Meggie opened her mouth to answer, but Hugo got there first.
“May I present Meggie Bloom?” he said, with a bow. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss—er, Aunt Ottoline.”
“How do you do?” Meggie said, dropping a curtsy. She supposed that was the end of her participation in the conversation.
“Exceptionally well, thank you,” Ottoline said, patting her stomach. “A good dose of salts goes a long way toward keeping me regulated.”
Meggie grinned, liking Ottoline Mabey more by the moment. Hugo didn’t look anywhere near as pleased, Meggie saw, glancing over at him.
“I am happy to hear it,” he said, a bald-faced lie, if the frown on his face was anything to go by. “I take it you received my letter, then?”
“Oh, indeed, just yesterday, and Dorelia and I have been busy as can be, preparing everything for your arrival.” She looked over her shoulder at the empty door.
“Sister!” she screeched, then turned back to Hugo and Meggie. “She’s probably in the kitchen keeping an eye on Cookie. We found him at the Orford quay yesterday. He’d come off a merchant ship and we snatched him right up, seeing as he’d just been dismissed. So lucky we were, even if he is a bit of a crusty fellow, though I suspect he will be mellow once he settles in.”
“Dismissed for what, exactly?” Hugo asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Stealing, dear, stealing, but Dorelia will have him sorted out in no time. He
says
he was only taking the extra rations that would otherwise have gone to waste, and I thought that sounded so thrifty. Still, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out to ensure that he gets off on the right foot.”
Hugo closed his eyes for a brief moment. “Never mind. Never mind. As long as he can cook.”
“Well, naturally I tried him out before hiring him,” Ottoline said in injured tones. “
I
thought he was frightfully clever, and so did Dorelia
and
Mr. Coldsnap. We dined very well indeed last night.”
“Who is Mr. Coldsnap?” Hugo asked, rubbing one finger over the bridge of his nose.
“Why, your steward, dear. Heavens, didn’t that silly man Peasenhall tell you anything when he sold you the property? Reginald Coldsnap has been running Lyden for years.”
Meggie was getting the distinct impression that she was not the only one new to these premises. Hugo appeared to know absolutely nothing about his house or the people connected to it. She wondered if he’d ever even stepped inside the door.
“Mr. Peasenhall mentioned only that the estate was well managed,” Hugo said, looking more annoyed by the moment. “But let us not stand out here. Miss Bloom will want to wash and change before dinner. You have prepared two bedrooms as I requested?”
“Only the best, and side by side, just as it was in our dear cousin Lally’s time. Oh, she was so happy when she married Linus—that’s Lord Eliot, dear, or was. Such a great tragedy when he lost her, although we did our best to make it up to him. My, but Dorelia and I have missed the old boy. We were a happy family.”
Meggie’s eyes widened as she caught the faintest whisper of remembered bliss—and physical bliss, if she wasn’t mistaken. Her hand crept to her cheek in wonder. Was it possible that Ottoline and her sister had actually—she blushed furiously and pushed the thought away.
Ottoline shot Meggie a sharp look, almost as if she knew what Meggie was thinking, then clapped her hands together. “Ah, well, this is no time to be reminiscing, not when there’s a wedding to plan,” she said, steering them toward the door. “Now, I stopped by to see the vicar this morning, and he is waiting to hear from you, happy to oblige you anytime you please, although you must remember that he has Sunday morning services, so tomorrow or Monday would be best for the ceremony.”
Hugo nodded as he led Meggie through the open door. “Tomorrow, I think. There is no point in delay.”
Meggie barely heard him, hanging on to his arm for dear life. It was a miracle that her legs didn’t collapse under her in shock.
The hall they’d entered was vast—so vast it could easily have housed an entire family. She gazed up to see that the pale blue walls were topped by a high white plastered and vaulted ceiling. Dizzy, she looked down only to see that the floor beneath her feet was a patterned marble. And on every inch of wall hung enormous paintings of biblical scenes and battle scenes and bucolic scenes of men with dogs and guns.
Meggie shut her eyes, unable to take in anything more, her head spinning. Too much. It was all too much.
“Meggie? Meggie, are you unwell?”
Meggie dimly heard Hugo’s voice coming to her, and she made an effort to open her eyes and smile up at him. “I’m perfectly well,” she replied brightly, then fainted dead away.
“O
pen your eyes, dear, there’s a good girl. Come along, open wide. Do it for your nice auntie, won’t you?”
Meggie stirred, dimly aware that she was lying on the softest bed she’d ever known, with a linen sheet loosely draped over her body. The soothing scent of lavender drifted from a cool cloth pressed against her brow.
She was sure she was dreaming. The last time anyone had cared for her in such a tender way was when she’d had the mumps at the age of seven. Aunt Emily had sat by her bedside, reading her stories and feeding her soup. But Aunt Emily was long dead and she didn’t have any other aunts—she had no family at all. And nothing was wrong with her other than a sharp gnawing in the pit of her stomach.
She groaned, thinking she must have slept through supper. No wonder—it was Friday, and she loathed gruel, so she hadn’t missed anything. Except lunch, she remembered. Never mind. That would have been gruel, too. Drift … keep drifting…
“Come along, child,” the same voice murmured. “Poor dear Hugo is pacing up and down outside, thinking you’re about to expire. He’s not to know that brides have nerves, now is he?”
Hugo … brides.
The words tugged at Meggie through her daze. That was it—Lyden Hall. She was at Lyden Hall, and funny little Ottoline Mabey was urging her to wake up.
She slowly opened her eyes, only to find Ottoline’s gaze boring straight into hers. Yet Meggie sensed none of the same giddy effervescence that had come from Ottoline before. Instead she felt a deep calm … and far beneath the calm, a great dark void, the place of deepest knowing.
Meggie stared transfixed into those ageless eyes for a long moment as if she might absorb strength from the giver before she responded to the call to awakening.
As she did, she heard a silent humming, a deep, strong primitive song that vibrated in her bones and echoed in her heart. A nameless song, it was one so instinctive that Meggie knew it for the song of the soul, emanating from the very depths of this woman.
She sat up abruptly. “Who are you?” she demanded. “You’re not Ottoline—you can’t be!”
“Just as I thought,” the Ottoline-who-wasn’t said with satisfaction. “You have the Blessed Gift, haven’t you, child? Ottoline thought it might be so.”
Meggie gaped at her with sudden understanding. Identical twins—she’d never come across a pair before. No wonder she’d been confused. However alike they might be on the surface, their inner natures were their own, and in this case as different as night and day. “You are Dorelia,” she said with certainty.
“I am Dorelia,” the little woman agreed, “and you are Meggie Bloom, a child of Sight. You are welcome here. You are most welcome here.” Tears shone in her bright little brown eyes and she patted Meggie’s hand with great affection.
Meggie didn’t for a moment think to deny Dorelia’s blunt statement. She could scarcely believe it, but she recognized something of herself in this woman. “You—you have it, too,” she whispered. “You have, haven’t you?” She wanted to cry with profound relief that she’d found someone else who had been born with the same aberration of nature as she.
“I have, dear, I do have, although I do not think my Blessed Gift behaves in the same way as yours does,” Dorelia answered cheerfully. “You see, the Blessed Gift comes in all shapes and sizes, just as we do.”
“It does?” Meggie said, wondering if here at last might be some answers to the questions she’d had for a very long time.
“Oh, indeed. There are those who can see the future, for instance. I am not one of them, thank goodness, for heaven only knows what I’d try to discover. I nose around in everyone’s business enough as it is.”
Meggie chuckled with true appreciation. “I know just what you mean.”
“Do you?” Dorelia looked at her speculatively. “How is that, child? How does your B.G. manifest, exactly?”
Meggie wanted to laugh. Her B.G. Somehow hearing it put like that made it almost normal, like a part of her body. “Well…” she said, “I cannot foresee the future or anything like that, but I can—well, I can hear other people’s thoughts. Only sometimes and not always when I want. Then sometimes when I do want to, I can’t hear anything at all. Or so I’ve just discovered.”
She could scarcely believe that she was talking in such a casual way about the talent that had plagued her all her life.
“Yes … it is irksome, isn’t it?” Dorelia said just as comfortably. “Now, I have the healing touch, but I cannot produce any sort of guaranteed outcome, simply a brilliant diagnosis. After that I can only give the treatment I think proper and hope for the best.”
She pursed her lips together. “I’d
far
prefer to have it the other way around, a terrible diagnosis and a perfect result, but there you are. One must do the best with one’s B.G. as one can. Speaking of which,” she said, gently pressing Meggie back down upon the bed. “Lie still for just a moment, while I see to you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Meggie protested. “I just forgot to eat at noon.”
“I’ll be the judge of what’s wrong with you and what isn’t,” Dorelia said, proceeding to press her hands in various places on Meggie’s body, sighing and humming to herself as she did so.
“Mmm,” she said when she finished. “You’ll do. Hungry, as you said, and tired, too, but we’ll soon have that fixed. More to the point, you’re frightened and confused and your emotions are all in a tizzy, but it doesn’t take the B.G. to know that. Love will do that to you.”
Meggie turned her head to one side, deeply ashamed, knowing she couldn’t lie, certainly not to this woman. “It’s not love,” she whispered. “I’m not supposed to say anything, but Hugo and I don’t even know each other. He just
thinks
it’s love—but that’s because his baser nature has taken control of his good sense.”
Dorelia stared at her, then threw her head back and shrieked with laughter. She howled from her belly until she bent over sideways on the bed, her little head bobbing back and forth, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Meggie had never in her life seen anyone laugh in such an unrestrained fashion, and although she thoroughly enjoyed the sight, she wasn’t at all sure what Dorelia found so wildly amusing.
As much as she longed to know, there was no divining Dorelia’s thoughts or feelings, but really, what need did Meggie have to divine anything? Dorelia’s hilarity said it all. Meggie was nothing but a silly girl.
She waited until Dorelia had straightened and wiped her eyes and nose on a scrap of handkerchief she produced from her sleeve.
“You really do only see so far, don’t you?” Dorelia cackled. “Never mind. You are young still.”
“I realize that the situation must sound ridiculous,” Meggie said, swallowing the last remnant of pride she had left, “but I have told you the truth. I accepted an offer of marriage from Hugo so that I might gain my freedom. There is nothing more to it.”
Dorelia’s face crumpled up again and she buried it in her handkerchief. ‘Tour freedom,” she said, when she finally looked up, vigorously wiping her nose. “Indeed? Freedom is a relative term, child. There is freedom of the mind, freedom of the body, freedom of the spirit, and each of those is qualified by the conditions you choose to impose on yourself and on others. I wonder which type of freedom you think you have attained?”
Meggie frowned. She knew that she was free of walls, free of rules and regulations that had for countless years defined every waking hour of her life, but she had a feeling that she’d just taken on another set of rules and regulations that she hadn’t begun to understand. Dorelia in her own way must be giving her fair warning.
Dorelia hopped up from the bed and opened the door of the hugest wardrobe Meggie had ever seen. “I aired and pressed a dinner dress for you last night in anticipation of your arrival—just in case you were not prepared. Ottoline thought that might be a possibility. That is Ottoline’s B.G., you see. She gets ideas about the future, and it’s usually best to listen.”
Meggie blinked. Ottoline had a B.G., too? “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my.”
Dorelia ignored her. “The dress is not in the latest fashion, of course, belonging as it did to my dear Lally who died many years before, but the material is still good.” She nodded, looking pleased with herself. “As soon as Lally passed away I packed it in mothballs and lavender. Ah, lavender—yes, indeed, an infinite variety of uses for the darling. Where
would
we be without it?”
She reached into the wardrobe and pulled the dress from somewhere inside the great interior, holding it up to the light that streamed through the window. “Now that I see you, I think the color a good choice, suited to your complexion. There are many whose skin is made sallow by green, but Ottoline had an idea about that, too. I modified the style as best I could without a pattern.”
“Oh—it’s lovely,” Meggie said in awe. She’d only seen such elegant clothing from a distance, worn by the grand ladies who occasionally came to visit relatives in the sanitarium. She’d never thought she’d ever wear anything so fine herself. “Are you sure?” she said, hesitating. “It doesn’t seem right to be wearing your cousin’s dress.”
“Don’t be absurd. Lally doesn’t need it anymore, does she? Off with that awful black thing you’re wearing.” She shook the dress out and pressed it against Meggie’s shoulders. “Lally was tall, as you are, so I do not think the hem will need taking up. I can make any necessary alterations in a pinch, but your figures are similar to my eye, much too slim. And just like Lally’s, your bosom could do with some filling out, but that will have to come in time, I suppose. Cleavage is such an advantage.”
Meggie had never given any consideration to her figure or its shape. She had certainly never spent any time dwelling on the size of her bosom. It was merely there, serving no other purpose than to earn licentious thoughts from Jasper Oddbins and others like him.
Apparently her bosom now had another function. It was there to fill out the front of clothes. She was obviously going to have to readjust her thinking about a great many things.
“Yes, Aunt Dorelia,” Meggie said obediently, wondering just how her bosom was going to fill out in time. It hadn’t changed one iota in eight years, and she didn’t anticipate it suddenly leaping forward and producing cleavage now.
“That’s better, as there’s an entire trunk of Lally’s clothes that have been going to waste—and if there’s one thing I cannot abide, it’s waste.” She cocked her head and regarded Meggie with a challenging gleam in her
eye.
“Well, you do need a trousseau, don’t you? All brides need a trousseau, and now you have one, so let’s hear no more about it.”
“Thank you,” Meggie said gratefully, slipping out of her own dress that had served her since her arrival at the sanitarium. “I have nothing suitable of my own to wear.”
“That much I do know, as I unpacked your bag. Between what I found in there and that hideous garment,” she said gesturing disdainfully at it, “it looks to me as if you’ve come straight from some kind of institution.”
Meggie colored furiously. “I—it is true,” she said, looking at the floor. “I worked at the Woodbridge Sanitarium. But please, say nothing to Hugo. He would rather no one knows, and I promised I wouldn’t tell. I’m supposed to say I met him in the village.”
Dorelia leveled a no-nonsense gaze at Meggie. “No one will hear it from me, but young Hugo sounds as if he needs some sense knocked into his head. Where’s your family, girl?”
“I have none,” Meggie said with a shrug. “My mother died giving birth to me, and my father died before that.” She couldn’t believe how easy that admission was. She couldn’t believe how easy she found it to talk to Dorelia, as if she’d known her all her life. She felt the same with Ottoline, as if communication was effortless. The experience was rare.
“Hmm. Orphaned, were you? No living relatives, not even an aunt or uncle? What about brothers and sisters?”
“I have no one,” Meggie repeated.
“So before you went to the nuns at the sanitarium, you were at an orphanage. Ipswich Orphanage, right? It’s the only one in the area. And it’s run by nuns.” Dorelia snorted. “No wonder you wanted your freedom. Well, never mind that now—you can tell me all about it some other time when there’s nothing better to do. We need to get you ready for dinner. We must make a good impression on Cookie, or he’s bound to bolt,” she said, shaking her head. “You have no idea how difficult it is to find a good cook, let alone keep one, and I don’t intend to let this one get away. We’ve been making do on our own for too long.”
Meggie sensed that Dorelia had just firmly shut the door on the past and just as firmly opened another—this one to Meggie’s future, which evidently began now.
An infuriated bellow sounded from the hallway. “Get away, you damned bloody beast! My God, has your mistress taught you no manners at all? I will
not
tolerate your insufferable attitude—let me past this minute!”
A low, familiar growl came from just outside the door.
Meggie jumped to her feet. “Hadrian? Oh, dear, he shouldn’t be in the house. I left him outside.”
“Oh, is that the name of your dear wolf?” Dorelia asked, shoving Meggie right back onto the bed with a surprisingly strong hand. “He came bounding inside the moment you went flat out and hasn’t left off guarding your door since. A lovely fellow—and unusual to see any of their kind out in the open these days. Wolves have been badly misunderstood, don’t you think?”
“Yes, but before he’s even more badly misunderstood, I must go to him,” Meggie said, alarm racing through every nerve in her body. Given Hugo’s fear of Hadrian, he might do something truly dreadful like kick him, or even shoot him.
“Don’t be silly, child,” Dorelia said, brandishing Meggie’s brush that she’d produced from the dressing table against the wall. “Darling Hugo must come to terms with your Hadrian, and the sooner the better. You
do
realize they are fighting over their territorial rights?”
Meggie frowned. “The house is more than big enough for both of them. This isn’t even Hadrian’s territory, not yet.”
“I didn’t mean the house; I was referring to you,” Dorelia said, letting Meggie’s hair down and starting to brush it with even strokes. “You are, of course, Hadrian’s family, his pack, as he sees it. This much I
can
divine—the beast is devoted to you. I know animals’ minds as well as I know my own. They know it, too.”