“It’s very upsetting,” Meg finally said. “You knew it would be.”
“I know nothing about you anymore,” Aunt Grace replied. “Your actions have been a mystery to me for days now.”
Meg nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said. Would her life ever cease being an apology? “I know I’ve caused you a great deal of worry. I … I believed in him, in everything he told me.” She hoped Grace wouldn’t push too hard, not wanting to have to lie, especially in front of Nick.
“So you see now what sort of man he is,” Aunt Grace said.
“Yes,” Meg said. “I see.”
“And you admit I have been correct in my fears,” Aunt Grace continued. “That I can tell what sort of man is proper for you, and what sort most emphatically is not.”
“Your fears were right,” Meg said, and she began to cry again.
“Very well,” Aunt Grace said. “This is not a happy moment for me either, Margaret. I hope we shall never have to reenact this scene. A lesson so bitterly learned should be remembered for the rest of your life.”
“I’ll never forget it,” Meg choked out. She was sobbing now, for her own anguish, and for Nick’s.
“There is no need for you to carry on so,” Aunt Grace said. “Especially in front of a stranger. Margaret, go to your room. I’ll be up momentarily, to discuss what we have both found out, and what punishments we deem appropriate for your recent misbehavior.”
“Stop it,” Nick said. “Can’t you see you’ve hurt her enough?”
“This is none of your concern,” Aunt Grace declared. “Margaret, go to your room. Mr. Sebastian and I are about to discuss what fee he will accept to leave Eastgate and forget this whole wretched business.”
“Aunt Grace!” Meg cried, but Nick only laughed.
“No fee is necessary, Miss Winslow,” he said, getting up from the chair, and returning his copy of the report to her. “Thank you anyway.” He didn’t even look at Meg as he walked away.
CHAPTER TEN
Sleep was impossible that night. Meg paced her locked room over and over, trying to avoid thinking about the detective’s report that Aunt Grace had cunningly returned to her at lunch time. Not that Meg had seen her then, or anytime until 10:30 lights-out. Meg had stayed in her room all day, and Grace was apparently disturbed enough by the sounds of her sobs to avoid her. It was the one thing Meg had for comfort. She didn’t know what she would have done if Grace had decided to discuss Nick’s sordid past or her own miserable future just then.
Grace did come in for a few minutes at 10:30, though. “Have you reread the report?” she asked.
“Yes,” Meg said, wishing it were a lie.
Grace glanced at the tearstained, crumpled report, and was satisfied Meg had indeed read it. “Life is difficult,” she declared. “The poor are always going on about unjust conditions, but suffering knows no social class.”
Meg stared at Grace.
“I know the pain you’re feeling,” Grace said. “I too was young once. I too had suitors.”
“Like Nick?” Meg asked.
“There was a man my parents deemed unacceptable,” Aunt Grace said. “His parents came from a fine family, don’t misunderstand me, but they were divorced, and his mother had married an Italian. A count, I believe, but it didn’t matter. My parents were not about to allow their only daughter to marry a man whose parents were divorced. Let alone with an Italian stepfather.”
“Did you love him?” Meg asked. Aunt Grace never spoke about her youth except to lecture Meg. As far as Meg knew, Grace had grown up obeying her elders, never mumbling or stooping, and doing all that was required of her. No love, no rebellion, no imperfections.
Aunt Grace looked thoughtful. “I don’t know,” she said. “At the time, I was sure I did. There were nights I cried in this very room. But I knew my parents were correct.”
“Why?” Meg asked. “He hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t his fault his parents were divorced.”
“Breeding is everything,” Aunt Grace replied. “A man whose mother marries an Italian is far more likely to stray from convention than one whose mother does not.” She paused for a moment. “My parents were very conservative,” she declared. “Within just a few years, it seemed everybody was getting divorced and marrying Italians, and society no longer seemed to stand for anything. Had I been Reggie’s age, or even Marcus’s, I could have married anybody I chose.”
“But times are different now,” Meg said. “Standards are different.”
Aunt Grace took Meg’s hand and held it for a moment in what came as close to tenderness as the two of them could achieve. “He’s illegitimate,” Grace said. “I’m sure you know the gutter word for that. I spoke to the head of the detective agency. He told me things that weren’t put in the report, about his mother. She took money from men in exchange for … the marriage act. It is no surprise that his father turned his back on the girl and her child. I’m not saying I condone his behavior. I’m sure different arrangements could have been made. But a boy with a mother like that, a boy with no father, cannot possibly have a moral code. Do you think his stepfather taught him the difference between right and wrong?”
Meg shook her head
“I want you to be happy,” Grace said. “I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. You could never be happy with a man like that. You are a Winslow. We stand for something. He is a man without family, without even a name. There will be other boys, Margaret.”
“There weren’t for you,” Meg said, knowing it was a hurtful remark, and regretting it almost as soon as she said it.
Grace rose and looked down at her niece. “Tomorrow is Saturday,” she declared. “We will discuss then the best way to teach you respect for your elders.”
“Aunt Grace, I’m sorry,” Meg said.
“You have a great deal to be sorry for,” Aunt Grace replied. “And there is much you have yet to learn. You may keep your light on an extra half hour this evening to give you the chance to reread the report one more time. Perhaps once you realize the sort of man I have saved you from, you will cease being hostile, and begin to feel gratitude instead.”
“Yes, Aunt Grace,” Meg said with a sigh.
Aunt Grace walked to the door, but before opening it, turned to face Meg one more time. “He is a wicked man,” she said. “He has been corrupted, and wishes only to corrupt. You are most fortunate to have family to protect you. Good night, Margaret.”
“Good night, Aunt Grace,” Meg said. She listened to the key being turned, then, as she was instructed, reread the report. She wondered if Nick knew what his mother had done, wondered what burst of kindness had kept the agency from writing it up. In spite of herself, she wondered about the year Nick had chosen not to tell her about. In spite of herself, she wondered how she could ever survive without him.
She turned her light off at eleven, but she was too restless, too frightened, to even try to sleep. She walked around her room instead, until shortly after midnight, when she heard noises outside her bedroom window.
She ran to the window and looked down. There was Nick struggling to put a ladder in place.
Meg bit down on her lip to keep from laughing. She went to her closet and slipped a blouse and skirt on, then located her sneakers and put them on as well. She unlatched the window, and once Nick gestured that it was safe, climbed down the ladder.
Nick grabbed for her on the bottom two rungs, and they held each other tightly for as long as they dared. Then they hid the ladder, and ran away from the house, toward the beach. They didn’t speak until they were past the point where anybody in Aunt Grace’s house could see or hear them.
“I was so afraid,” Nick said as they huddled together by the ocean. “I thought that after you read the report, you’d never want to see me again.”
“All I wanted was to see you,” Meg said. “To see you, to talk to you, to love you.”
“You don’t hate me, then?” Nick asked.
“How could I?” Meg asked
. “How could I hate you when I love you so much? And besides, you told me everything there was in that report.” Well, almost everything, she thought.
“It looked different seeing it like that,” Nick said. “Hell, I lived through it, and it still looked different. Uglier.” He laughed his harsh, humorless laugh. “I pride myself on keeping clean,” he said. “I know that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, but it always has been to me. My stepfather stank from sweat and whiskey and just plain meanness, and sometimes bills didn’t get paid and the hot water was turned off, but I always stayed clean. No matter where I lived, no matter how I lived, I stayed clean. This morning, reading that report, I felt dirty, slimy. I could smell the gutter in me.”
Meg stroked his hair. “I smelled Aunt Grace,” she said. “The scent of her powder nauseated me.”
Nick smiled. “Maybe that was it,” he said. “Maybe that was what I sensed.”
“I tried to show you how much I love you,” Meg declared. “I was so afraid you’d see me crying and not understand why.”
“I don’t understand anything anymore,” Nick said. “I used to know just who I was and where I was going, but now all that counts is you. I’d give up everything for you, Daisy. I know that doesn’t sound like much. I don’t have family or friends or money or any of those things most people have to give up. But I have my dreams, and I’d give them up for you.”
“You don’t have to,” Meg said. “Your dreams are mine. I want only what you want.”
They kissed hungrily. “Love me,” she whispered. “I want to make love with you.”
But Nick broke away. “I want that too,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how much I want that. But not now. Not like this.”
“Why not?” Meg demanded.
“For a lot of reasons,” Nick said. “All of which I’ve thought about for days now. What if you got pregnant? What if I got arrested? What if your aunt and that wonderful uncle Marcus of yours found out and used that as proof of your mental instability? What if once we started we couldn’t stop?”
“Then it has nothing to do with my purity?” Meg asked.
Nick grinned. “That purity of yours is just an inconvenience,” he said. “We’ll take care of it at the right moment.”
Meg cuddled up beside him. “I don’t want to wait too long,” she said. “I don’t think I could stand waiting too long.”
“Me neither,” Nick replied. He bent over, and kissed Meg lightly on her lips. “We’ll be together,” he said. “I promise.”
“I promise too,” Meg said. She stared out at the ocean. “Aunt Grace was almost human tonight,” she said. “Just for a moment or two. She talked about a boy she had loved and how her parents wouldn’t let them get married because his parents were divorced and his mother married an Italian.”
“An organ-grinder?” Nick asked.
“A count,” Meg replied. “My grandparents had very high standards.”
“So it would seem,” Nick said. “At least we don’t have them to deal with.”
“She almost didn’t scare me when we talked like that,” Meg said. “I hate how scared I am of Aunt Grace. Sometimes when we’re together, you and me and her, I don’t feel frightened anymore, but that’s because you’re there. As soon as you’re gone, I’m scared again.”
Nick nodded. “She is scary,” he said. “She has so much power over you. She scares me, what she could do to you, how she could hurt you. How she has hurt you already.”
“Aunt Grace hasn’t hurt me,” Meg replied. “Not the way your stepfather hurt you.”
“Oh Daisy,” Nick said. “There are so many different ways of hurting. Not all wounds come from iron skillets. You have no idea how wonderful you are. I’m glad, in a way, because if you did, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with me. But that’s Grace’s fault. That’s how she’s hurt you. She’s made you feel inadequate, frightened. Someday you’ll realize just what she’s done to you, and you’ll hate her almost as much as I do.”
“I hate your stepfather,” Meg said. “Even more than you do, I think. And I hate your father, too, and I hate your mother for letting all those things happen to you.”
“You shouldn’t hate my mother,” Nick said. “I don’t. She told me when she was dying that she was sorry she didn’t love me, but I think she did. I think she must have, to feel regrets like that. And she used to hug me when I was little. I didn’t see that much of her, but when I did, when she’d come to see me, she almost always hugged me. So don’t hate her, all right?”
“All right,” Meg said. She thought of the conversation she’d had with Aunt Grace, and in spite of herself, she asked, “Nicky, who taught you the difference between right and wrong?”
“You did,” Nick replied.
Meg nodded. That was what Aunt Grace couldn’t understand, how much Nick had already taught her, and how much she had in turn taught Nick. “We have to make a plan,” she said. “We have to work out our future. Aunt Grace says tomorrow we’re going to decide how to teach me to respect my elders. She brought up gratitude again.”
“Has she been keeping you locked up?” Nick asked. “I saw Clark yesterday, and he said he thought things were easing up.”
“They have been,” Meg said. “A lot depends on the next few days. But even if I behave myself, I’m still going to be sent to England in August, and I may not get back to the States for two years.”
“Better that than the sanitarium,” Nick said.
“You sound like Aunt Grace,” Meg said. “The lesser of two evils is still evil, Nicky.”
“You still want to get married?” Nick asked.
“Please,” Meg said. “We could run off tonight, and they’d never find us.”
“Not tonight,” Nick replied. “We’re taking too big a risk just being here together. They’re bound to check up on you tonight.”
“Tomorrow night, then,” Meg said. “Soon, Nicky. It’s our only chance.”
“Daytime is better than night,” Nick said. “If you behave yourself tomorrow, act penitent, then your aunt will be sure to let you go to church on Sunday.”
“I’ll never be able to escape on Sunday,” Meg said. “Aunt Grace will practically chain me to her all day.”
“And you’ll keep on behaving yourself,” Nick said. “You’ll show her how much the report upset you, how you’ve realized what I’m really like. You’ve started that already, haven’t you? You haven’t been leaping to my defense, or anything.”
“I don’t think so,” Meg said. “I’ve been too scared to do much of anything today. I was so afraid I’d never see you again.”
“Don’t ever be scared of that,” Nick said. “I don’t know how we’re going to arrange things, Daisy. I don’t know how it’s all going to work out. But one way or another, we’ll be together. I’m going to marry you, and I’m never going to spend a night apart from you. I need you too much. Without you, I’m nothing.”
“I know,” Meg said. “I’m nothing without you. That’s what frightens me so.”
Nick kissed her. “You’re everything,” he said. “You’re strong and brave and beautiful. If you ever feel frightened or alone, tell yourself that, that you’re strong and brave and beautiful. Will you do that for me?”
“I’m strong and brave and beautiful,” Meg said. It sounded better coming from Nick. “I wish there were words I could teach you. But you already know you’re smart and handsome and loving.”
“No,” Nick said. “I didn’t know I was loving.”
“Now you know,” Meg said, and she laughed with triumph. She had given Nick something of value, something no one could ever take away from him. She still owed him so much, but at least part of the debt had been paid off. “So Sunday I’m penitent. Does that mean we can get married on Monday?”
“We’d better aim for Tuesday instead,” Nick said. “We’ll need Clark’s cooperation. I hate to rely on him, but he seems to be the only friend you have that Grace will trust you with.”
&
nbsp; “Clark isn’t going to like it,” Meg said.
“I know,” Nick replied. “But he loves you, and I think you can count on him. Besides, without him, we don’t have a chance. You’ll see Clark on Sunday at church. Make a date with him for Tuesday. Talk to Grace about it first, get clearance from her, and if she says yes, then ask Clark.”
“What if she says no?” Meg asked.
“We still have four weeks before you’ll leave for England,” Nick said. “We don’t have to rush things.”
“Yes we do,” Meg declared. “If I don’t get out of that house soon, I probably will go mad.” She realized uncomfortably that she wasn’t joking, and wondered if Nicky understood that as well.
“It will work out,” he said. “We’ll try for Tuesday.”
Meg thought for a moment. “No, Thursday,” she said. “Thursday will be better. The staff has Thursdays off, so there are fewer people to check up on me. And it gives me more time to convince Aunt Grace.”
“Can you manage until Thursday?” Nick asked.
Meg nodded. “If I know we’re really getting married then, I can,” she said. “Promise me, Nicky. Promise me we’re getting married.”
“Thursday,” he said. “By Friday you’ll be Mrs. Nick Sebastian. By Friday we’ll be together for the rest of our lives.”
“Then I can hold out until Thursday,” Meg said. “All right. Thursday morning, I go out with Clark. We’ll tell Grace we’re going to have lunch together, and she shouldn’t expect us back until supper. That should work out well. Aunt Grace always lunches out on Thursdays, and then we have a light supper, so it makes sense that Clark and I would stay out as well. Only as soon as Clark and I leave, we’ll meet you, and you and I will leave Eastgate. Maybe I can take some money with me. Aunt Grace usually has some money lying around in her bedroom. She likes to leave it there as temptation for the servants.”