“Because you—”
“You don’t want to know what I really think of you. It’s easier for you to set me up as a whipping boy for all your aggressions—”
She made an outraged sound and swung the basket she carried at his black bag. She aimed it at him as if she were a fencer, and their respective bags their swords. He was so surprised that he scarcely had time to step out of the way.
“Careful!”
“Go ahead. Tell me it isn’t ladylike to resort to violence. Tell me that it confirms what you believe of me—that I’m impulsive, hotheaded, and foolish.”
“Hit my person all you want,” he replied, “but by God, Lydia, if you jostle my bag, you could break the bottle of laudanum. It will get all over my stethoscope, and I will be up all night cleaning it. Do you have any idea how many little parts and tubes there are to a binaural stethoscope?”
Not to mention the mess it would make of his record book. That was three months of visits, symptoms carefully recorded and pored over of an evening, trying to ferret out cause and effect. Plus, the bag had impossible-to-clean corners and seams. It would be sticky for months afterward.
He shuddered and set his bag carefully on the stage. “Punch me, but leave my medicine out of it.”
“I’m not going to strike you in public,” she said scornfully.
He jumped up on the stage, and then, before she could protest, hauled her up to stand beside him. The tree was fat and tall, but there were a few feet of space behind it, shielded from public view by the needled branches.
He held up his hands, palms facing toward her. “Go ahead,” he said, and this time, he let a note of mocking infect his tone. “Hit me. Or do you think you’re too weak to cause damage?”
She balled her fist and hit his hand. The shock of the strike traveled up his arm, clear to his elbow. She packed a surprising power for her size, along with better follow-through than he’d expected.
While he was still blinking in surprise, she hit his other hand, her teeth clenched. “God damn you, Doctor Grantham.”
“He probably will.” He was doing it right now, presenting her before him, her hair slipping from her coiffure, those curls dangling at her cheeks, asking to be brushed away.
She swung at him again, a little more wildly. “I hate you.”
“I’m sure you do.”
She glared at him. “I am not—I repeat—I am absolutely not—angry at you.” This was punctuated by another blow. If she’d actually been trying to hurt him, he suspected he’d be in pain. But she concentrated on his hands, striking them with all the force of her fury.
The scent of pine surrounded them; branches tickled his lower back. She shifted her stance, and the tree vibrated as her skirts brushed its needles.
“Far be it from me to contradict you, but you appear to be quite angry with me.”
She looked up into his eyes. “I can’t be angry with you,” she snarled. “You haven’t done anything wrong, and if I were angry with you, it would be irrational.”
“Not irrational. Just not very fair.”
“If I were angry, it would mean that I still hurt, that I still cared about what happened to me. It would mean that I hadn’t put it all behind me. And I have.”
Her eyes dropped and she looked at her fists, as if just realizing that she had been hitting him. Her hands flexed. Her face turned up to his, stricken, as she recalled what she had just said. “I have,” she repeated. “I don’t think about it all.”
He couldn’t say anything.
“Do you know what I hate most about your eyes?” Her voice had fallen to a whisper, and he couldn’t make himself look away. “When I look into them,” she said, “I see my own reflection in them. Mirroring back all the things—” She choked.
Her skin turned white. That meant the capillaries in her skin were constricting. He could almost have guessed her pulse from the labor of her breath. She’d be feeling cold and light-headed right about now.
“Breathe deeply,” he suggested.
She didn’t. Instead, she doubled over, as if she were the one who had been struck. She held her stomach.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I haven’t put it behind me.”
He stepped closer to her. She made a sharp, keening sound, wind whistling between her teeth. She wrapped her arms around herself. He wanted to touch her, to lay a hand on her shoulder. But just as he was on the verge of reaching out, she straightened and looked in his eyes.
“I am angry.” She said those words carefully, trying them on as she might put on a hat in a shop. She must have found the fit to be superior, because she gave a little nod. “I’m furious. Absolutely furious. I could kill Tom Paggett, if he were here.”
Tom Paggett. Jonas made a mental note of the name. He was already wondering what to do about the man, when Lydia burst into tears.
It was absolutely the last thing he’d expected. She didn’t cry daintily. She stood in place, fumbling in her skirts for a handkerchief. And finally, Jonas let himself move. He took those final steps toward her and did what he’d longed to do for so many months.
He put his arms around her. And to his utmost relief, she not only let him, she curled her hands around him and pulled him closer.
For that moment, he could let himself glory in the feel of her—the sweet softness of her, the feel of her warmth against his body. He could simply hold her and pray.
He could almost have cried alongside her.
Those gut-wrenching sobs—even if he’d cared nothing at all for her, they’d have tugged at his heartstrings.
“Shh,” he whispered. “Shh. I’m sorry.”
He knew she didn’t care who he was—that she was too anguished in that moment to do anything but weep, and take what little comfort he could give. He was nothing more than a shoulder to her.
Still, he was glad that it was his arms enfolding her, that his lapels took the brunt of her grief. He was the one who stood there as she wept, the one who felt when those shudders began to subside. Each minute that passed seemed precious. When the sobs faded to sniffles, he wiped her eyes with his handkerchief.
“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” she sniffed as he dabbed at her cheeks. “You’re being kind, but you always make fun of me.”
He ran his hand down her shoulder. “I never make fun of you.”
“You say such horrid things about me.”