Call Down the Moon Read Free Page A

should be able to help, he thought, infuriated with himself. The unsolicited physical reaction was utterly ridiculous, given the circumstances.
    “Lord Hugo? Did you hear me?”
    “Sister,” he said, clearing his throat, speaking over his shoulder as he tried to suppress the evidence of his baser nature in front of the nun. “I was wondering. Is anyone allowed to wander freely about the grounds?”
    “That entirely depends on who it is,” Sister Agnes replied, her tone unconcerned. “Why do you ask?”
    “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.

2
    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