Call Down the Moon by Katherine Kingsley

responsibility bursting with health and double the produce.
    She found it so satisfying to watch the earth come alive in the spring, bringing forth new growth. Spring was her favorite time of year, although summer did give her enormous satisfaction, wielding its generous bounties. But summer was easy. Summer only had to reap what spring had sown. Spring had to conquer the small, cold death of winter, and that took real strength.
    She loved the autumn almost as much, the brilliant colors of the trees and shrubs a last magnificent showing before winter again claimed its price. Now that was bravery, she decided, rising to fetch the watering can. Each cell in each fauna and flora knew this was its final goodbye before dying away.
    Really, it took even greater bravery to stir anew and start the cycle all over again. This was the essential nature of life itself.
    It had often occurred to her that the patients under her care went through much of the same process. When they arrived, most of them were living in the long, dark winter of the soul. Only the luckiest, most determined ones found the strength to renew themselves, to stretch out and make the journey back into the world, rediscovering the joy of life the way the plants of God’s earth did every year.
    “Oh, you really are lovely lettuces,” she murmured, standing back, hands on her hips, surveying her crop with pleasure.
    She glanced up in surprise as Hadrian, who had been basking in the sunshine, emitted a low growl from his throat. Hadrian only growled in such a manner when a stranger approached, but she hadn’t sensed anyone coming and she always felt a person’s presence. No, she was absolutely sure they were alone.
    Hadrian did not agree. His growl deepened and his body tensed, shifting from the lazy position he’d assumed alongside the fence into a half-crouch, his ears pricking back, his legs stiffening.
    Alarmed, Meggie rose, turning and shielding her eyes against the rays of the slanting sun.
    She was surprised when she saw that Hadrian hadn’t been mistaken after all. A man walked down the path toward her, but she couldn’t make out who, only that his figure was tall and imposing. His face was obscured by the brim of his hat, leaving his features in shadow.
    She stretched out her mind, trying to read something, anything at all from the stranger, but nothing came. Nothing at all … except a sudden awareness of something dangerous and indefinable that struck not at her mind, but at her body. She’d experienced this sense of physical chaos from only one other person before, and that was over two months ago. The memory would be burned into her brain for all time.
    She pressed a shaking hand to her mouth. It couldn’t be. Oh, dear gracious Lord in heaven, not Hugo Montagu? Impossible.
    And yet she knew it was, and not just because every nerve ending in her body vibrated with heightened awareness. She also experienced the same absolute silence in him that she had before, a total blank that left her without any point of reference.
    It was only now, without the benefit of her talent, that she realized how much she relied on it. For the first time in her life she felt completely alone in the presence of another person, with not even the vaguest of whispers to guide her.
    As unfamiliar as the experience was, in a way it was an enormous relief. Or it would have been if she hadn’t been shaken to the core of her being.
    Hadrian growled again as Hugo approached the garden gate.
    “Lie down, there’s a good boy,” she murmured, knowing that Hadrian must sense her alarm, and so he should: her knees threatened to give out at any moment. “All is well,” she lied, feeling a complete fraud, which Hadrian must also know. But he still lowered from his wary position to one of quiet watchfulness.
    Meggie’s heart filled with gratitude, realizing that she wasn’t entirely without protection—although she wasn’t sure that this was the sort of situation that Hadrian