“Dear heaven,” he murmured, his blood running cold as ice. He calculated the chances that Meggie would keep her wits about her at about zero. “Where exactly in the garden are they?” he asked, trying to keep a level head. Someone had to present the voice of reason.
“I couldn’t say, my lord,” Loring replied, his face impassive. “Her ladyship went out to play with her ah, dog, and when Her Grace went out to find her ladyship, she asked that they not be disturbed, so they might be anywhere.”
Hugo cringed. Marvelous. Just marvelous. His mother had been faced not just with Meggie for the last hour, but her damned wolf as well.
Well, there was nothing to be done but face the consequences and put as bold a face on the matter as possible.
He strode through the house and out onto the terrace, stopping to scan the vast park for a sign of his mother and his wife. It was the wolf who finally tipped him off. Hadrian leapt around the ornamental pond, tail high, nose low, eyes fixed on the water, no doubt planning a light repast of goldfish.
Hadrian could have the whole damned pond, for all Hugo cared. Meggie and his mother sat on one of the nearby benches, their backs to him, and their heads turned to each other in conversation.
He didn’t waste another moment. He ran down one side of the double staircase that led to the garden and walked briskly across the lawn, slowing his stride just long enough to put on an appearance of composure.
That concerted effort went wasted, for as he approached, he heard the murmur of Meggie’s voice, followed by a burst of hilarity from his mother and then another. He’d never heard his mother laugh in such a way before, and the shock nearly sent him to his knees. She must be finding Meggie a proper sideshow.
Oh, God. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Help me now in my hour of need. Please help my mother understand, let her at least see that I love Meggie.
He still didn’t have much faith that God ever listened, but Hugo sent the prayer up with more sincerity than he ever had before.
Swallowing against the knot of terror in his throat, he casually approached. “Mama,” he said, walking around the side of the bench and dropping a kiss on her cheek. “This is a wonderful surprise.”
He straightened, anxiously examining Meggie’s face, but to his relief, she seemed relaxed and untroubled. “Hello, sweetheart. I see you and my mother are becoming acquainted.”
The duchess wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. “Hugo, darling. How—how lovely to see you. Oh—oh, dear.” She burst into laughter again. “Forgive me, your wife has just been telling me a story about…” she covered her mouth and muffled a highly unladylike snort before continuing, “about a certain Martha Lindsay and her
difficulties.”
Hugo’s knees nearly buckled. “Meggie?” he said, shooting her a questioning look.
“Don’t look so worried, Hugo,” his wife said merrily. “Your mother knows all about my time at Woodbridge Sanitarium, and she doesn’t mind in the least. What she didn’t know about, because Sister Agnes didn’t like to tell her, was Mrs. Lindsay’s particular type of obsession. We were discussing the aunties and Linus Eliot and
that
arrangement, and that of course led to Mrs. Lindsay and—well, you know.”
“Dear Sister Agnes,” his mother said just as merrily, her eyes still streaming. “I think she likes to protect me from what she considers to be the more unsavory forms of mental illness.”
Meggie grinned. “Don’t you ever repeat this to Sister Agnes, Your Grace, but personally, I think that if Mrs. Lindsay had to be ill, she chose one of the more pleasant afflictions.”
The duchess doubled over. “Oh, my dear, you will be the end of me, you really will,” she gasped. “No wonder you are so sorely missed at the sanitarium. I think you must have been a ray of sunshine to everyone.”
Hugo passed a hand over his face. His mother knew that Meggie had been living in an asylum, and she was behaving as if nothing could possibly be more delightful. Meggie’s affliction was contagious, that was the only explanation.
“Hugo, darling, whatever is the matter?” the duchess asked, sobering abruptly. “You look positively ashen. You are not unwell, are you?”
“Never better,” he said helplessly.
Meggie caught her bottom lip in her teeth, looking guilty as could be. “Hugo, I’m sorry. I know you do not like me to speak of the sanitarium, but your mother had already been to see Sister Agnes, so there didn’t seem to be any point in dissembling. You did say that you were going to tell her everything anyway.” She regarded him uncertainly. “You were, weren’t you?”
Hugo looked over at her, a flicker of anger sparking in his gut, not at her but at his mother. “Meggie, my love, you have nothing to be sorry for, and yes, of course I was going to tell my mother everything. However, I would appreciate it if you would do me a very great favor and leave us to have a word in private. I will join you in just a few minutes.”
Meggie nodded and stood, but a slight frown of worry marked her usually smooth brow and her clear gray eyes held a guarded expression of alarm.
“It’s nothing, sweetheart, just some family business,” he said, trying to reassure her. “I really won’t be long.”
She gave him one of the wobbly smiles he so loved, then called Hadrian, curtsied to his mother, and left without another word.
“Meggie is a lovely girl,” his mother said, after she’d gone. “So sweet and pretty and such an original. I can see why you must have been instantly attracted to her. Sister Agnes told me the whole story, and I thought it most touching.”
Hugo ignored her. “Checking up on me, were you, Mama?”
She tilted her head. “I confess, when I received your letter, I was concerned that you might have done something ill-advised, and so I decided I’d best return to England and see what I could find out.”
“Why am I not surprised?” he said bitterly, although he knew deep down inside that he deserved her mistrust.
“Do not be unreasonable, darling. I am your mother, after all, and it is only natural that I would be interested in your welfare. I wanted to be sure that you had made a wise marriage and not just an impulsive one, and I must tell you that after speaking both to Sister Agnes and Ottoline and Dorelia Mabey, my heart could not be happier for you.”
“Oh, and why is that? I suppose you heard about Meggie’s newly acquired fortune, is that it? That makes everything perfectly acceptable, does it, her past wiped clean?” He really couldn’t think of another explanation for his mother’s astonishing acceptance of not only Meggie’s illegitimacy, but her history of mental instability.
His mother regarded him with surprise. “Darling, do you have so little faith in me that you believe I would cavil at a marriage made for love? All I ever wished for you was happiness, Hugo, that and a productive life, and you have managed to find both with Meggie.”
Hugo opened his mouth, then closed it, finding absolutely nothing to say. He was beginning to think he was the one who was out of his mind.
“To address your question, dear Meggie might not have the most splendid past,” his mother continued, “but you are right, that is behind her, and she is your wife now.” She lifted a hand to forestall him. “Yes, extraordinarily enough, she has also turned out to be an heiress who will eventually make you one of the richer men in England, but I would say that is beside the point.”
“Beside
the point?” Hugo said in disbelief. “Mama, I cannot think that you are serious. Since when do you ignore the import of sizable fortunes?”
“I am perfectly serious as far as your happiness with Meggie is concerned—money has nothing to do with it. As for the rest of the world, I think that Meggie’s dowry will be a most useful decoy. I intend to spread word around London of your fortuitous marriage immediately, with a slight rearrangement of the details for the curious—I worked them out on my way, and I think my plan is completely feasible.”
Hugo stared down at the ground. So. She was going to take care of it all was she? Make a few choice amendments and purge Meggie of her past?
He knew he should be grateful—grateful for her blanket acceptance of their marriage, of Meggie, and for her offer to help deflect any hint of scandal. A month ago he would have been grateful himself, but now … now he didn’t know how he felt, only that he wanted his mother to accept Meggie as she was, not as she thought Meggie should be.
“Hugo, darling, please do not look so downcast. I do not in any way criticize your dear wife, I only mean to make her way easier. You know how cruel society can be about one they perceive to be—well,
different,
if you understand my meaning.”
“What an interesting euphemism you use, Mama.”
“My dear boy, I know that you love your wife and you are therefore understandably sensitive about her, but you surely wish to protect her from scorn, do you not? I cannot see what purpose would be served by having all the
ton
know that Meggie is illegitimate.”
“No,” he said, digging the heel of his boot into the grass. “There would be no purpose served in that.”
“Good. So I thought we would say that Meggie, orphaned when young, grew up very quietly and simply in Suffolk, that she is connected to both the Aldeburgh Russells and the Southwold Mabeys, and that being the only surviving relative on both sides, is beneficiary of both fortunes—all of it true. How is that, darling?”
“Well enough,” he said tonelessly. “What are you planning to say to explain away her six-year stay at the Woodbridge Sanitarium? Or perhaps you intend to delete that part of her life entirely.”
“I cannot think why it should ever come up, Hugo. Not that there is any shame in Meggie’s time at Woodbridge. Sister Agnes could not say enough about her work—how brilliant Meggie was with the patients—but people can be terrible snobs about that sort of thing.”
Hugo’s head shot up. He had to force himself to keep a neutral expression as his mother’s words echoed around and around in his head like a roulette ball endlessly spinning, finding no place to land.
Meggie had
worked
at the sanitarium? She had looked after the patients, not been one herself?
“Sister Agnes said Meggie’s work was brilliant?” he repeated, so stunned it was a miracle he could speak at all.
“Yes, darling. Did Sister Agnes not tell you? Meggie was her right hand, a true godsend from the time those awful nuns at the orphanage sent her over as punishment for some imagined sin or other. I think the only reason Sister Agnes let Meggie leave with you so easily was because she loved Meggie and wanted her to be happy, and she saw that you also loved her, too.”
Hugo turned his back and walked over to the pond. He sat down on the very edge and stared down at the water. The distorted reflection of his face stared back at him in mockery.
Every presumption he’d ever made about Meggie stemmed from his belief that she had been an inmate, someone who had been confined because her mind was unbalanced. He had accepted her despite it, loved her despite it, thought that maybe she’d healed to a large degree, and worried in equal measure that she might revert to her previous condition.
Only there was no previous condition. Had he been mad, completely mad himself to see an illness in her that had never existed? Had he because of one huge and erroneous assumption interpreted everything she’d said and done through a distorted filter?
He tried to go back to the beginning and reinterpret all that had passed between them from the very first. His mind raced furiously. Incredibly, as he ran through the details he really could see Meggie as a woman who was absolutely normal and had been sane all along.
He’d assumed her mad on first sight simply because she’d been present in the asylum, and because no sane person could possibly possess such translucent, untroubled eyes, and such an otherworldly presence. He’d assumed her mad because it suited him at the time and it suited him even better when he’d had need of her money.
He’d assumed her mad because when he had gone to propose to her out of the clear blue sky she had laughed in his face and called him mad himself. What he’d mistaken for lunacy had only been rattled nerves and a healthy suspicion of a man from a completely different station in life—a man who had appeared out of nowhere with a proposition that must have seemed outrageous to her. He wondered now why she had accepted him at all, considering the way he’d behaved.
When he’d taken her to the sea on the day they were wed she had frolicked there with an unlimited joy. Later when she had given herself to him without reservation and not a hint of shyness, he’d assumed her mad for her complete lack of inhibition.
For every last one of her virtues he had judged her deranged, and Meggie had never realized it for an instant.
Why should she have, even though he’d treated her like a complete idiot for the first twenty-four hours of their relationship and not given her much more credit since? He was the true idiot, having made it perfectly clear to her from the first how he expected her to behave. She’d only done her best to oblige him.
He pressed the back of his hand hard across his mouth, too shaken to speak. The profusion of emotions sweeping through him was too raw, too profound for coherent thought.
Meggie was sane. Beautifully, perfectly, brilliantly sane. Their marriage was safe, their future children without potential threat. He loved her with all his being. She loved him in the same way. Somewhere a miracle had happened, although he vaguely registered through his shock and confusion that the miracle had happened a long time before and he was the last one to see it.
Meggie. Oh, Meggie. Has there ever been anyone more sane than you in your honesty? Anyone more direct, more free of guile, more uncaring about what the material world might give you, yet more caring about what beauty the world’s natural bounties hold? Anyone ever more willing to love with no conditions attached?
He bowed his forehead into the palm of his hands, tears stinging at his eyes. Meggie, his dear, sweet Meggie, unique among women. What the hell had he done? What the
hell
had he done?
“Hugo, what on earth is the matter with you?” his mother said impatiently. “The way you are behaving, one would think you were hearing all this for the first time.”