The Jane Austen Society(51)

“Listen, Liberty, it’s actually a good thing we ran into each other. Would you be so kind as to let Dr. Gray know about my plans to make a change? Like I said, I’ve been meaning to tell him for a while now.”

“Of course, Adeline. Anything to help you out right now. Be well, okay dear?” Liberty reached out and gave Adeline a big hug, then walked off in the opposite direction.

Adeline continued on her way home. Running into Liberty Pascal, of all people, had done nothing to improve her mood for the day, and she would be glad to get back to the solitude and privacy of her little house. She was not due to see Dr. Gray again for a few more weeks, when the Jane Austen Society was scheduled to have its second meeting. She was glad of that—Liberty would tell him Adeline’s plans shortly, and he might wonder about them, but hopefully this business would be all done and forgotten by the next time they met.

Adeline was crouching in her front garden a few hours later, digging up the ground to belatedly plant some tulip bulbs, clearing the dead fall brush to showcase her own little patches of snowdrops, when she heard the front oak gate swing open on its creaky, fallen hinges. She stood up to her full height as Dr. Gray approached.

He had an unusual look of concern on his face—he was usually good at hiding his feelings, so much so that she often found herself spending a large part of their time together just trying to make him crack.

“You are well?” he asked abruptly.

She leaned both hands on the old wooden handle of her shovel and looked directly at him in surprise. “Yes, tolerably. Are you?”

He started to pace about the garden path, which divided just before her into a long oval before resuming its redbrick march to her red front door. She was standing within the oval-shaped patch of ground, which was surrounded by a low box hedge that Samuel had planted for her as a wedding present less than a year ago.

Dr. Gray continued to pace about distractedly on the other side of the hedge, pulling dead twigs off some of the hawthorn bushes and then mindlessly throwing the sticks onto the ground.

“I see you’ve hired Liberty Pascal,” Adeline finally spoke up. “She’s an old classmate of mine, from college. A real force of nature, that one—she should have you whipped into shape in no time.”

“What on earth does that mean?” he asked with a jerk of his head.

“Nothing in particular. She’s just hard to resist. French lineage and all that.”

Dr. Gray took off his right glove and rubbed his jaw with the exposed hand. “Adeline, why are you firing me as your doctor?”

“I’m not firing you.” She pushed the shovel deeper into the ground until it was standing upright on its own.

“Really. What do you call it then?”

“Does it matter?”

“Is this about the medicine?”

Adeline looked at him in pure shock. She had been honestly struggling to figure out why he was so upset, and now the full implication of his words struck her hard.

“The medicine . . . that you gave me . . . that medicine?” Her words came out slowly, as she tried to process his obvious anger at her.

“Is it because I won’t give you any more of it?”

“Dr. Gray!” Her eyes lit up with such fury, he immediately regretted saying it. “Are you honestly standing there accusing me of being an addict of some kind? Of switching doctors so I can get more drugs? You, of all people?”

Dr. Gray removed his other glove and shoved both of them deep into his coat pockets in visible frustration. Looking about for somewhere to sit, he spied an overturned clay urn under a crab-apple tree and went and plonked himself down on it.

“Well?” Adeline persisted in her anger.

Dr. Gray sat staring at the ground about him, at the dead leaves and dried seedheads of last summer’s hydrangea and allium blossoms. He could see that keeping up with the garden must have come to a crashing standstill for Adeline amidst the terrible events of last fall. He thought about the broken front gate, and all the yardwork to be done about them, and how only a widow could find herself with such a house and property to manage all on her own.

“You need someone to help you out around here,” he answered her instead, trying to regain some verbal command of the situation now spiralling out of his feeble control, as things so often seemed to do whenever he was near her.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Look, I’m very sorry if I guessed wrong just now—but I felt it incumbent upon me, as your physician, to make sure there was nothing going on. Nothing of that kind, at least.”

“Dr. Gray, I had hoped you would know me well enough to know that I would never get out of control like that.”

He looked up at her. “Unfortunately, it can happen to the best of us. I know that for a fact. Look, I am sorry, but I had to ask. I had to know that I had asked the question at least, no matter how much it upset you.”

“How brave you are.”

He could see her dry humour returning, which helped him ask the one question he had dreaded even more, ever since the loss of her baby.

“Adeline, is it anything else I’ve done?”

“Not at all. I just—it’s a new year, you know? And we’re going to be working together again, with the society, and it’s probably a good idea to keep some things separate.”