“Because he wanted to bring you both to India, now that he had enough money to support you and a place to live. Did I not mention that theirs was a true love match?”
Meggie drew in a deep breath, then released it. “No. No, you didn’t mention it. That’s one piece of good news in this whole mess, I suppose.”
“Oh, child,” Ottoline said, “I do apologize. You were very much wanted by your mother and your father, who loved each other to distraction.”
Meggie didn’t know why, given the rest of the story, but she gained great comfort from the knowledge that her parents had at least loved each other. She’d always wondered about that, always hoped it had been so, and now she knew they had. “What else did he say in his letter?” she asked, suddenly desperate to know what her father had thought, what he’d felt after it all had gone wrong.
“Well, he explained that he’d already planned to go into exile, knowing that he couldn’t carry on smuggling for very much longer, not with the excise men getting closer all the time,” Ottoline said. He told us that he’d written to Meg in Ramsholt, where she lived with her parents, telling her to meet aim at Bawdsey at eleven o’clock the night of June 24th. He’d moored his ship, the
Hope,
there, and he intended to take Meg away with him.” She sighed heavily, then pulled a handkerchief from her left sleeve and pressed it against her mouth, smothering a sob. “I cannot bear to go on.”
Dorelia, her own tears flowing freely, snatched the handkerchief from her sister’s grasp and blew her nose with vigor. “Oh, dear. Dear me, the tragedy. And that is
my
handkerchief, Sister.”
“Nonsense,” Ottoline barked. “I took it from the laundry pile myself this very morning.”
“Please,” Meggie begged, “don’t stop now, Aunt Ottoline. What happened? What went wrong?”
“Yes, and there lies the rub, child,” Ottoline said, glowering darkly at her sister, “for nothing would have gone wrong at all if it hadn’t been for those interfering idiot Blooms. They intercepted the letter, you see, before poor Meg could read it, and they tipped off the excise men as to where dear David would be that night, and exactly when.”
“No … oh, no,” Meggie said, her hand slipping to her throat in real dismay. “How
could
they do something so dreadful—and to their own daughter? Then to tell her he’d been killed … But are you sure that’s what happened? Are you absolutely sure? How could my father possibly have known that the Blooms were responsible for setting the excise men on him?”
“He didn’t know, not until two years later, when we replied to his inquiry and gave him all the details,” Ottoline said. “Oh, the blow he was dealt. I don’t know that he ever recovered.” She dug a second handkerchief out of her other sleeve and mopped at her eyes. “To have to tell him that his true love and their child had disappeared without a trace…”
“You see, we investigated the matter, dear,” Dorelia said, while her sister recuperated from her surfeit of emotion. “We found the Blooms and we asked them of Meg’s whereabouts. They said they didn’t know and didn’t care, that she had left without a word after they had told her of David’s death. They called her an ungrateful baggage, only not in such polite terminology.”
“Oh,” Ottoline chimed in, “and you should have heard what they said when we told them she’d been carrying David’s child! Terrible things. Just terrible. That’s when they told us what they’d done—they even went so far as to tell poor Meg that they’d taken her letter and used it to betray David. No wonder Meg ran away.”
“No wonder,” Meggie echoed. “No wonder at all…”
“They said they had only one regret,” Dorelia sniffed, “and that was that dear Cousin David had survived.”
“A miracle that he did,” Ottoline added in a thick voice, sweeping her handkerchief around her entire face, “given that he waited and waited for her until the last possible moment, he and his crew fighting it out until he was forced to set sail without her. Broke his heart, it did, but he had no choice. To learn she’d never received his letter, that only deepened his wound…”
Meggie thought her own heart might break. As the story unfolded, she’d received the first real picture of her mother and father that she’d ever had. She sat very still, trying to absorb everything she’d learned.
They had loved and loved truly. Her mother in her grief had left everything she’d ever known behind and set off on her own to bear her child. Meggie couldn’t help wondering if in the end her mother hadn’t lost her will to live and died once she’d safely brought Meggie into the world. Her last act was to name her infant daughter. Which led her to another question.
“Aunties,” she asked hesitantly, “do you have any idea why my mother named me Madrigal? My aunt Emily told me those were her last words—that I be named Madrigal Anna. She said my mother was insistent about
Dorelia and Ottoline both dried their eyes in the same moment and beamed at her. “Dear Madrigal,” Dorelia said fondly.
“Dear, dear Madrigal,” Ottoline agreed. “A lovely woman she was, our first cousin, and David and Lally’s mother, which makes her your paternal grandmother. Your mother named you after her, and also after your father’s grandmother. Anna was her name. Remind me to show you the inscriptions in our family Bible.”
Meggie drew in a sharp breath. She’d been named after her grandmother … and her great-grandmother.
“Oh,” she said, her voice choked. “Oh, my.” She hadn’t really taken in the connection until now, not fully. She had roots, real roots, a father she could finally name—and a real resemblance to her father’s sister Lally, not just an imagined one the aunties had been trying to recreate. She
did
look like the portrait on the stairs.
Family. Her family. Which made Ottoline and Dorelia actual cousins of a sort—second cousins three times removed, if she wasn’t mistaken. All her life she’d been without any relatives at all, and now she found herself living under the same roof with two people she shared actual blood with.
Overwhelmed, she couldn’t find a word to say, not a single word.
She pressed her hands to her eyes, fighting back tears.
“Sweetheart?” Hugo spoke softly against her ear, his breath warm against her cheek, the pressure of his arm reassuring around her shoulder. “Are you overwhelmed? Do you need to be alone?”
Meggie stifled a half-laugh, half-sob. “No. I’ve been alone all my life,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Until you came along, I had no family except Hadrian. Now I have a husband and aunties, and—oh, Hugo! I actually belong to a pack of my own! I cannot believe it—I feel like howling.” She looked at him and laughed in real joy.
Hugo abruptly released her and moved to face her, looking into her eyes, his hands gripping hers tightly. “Meggie. Meggie, listen to me. I know you’ve had a series of shocks, but you must concentrate,” he said in a voice so low she could barely hear it. “You don’t want Mr. Gostrain to think there is anything amiss with you.”
Her eyes clouded over. She’d forgotten all about Mr. Gostrain, who had discreetly retreated out of her line of sight, although not earshot. “I don’t think I could do anything at this point to persuade him otherwise,” she said just as softly. “He has obviously come to dissuade you against our marriage, and everything he has heard this afternoon can only strengthen his case. He must see I am not fit to be your wife.”
“No—no, my love,” Hugo said, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close against his chest. “He does not see that at all, and you must not give him any reason to think that is the case. Please, if only for my sake, pull yourself together. Please.”
“Forgive me,” she said, feeling dreadful for letting him down. She had committed the unforgivable error of showing emotion in public. “I will behave, I promise.”
“Good girl. Now try to compose yourself, for there is more, and you need to appear as calm as possible. Can you do that for me?”
“For you I think I can do just about anything,” she said as bravely as she could. “Just tell me now if Mr. Gostrain is going to try to dissolve our marriage. I am not sure that I can be calm about that unless I have advance warning, and possibly not even then.”
“He is not going to do anything of the sort,” Hugo said, kissing her hand. “The exact opposite is true. You only have to listen carefully to him and sign whatever he asks you to sign, as I will also do. Do you think you can manage that, Meggie? Be calm, listen quietly, and sign some papers?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, supposing she deserved to be spoken to like an imbecile, given the undignified way she’d just behaved. “I am perfectly prepared.”
“Good. Excellent.” He wrapped his warm fingers around hers, gently squeezing them to reassure her. “Mr. Gostrain. I think my wife is now ready to hear the full extent of what you have to tell her. I would, however, appreciate brevity on your part, as she is already exhausted from the revelations of this day.”
“As you wish, my lord. I will be as quick as possible.” He cleared his throat. “We first begin with David Russell’s legacy to his immediate lineal descendant, Madrigal Anna Bloom…”
A
ll in all, Meggie thought she’d behaved reasonably well. She hadn’t screamed, or fainted, or really done much of anything except nearly break Hugo’s fingers.
He hadn’t seemed to mind, or at least not about his fingers.
Something was very wrong, though. Hugo had not been himself ever since Mr. Gostrain and the aunties had delivered the news not only about her inheritance, but also the truth about her parents. His mood had been distant and abstracted. He’d been perfectly kind and polite, but he’d barely met her gaze during dinner, nor spoken much at all.
She took a deep breath of the night air, watching as a bam owl floated silently across the river and disappeared into a thicket of trees on the opposite bank. The rain that had fallen earlier had left a crystal sheen on the grass, and the light from the crescent moon glittered on the droplets like tiny stars.
The outer world went on just as it always did, with no indication that everything in Meggie’s inner world had been turned topsy-turvy. She was not the same woman who had awakened that morning and gone about her day. The boundaries of her life had been redefined; her existence had been given a shape and substance it had lacked before.
She was utterly miserable.
Through the clamor of her thoughts she heard Hugo walk through the open door onto the balcony, felt his hands rest lightly on her shoulders.
“Meggie? Come to bed, sweetheart. You’ll catch a chill standing out here in nothing but your night shift.”
She turned into the circle of his arms and gazed up at him, her heart aching. She was sure she knew what troubled him. “Hugo, you have always been honest with me, haven’t you?”
His arms tightened slightly around her back. “Why would you ask me that?” he said, two furrows marking the space between his brow.
“I—I want to be sure that you are telling me the truth when you say that you really don’t mind about my father.”
Hugo’s face instantly cleared. “How can I possibly mind about a man who left you a fortune? I don’t think I even mind about the Mabey sisters since they plan on leaving you another one.”
She smiled uncertainly. “Yes, they are very generous—but that’s different, Hugo. They’re not criminals.”
“I don’t know if you can really call your father a criminal, sweetheart. He may have broken some laws, but in this part of the world, smuggling is a time-honored profession.”
“That may be so, but it certainly got him into a lot of trouble. Look what came out of it—he lost the woman he loved, he had to leave his family and his country behind, he never even met his own child. The aunties said his heart was broken.”
Instead of answering, Hugo bent down, scooped her up in his arms, and carried her inside. He kicked the glass door closed with his foot, then deposited her in their bed, and pulled the covers up around her.
“All right,” he said, sitting down beside her and taking her hand. “What is this really about? I don’t think you’re cast down over your wayward father’s broken heart. You’ve been unusually quiet ever since James Gostrain emptied the bag, and you hardly ate anything at dinner —oyster stew, one of your favorites. Most people would be jumping up and down with joy at being told that they’ve inherited four hundred thousand pounds, with another three hundred and fifty thousand coming to them.”
She’d
been unusually quiet? Hugo must think her completely oblivious to his behavior. Either that, or he was oblivious to it himself, which wouldn’t surprise her. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, trying to think how to get him to tell her the truth. Her last attempt had been entirely unsuccessful, and she was certain he was evading the issue in order to protect her.
“Meggie? Are you worried about the money for some reason?”
“Oh, no—I’m sure the inheritance will be very useful,” she said, wanting to reassure him on that point, “and I am happy that after all you’ve done for me I can give you something back. I don’t really understand about money, since I’ve never had any, but you understand all about it, so you’ll know just what to do with it. It’s yours now anyway, so I don’t have to worry about it, do I?”
“Then what is the problem?” Hugo asked, pulling off his shirt and tossing it over a chair. “Something is wrong, Meggie, and I’d rather you tell me what is worrying you instead of holding it inside and making yourself miserable.”
She swallowed hard, summoning up her courage. “I—I always want to have truth between us; nothing is more important to me than that. The only way our marriage can flourish is if it is based on trust and honesty.”
He nodded, looking down at the floor, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “And?” he said.
“And I can’t help but feel that it is you who are keeping something from me.”
At that his gaze flashed back to her face, his eyes narrowed. “Why would you think something ridiculous like that?”
“Because I know you, Hugo, and I can tell when you’re hiding something. I also think I know what it is.”
“Do you?” Hugo said in a biting tone, his eyes suddenly going cold. He stood and crossed over to the fireplace, then turned to face her, his arms folded across his chest. “Then why don’t you tell me what you think I’m hiding, clever Meggie, if you know me so well?”
Meggie sank back against the pillows, surprised and hurt by his anger. “I think you really do mind about my being illegitimate,” she said in a small voice. “I think that being the generous man you are, you’ve tried very hard to tell yourself it’s not important, and you found that easier to do when you didn’t have any real details. Now that you know everything, though, you can’t help but be repulsed by the truth and by me, as hard as you try not to be. That’s it, isn’t it?”
To her astonishment, Hugo threw his head back with a shout of laughter. “You are a little fool, aren’t you?” he said, looking at her with a shake of his head, and then another.
Devastated by his cavalier attitude when she’d just poured her heart out to him, Meggie glared at him, her temper rising fast. “Think what you will, but please do not laugh at me. That wasn’t easy to say, and the least you can do is respect my sensibilities, no matter how stupid you think I am.” Her eyes filled with tears and she turned her head to one side, furiously brushing them away with the back of her hand.
The next thing she knew, Hugo was beside her on the bed, holding her, her face pressed against his bare chest. “I’m sorry, Meggie,” he said, stroking her hair, his voice rough against her temple. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Well, you did,” she said furiously, somehow managing to bring her hands up between his body and hers and forcibly shoving him away.
“What—what the devil did you do that for?” he asked indignantly.
She rose to her knees, hot anger surging through her veins, the blood pounding so hard in her head that she could scarcely see, let alone think straight. “You can’t just go saying whatever you like with no thought to the consequences, and then presume a quick apology will fix everything,” she said, her entire body shaking with emotion. “Some people have feelings, even if you don’t!”
He looked at her in bewilderment. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said,” she replied curtly, swiping impatiently at her face again, cursing the tears that ran down her cheeks. “If you do have feelings, God only knows what they are, because
you
certainly don’t have any idea, and neither do I. I’ve never known a person to blow hot and cold the way you do, one moment kind and considerate, and the next acting like a bully, when you’re not being altogether indifferent. You may be a duke’s son, Hugo Montagu, but that’s no excuse for your boorish behavior, and it is no excuse at all for lying to me!”
“Lying to you? What the hell do you think I’ve lied to you about?” he demanded, glaring right back at her, his blazing blue eyes only inches from hers. “I told you I don’t give a damn about your bloody father, and I don’t, except to think him an unprincipled idiot who ought to have married your mother and stood by you both, but that’s neither here nor there. What I do give a damn about is you, Meggie. I am outraged that you were abandoned when you might have had a perfectly decent upbringing, and now that you don’t need him or his money, your father finally provides for you.”
He raked one hand through his hair, his self-control as shredded as hers. “I could happily murder him for that alone, since it seems to me that if he’d wanted to find you badly enough, he could have managed it, and when it might have meant something to you.”
“Oh,” she said foolishly, her anger instantly draining away. She sat back on her heels, thinking that Hugo looked anything but indifferent.
“‘Oh?’ Is that all you bloody well have to say?” he roared. “You accuse me of—of lying, not to mention telling me I’m a bully with an entire lack of feelings. I suppose that means loving you more than life itself doesn’t count for anything with you, but why should it? Why the hell should it?”
“Wh-what?” she said, so stunned by that bald statement that she could hardly draw breath. “What did you say?”
“You heard exactly what I said.” He moved quickly off the bed, walking over to the French doors. Instead of going outside, he leaned one hand against the glass, his back to her, the muscles in his shoulders taut, his head bent.
Meggie shot bolt upright, her hands over her mouth. She was more disconcerted by the revelation that she could shake him so deeply than she was by any other of that day’s alarming disclosures.
That he’d been so badly shaken as to break every one of his rules and actually tell her that he loved her showed the depth of his hurt, and she was responsible.
She climbed out of bed and padded across the floor, slipping her arms around his waist, holding him close against her. “Forgive me,” she whispered against his back, abandoning all pride. “I let my temper get away from me, and you didn’t deserve the tongue-lashing I gave you. I—I have no excuse other than being easily wounded because I love you, too, so very much.”
He stiffened, then turned abruptly, his eyes glittering like cold blue starlight and looking just as distant. “Ah. You say the words so easily, Meggie, and yet this is the first time I’ve heard you use them. I wonder why you choose to speak them now?”
Meggie blinked, backing away from him, his anger palpable. “But—but I thought…” She bit her lip, completely confused.
“You thought what?” he said bitterly. “That I am indifferent to your feelings in that direction as well? That I don’t care whether you love me as long as I can take you to bed and have my boorish way with you? I suppose you also think that since I am such an unfeeling man I am incapable of loving you, no matter what I say.”
“N-no,” she stammered. “I know you loved me, because you told me so when you asked me to marry you, but since you haven’t mentioned anything about it since then, I thought—well, I thought it must be an improper subject.”
Hugo stared at her. “An improper subject? Where the hell did you—oh, never mind. Never bloody mind.” He shoved both hands through his hair, then looked down at the floor, his mouth compressed in a tight white line.
“Please don’t be angry with me,” she said, flushing and feeling like a complete idiot. “I don’t know the first thing about the rules and regulations that govern love in the upper classes, except that you told me I don’t have to behave like a lady in bed.”
He lifted his head and gazed at her with absolutely no expression, one finger stroking the comer of his mouth.
“So I thought that in bed I could show you that I love you, but that I had better not actually
say
anything,” she said, fumbling for an explanation he would understand. “You hate it when I speak out of turn or say things I oughtn’t, and I’ve been trying so hard to be the sort of wife you want.”
He still didn’t say a word.
Meggie wanted to curl up and die—he’d probably never forgive her, he might not even speak to her ever again, and she probably deserved it. “I suppose the only thing left to say is that I’m sorry I accused you of having no feelings, and I’m sorry if I hurt you,” she said miserably. “I told you that I can be perfectly awful when I lose my temper—I was caned more times than I can remember for that single fault alone.”
“Were you?” he said, raising one eyebrow. “By Sister Luke of Mercy, I suppose?”
She nodded, clutching her hands together, relieved that at least he had finally said something. “I expect you feel like caning me yourself.”
“Not exactly,” he murmured.
“No?” she asked nervously. She didn’t have the first idea what he was thinking, for he was regarding her in a most peculiar, speculative fashion. At least he didn’t look murderously angry anymore. “Are you sure?”
“Quite sure,” he replied, the shadow of a smile crossing his face. “Beating my wife is not the first thought that comes to mind when she finally tells me she loves me.”
“Oh,
Hugo,”
she said, the tight knot in the pit of her stomach beginning to uncurl. “Do you mean it is not an improper subject after all?”
“If you are referring to the badly misnamed Sister Luke of Mercy and her proclivity to cane you, I would say that is a highly improper subject. If, on the other hand, you are referring to loving me even half as much as I love you, then no. That is a subject I could listen to all night.”
Meggie released a huge breath of relief. “And I could tell you all night—I’ve been wanting to say it to you for ages, and now I feel very silly that I haven’t before this.” She paused, an obvious question occurring to her. “I was just wondering … is there a reason you didn’t—well, that you never mentioned anything again about being in love with me?” she finished awkwardly.
He sighed, looking at some point over her right shoulder. “I suppose I thought it best not to push you. You never pretended to marry me for love, Meggie, and although I had strong suspicions that your feelings had changed, I reckoned you would tell me in your own good time. I confess, I was growing concerned that I’d been mistaken.”
“Oh, Hugo—Hugo, I’m so sorry,” she said, filled with remorse. “Please forgive me for being so obtuse?”