The Jane Austen Society(59)

“Yes, she called my mum to tell her you were on your way—or might be, I think.”

“I never told her any of that. I never told her where I was going. I had just taken your card from her, the Christmas card you sent me, but it wasn’t return addressed. And I never said a word to her.”

“I see.” Adeline leaned back against the butler sink. “Is that—was that—one of the reasons why you fired her?”

“It was one of them. Your mother . . .” He paused.

She felt her stomach drop again.

“Your mother seems to think . . .” He started again, then stopped.

“My mother respects you very much, Dr. Gray. You saved my life.”

“No, I didn’t. I lost your baby. I ruined everything for you.”

“Oh my God, no, of course not.” She came over to him and he looked away from her as his shoulders started to shake. “Oh, God, is that what you’ve been thinking? Is that what you’ve been worried about all this time, from me?”

She hesitated, then put one hand on his shoulder, but he continued to look down, his arms still shaking.

“Dr. Gray, not for one moment did I ever think anything other than that you saved my life. Dr. Westlake told me as much. He said that if you hadn’t called the ambulance when you did, before heading over to the house, it would have been too late. I would have bled to death.”

“But you’d been bleeding a bit the night before and had the back pain, and I should have figured it all out right away, and then I could have saved both you and your baby from all of this.” He straightened himself up and backed away from the table. “We’ll never know what to believe.”

“But I know. Isn’t that all that matters?”

He took a deep breath and picked up the tea tray. “Maybe you believe only what you want to.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because I’m your doctor—I’m everyone’s doctor around here—and it’s only natural that—”

“You’re not my doctor anymore, remember?”

“How can I forget? It’s the first time I’ve ever been fired.”

“So it’s an ego thing with you. . . .”

“Look,” he said firmly, “either way, you have been under my professional care for years, and it would only make sense that you would give me the benefit of the doubt.”

She was feeling confused again and even a little sick to her stomach. “I’m not giving you the benefit of anything. I believe what I do not because you were my doctor, but in spite of it.”

Now it was his turn to feel confused, and he was just about to say something when Liberty appeared in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Everyone is here now, Dr. Gray. Even ol’ Miss Knight has been let loose—can you believe it?”

“Thank you, Liberty. You can head home now. It is a Saturday after all.”

But Liberty didn’t look to be going anywhere. Instead she continued to stand in the doorway, her right hip leaning against the frame, looking from one slightly flushed face to the other. Something was going on between these two, she just knew it. She herself found Dr. Benjamin Gray attractive in a distinguished-older-man kind of way—plus he had that lonely widower thing down pat. She remembered from college how Adeline Lewis had had a crush on one of their professors, and even though she was practically engaged to a boy back home, they were all pretty sure that something had happened. Adeline always had a way about her, a confidence, that men seemed both intimidated by and attracted to. Liberty had even tried to model herself a bit on the other girl, although she would never have told her that.

Adeline Lewis was confident enough as it was.

Mimi Harrison and Yardley Sinclair had taken the noon train to Alton together from Victoria Station. She had spent the journey telling him all about Frances Knight, and the strange little servant girl Evie Stone, and the entail laying waste to everyone’s plans for now. Mimi did not know much about the other four members, only that they were three local men of a “romantic” inclination and a young war widow.

“I always find it interesting how Jane Austen’s fans are always romantics to some degree—when I swear she wrote those books with a goose quill dipped in venom,” Yardley was saying over a paper cup of black coffee from the train station café.

Mimi laughed. “You stole that line—I just saw it in Preminger’s film Laura.”

“We steal in the auction business, don’t you know?”

“You steal. And then you hold the rest of us hostage for the highest price. That’s quite a system you’ve got going there.”

“Talking about holding hostage . . . how’s that engagement going?”

Mimi made a face at Yardley, who she knew did not care for Jack, although not at all in a jealous way. Yardley preferred men, as he had made clear to her on their second meeting over lunch at Rules, when he had subtly flirted with the waiter in a way that she had not witnessed before outside of L.A.

“Jack is, and I know this is hard to believe, but he is actually a very loving and generous man.”

“To you.”

“Is it wrong of me to care most about that?”

“Mimi, you studied history at college, right? Did you learn nothing?”