inside, fed her the best meal Meggie had eaten since her foster mother had died, and allowed Meggie to nod off at the dinner table.

From that day until now, Sister Agnes had never spoken an unkind word to Meggie. She had taken Meggie under her wing and treated her with compassion and infinite understanding, a healing balm to Meggie’s wounded soul.

From the beginning, Sister Agnes made it clear that she believed not one word that the Mother Superior had written about the inherent evil lurking in Meggie’s heart. Instead, she accepted Meggie, and as Meggie gradually came to trust Sister Agnes, she allowed herself to open up. One day she even found herself telling the nun about the strange talent she’d been born with. She’d never admitted it before to anyone, fearing the repercussions. It was bad enough when people only suspected.

Witch. Devil. Liar.

Yet instead of condemning Meggie, Sister Agnes had told her that her talent was not God’s curse, but His blessing—a true gift that could do others good if she used it wisely and carefully.

Meggie still wasn’t convinced about the blessing part, although she did realize that her talent had a special function in the sanitarium, and Sister Agnes encouraged her to make use of it.

She wished she knew why she was able to hear the inner thoughts of the deeply troubled and deranged with hardly any distortion. Animals were just as clear to her, although she didn’t exactly read their minds as much as sense their impressions. But, her talent was entirely unpredictable when it came to dealing with the sane.

Sometimes she’d hear the thoughts inside their heads as clear as day, and sometimes she had nothing more than a vague sense of their thoughts. And sometimes she couldn’t make much out at all, although she was never without an acute sense of a person’s presence.

What she’d like to have was the ability to
choose
to read the minds of those around her—or better yet, not to read them at all. As it was, she never knew when an errant blast of someone’s private contemplations was going to enter her mind.

Usually she had some warning, a vague buzzing like a distant conversation that was easy enough to tune out. But when she wasn’t paying attention, the buzz suddenly crystallized itself into words and images and, well … it could be embarrassing. This morning had been a classic example.

Jasper Oddbins had been giving her the day’s gardening instructions, as if she couldn’t work out what needed to be done for herself. She’d let her mind wander, much to her regret, for the next thing she knew, Jasper Oddbin’s exploits of the night before were singing in her head completely uninvited.

Owd Sally Potter were a fine ‘un, she were, full of daviltry, and me cherry merry. Wouldn’t mind if I don’t ha’ another trosh tonight, e’en if it do cost me my week’s wages … Now liddle Miss Meggie here, waal she’d be fine enow, but I’d be a dunner if that nun got wind I ha’ a fancy for the gal … A nice, tidy bosom, yass sah, e’en if it be all hidden away in that sack…

Blushing ferociously, Meggie had belatedly snapped the mental shield into place that protected her from unwelcome knowledge, but she hadn’t been able to look Jasper in the face after that.

“Goodness, it’s been a long day,” Sister Agnes said, returning from her reverie as suddenly as she’d gone into it.

“Has it, Sister?” Meggie replied, happy to be distracted. “What trials crossed your path today?”

“Well, first we had a disturbing incident with poor Mr. Blecksott—I did tell Peterson that he needed to keep a more careful eye on the razor when he shaved the man. It’s a blessing Mr. Blecksott didn’t manage to do Peterson any damage when he grabbed hold of the razor and chased poor Peterson about the room.”

“I know you don’t like me to speak unkindly, Sister, but what Mr. Blecksott needs is a good wallop to his backside,” Meggie replied tartly. “If his mother had seen to it when he was a child, Mr. Blecksott would probably have gone through life in a much more regulated fashion,” she muttered half to herself.

“Now, Meggie,” Sister Agnes replied, her mouth curving in a tolerant smile that belied the sternness of her tone, “you know better than to speak like that. Mr. Blecksott cannot help his predisposition to violence. You must try a little harder to feel kindly toward him.”

“Perhaps I would if I didn’t believe Mr. Blecksott is with us in order to escape his creditors. This dementia he pretends to display is enough to keep him here for as long as it pleases him—and I am certain it pleases him far more than a stint in jail would. He never does any serious harm to himself or anyone else, does he?”

Meggie knew perfectly well that her words would make no difference. Mr. Blecksott would be there tomorrow and the day after that, and on and on
ad infinitum,
just as surely as she would be. They were both locked into the same humdrum routine, and she was sure Mr. Blecksott terrorized Peterson and everyone else out of sheer boredom. What else did he have to do with his time?

“He may not have harmed anyone yet, but not for lack of trying,” Sister Agnes said gently. “Since you tell me that you cannot see clearly in his case, you must not make assumptions. You of all people should realize that.”

Meggie just shrugged. Maybe she was hardened, too aware of the bitter realities of life to be as compassionate as Sister Agnes would like her to be. Sister Agnes had not experienced life’s hard edges in the same way that Meggie had.

Sister Agnes had been brought up in a loving family. It had been
her
choice to turn her face away from the temporal aspects of life and devote herself to God and the care of the less fortunate.

Meggie’d had no such choice. Life had been dictated to her, defined by loss, shaped by helplessness. She’d learned early on that her life would never be like everyone else’s, and she had long since developed a pragmatic core that concealed her loneliness.

Her dreams were of no importance in the great scheme of things, nor would they ever be. Sister Agnes had drilled into her head time and time again that she was God’s servant, doing God’s work for those poor souls whom God loved best. Meggie should try to be grateful and have faith that God had a plan for her.

Meggie didn’t believe for a moment that God had a plan for her. Not that she had anything against God—it was just that she didn’t think He interested Himself in the day-to-day problems of each of His servants, sane or otherwise. He had certainly shown no interest to date in Meggie and she didn’t expect that to change.

For Sister Agnes’s sake, though, Meggie did try to find a reason to be grateful for her circumstances. So far she hadn’t had much success.

She looked hard for what beauty each day might hold, and she occasionally managed to find it in the small satisfactions, such as the work she did in the gardens. Sometimes she was even rewarded by a minor miracle when one of her patients found the way back to reason and was discharged to live a full and healthy life.

Meggie couldn’t help wondering if she’d ever leave the sanitarium. Where would she go? What would she do? She might have been trained for teaching but between her unfortunate background and her unusual ability she doubted she’d find a respectable position. The Mother Superior had clearly come to the same conclusion.

She supposed she should be grateful that at least here she didn’t stand out as a freak. The patients didn’t seem to notice that she could read their thoughts, caught up as they were in their own perverse sense of reality. Her job was to see to their needs as she perceived them, and she seemed to make a difference to their peace of mind. Sister Agnes understood that and honored her talent, telling Meggie time and time again how much she appreciated her help. Here, at least, Meggie was needed.

She bent her head back over her stitching, forcing her attention back to her work and pushing her troubled thoughts into the comer of her mind that she kept to herself.

Meggie had also tried to push thoughts of the mysterious man she had seen earlier to the same comer of her mind. What
had
he been doing in Sister Agnes’s study, and why had he been staring at her with such fierce concentration, his hand pressed up against the glass?

For one foolish moment she’d thought he’d been reaching out to her…

“Where have you gone now, Meggie?” Sister Agnes asked, turning her head at Meggie’s extended silence. “You’ve been unusually quiet this evening.”

“I was just wondering about the man who visited you today.” The words slipped out and Meggie wanted to bite her tongue. Since she couldn’t take them back now, she decided that she might as well forge ahead. Her curiosity had been gnawing at her ever since their gazes had locked for those unnerving moments. She remembered breaking the contact and urging her feet along the path, resisting an impulse to glance back to see if he was still watching her with his piercing cobalt eyes and their unfathomable expression.

Perhaps that was what fascinated her most of all—that he had been so completely unfathomable to her. Usually she sensed
something
from a person, even if she couldn’t read his thoughts. In the stranger’s case there had been nothing at all, no clue as to his character, his intentions. She had heard only a great, unfamiliar silence.

Instead, something else had stirred deep inside her, something equally unfamiliar and also frightening, as if she were far out of her depth. It was something that had wakened a part of herself that spoke of being a woman and left her in no doubt that he was a man.

She thought she finally understood what poor Martha Lindsay meant when she ranted about the uncontrollable physical urges of her body that had led to her downfall and to Woodbridge Sanitarium. Meggie had been hard pressed to understand what a physical urge for a man might feel like, but now she had a fair idea. She really wished she had remained in the dark.

“I—I saw him in your window,” Meggie added feebly, trying her best to sound unconcerned about the incident. “Was he here to inquire about one of the patients?”

“In a roundabout way,” Sister Agnes replied, snipping a thread off her own embroidery. “He came on his mother’s behalf, but I do not think he was by any means comfortable stepping foot in a sanitarium.”

“Who was he?” Meggie persisted, fascinated by this small kernel of information about the mysterious visitor.

“His name is Lord Hugo Montagu. His mother is the Dowager Duchess of Southwell, one of our patronesses. Lady Kincaid is a relation of the family’s and it was the dowager who brought her to us.”

“Oh…” Meggie said, her head spinning with this unexpected revelation. Never in a million years would she have made a connection between Eunice Kincaid, whose soul spoke to her of chaos, and this enigmatic stranger whose soul was silent, but whose physical appearance had wreaked havoc on her equilibrium.

So he was a duke’s son. Maybe that explained his complete inaccessibility, she thought wryly; perhaps his thoughts and feelings were far too rarefied for the likes of her. She chewed on the end of her finger for a moment. “Did he come to see Lady Kincaid?” she finally asked. “I was with her earlier this evening, and she mentioned no visitors, not that she is fit to see anyone in her present condition.”