Page 54 of Miss Ashbury and the Anatomy of Mending a Heart

She looked up at him with hazel eyes swimming with tears. “I got the impression that he intends to ask you next.”

Stephen frowned. He heard her unasked question. What would his reply be, if Mr. Douglas asked him?

“I’ll think about it.” That was all the assurance he could offer at the moment, but it seemed to be all that she needed.

She gave a sigh of deep relief, reached over, and briefly touched the hand that held the reins. “Thank you.”

Stephen could only grunt a response—that simple touch, there and gone, had a strange effect upon him.

They were silent the rest of the drive, but Stephen’s mind was whirring. He thought of Vera, and of Anne.

Mostly, he thought of Vera.

CHAPTER 15- VERA

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sometimes it’s like this.”

Vera nodded, swiped at her eyes with a handkerchief. It was full night, and two lanterns swayed from the poles above their plodding cart.

When the call came, they’d just been sitting down to an early supper. They’d run to the entryway and grabbed their supplies—Vera her basket, Stephen his handsome leather doctoring case. Elda, their silent shadow, had followed in their wake.

They’d been on the road within minutes, driving down the narrow lane at a teeth-clacking pace. They’d arrived just in time to give the family false hope, just in time to press bandages against wounds that had already bled too quickly and too much.

Then there was nothing left to do but to announce it to the family. The wife collapsed there in the yard with such alacrity, it was as if she’d been shot. Yet it wasn’t a tangible wound to her heart, but an emotional one.

Mrs. May’s husband was gone. He’d felled the tree and it had returned the favor on the way down.

“Those children,” Vera managed to warble, then gasped an inhale.

“I know.” Stephen nodded, his face grim. “It’s the hardest part. It’s easy to help, or even to walk away feeling like you’ve done all you can. But these kind of cases…” He shook his head. “These are the ones that keep me up at night. What if we had arrived even five minutes earlier? There’s no way of knowing.”

Stephen shrugged, and it looked like defeat. Vera rubbed at the ache in her chest. There were a few moments where the only sounds were the horse hooves clomping on the hard-packed road, the crickets’ song, Elda’s wheezing snore from the back of the cart, and Vera’s periodic sniffling.

“That was the hardest part about India,” he said, his eyes on the road but far away. “The children that I couldn’t save. There was a boy, came in with a fever. I tended to him for two weeks.”

“What happened?” Vera prompted when the pause grew too long.

Stephen gave a sad smile. “He got better. He went home. His mother brought me dinner to thank me, but it was too spicy—I couldn’t eat it.” His chuckle dribbled off into nothing. “Then I was called to an accident. That boy I’d spent all that time saving was crossing a road, talking to a friend. Neither of them were paying attention and a horse cart just…” He shook his head. “In my darker moments, I wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for that boy to die of fever. If maybe, by saving him, I’d inadvertently killed his friend.”

“Of course not. That’s not how life works.”

“I didn’t say the thought was rational. But it’s strange to think of how many lives were altered today, because we didn’t get there in time. Those children without a father. That woman without a husband. And even the connections further back than that—someone in India hurt me, and I decided to leave. I’m still not certain whether I made the right decision.”

Vera wasn’t sure if she should ignore his broken betrothal out of politeness. In the end, honesty won out. “Your mother told me months before you came home that you were engaged.”

He nodded, but there was no missing the tightness of his features. “Her name was Samantha, and I’m not sure she ever really loved me at all.”

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”

Heaven knew there were so many things that Vera didn’t wish to speak of—or to remember, for that matter.

“It’s all right. She wanted England more than she ever wanted me.” He gave a snorting laugh. “She settled for Italy—I guess it was close enough.”

Vera cringed. “I’m sorry.”

“The funny thing is, I don’t think that I am. I would rather know—without a doubt—that my wife would choose me.”

“But you regret coming to Devon?”