Page 59 of Miss Ashbury and the Anatomy of Mending a Heart

They’d visited the man only days earlier, at his wife’s request. Vera had stood unobtrusively against a wall as Stephen performed a cursory examination of the man’s vital signs and questioned him.

Vera slid him a glance and said in a dry tone, “I think he’d stop having such bowel calamities if he’d desist with the great quantities of bran.”

Stephen laughed. He saw Vera studying him and wondered if she’d spied the lone dimple that peeked out from beneath his goatee. He was self-conscious of it—dimples, as a rule, should come in matched sets—but there was nothing he could do about it, save for growing his beard back.

“Why haven’t you married? Before your betrothal, I mean,” she said, surprising him. “Or was Samantha the first lady of your acquaintance?”

He chuffed a laugh. “I blame my mother.”

Vera frowned. “I think she’s wonderful. What’s the problem—did she not approve of your choices, or did your choices not approve of her?”

“It’s not that. When one is raised by a woman of such singular quality, it makes one realize that nothing less than a woman of singular quality will do.” Stephen glanced out over the fields surrounding them. “I thought that Samantha was that person, but she proved me exceedingly wrong.”

“Do you want to tell me about her?”

Vera’s question was plain, honest, and Stephen was surprised to find that he did want to tell her about it. He hadn’t told anyone before. Not even when his mother had asked a similar question.

“She was…in some ways, she was a lot like you, actually. In that she was helpful and kind.” He winced, embarrassed by the admission, and plowed onward, hoping that Vera wouldn’t focus on what he’d said. “She was the daughter of a missionary, and she and her mother helped in my clinic. Her parents were good people. I think she was, too.”

Vera’s eyebrows raised. “That’s a very charitable statement, considering what she did.”

“I know it would be very easy for me to cast her as some kind of villain, but at the time, I didn’t see that she was truly miserable in India.” He shrugged. “And not just in the general way that India makes all outsiders miserable—the heat, the smells, the great cacophony of it all. She wanted to leave just as much as I wanted to stay.”

“Then why did you come home?”

“I think her breaking our engagement, marrying someone else—it stripped me of my idealism, in a sense. I hate to say it, but it helped me grow up. Even when I left, I was still very naive.”

“How can you say that? I’m sure you’ve seen unimaginable things.”

“Yes, but in some ways, I was still a little boy, running away from home.” He glanced at her and admitted the truth. “You helped me see that, you know.”

“Me?” She straightened, as if surprised.

“That sharp tongue of yours…” He shook his head. “It helped me realize that my priorities needed to shift. Back here. To my family.”

Vera scrunched her nose as if she were uncomfortable with the notion. He wished he didn’t find it so adorable, and decided to ignore it.

He continued slowly, finding his words as he went. “There is a strange kind of entitlement that is born from coming from a happy family. You begin to believe that they will always be there, that your family will always be all right, because it began that way.”

“Your family is all right,” she protested.

“Not because of me.” Stephen straightened his shoulders as if to defend himself, but these words were true—they deserved to be said out loud. “I should never have left after my father died. I should have been here. I should have taken over the estate, helped raise my brother. Filled in for my father where I could.”

Even he could hear the guilt in his words, but that was fine by him. He wasn’t trying to hide it.

“They are happy. Whole. Healthy.” Vera looked up at him, her eyes wide and earnest. “I was perhaps too harsh when you first returned. We didn’t start well, you and I.”

He grinned. “We certainly didn’t, but that doesn’t mean what you said wasn’t true. Distance didn’t absolve me of my responsibilities here. Though I am a physician, I’m also a title holder, which comes with a host of responsibilities—both of people and lands. Even before that, I’m a son, a brother. I don’t…I don’t think my father would have been pleased with my choices these past few years.”

There it was—the deep, ugly fear that crept up to Stephen’s bedside while he stared into the dark of his bedroom at night, beneath the weight of his bedcovers and guilt.

“I don’t think that’s true.” Her gentle voice had him meeting her eyes once more. “Your mother is very proud of you. She was even before you returned home. By the tell of things, she and your father were nearly of one mind.”

Stephen was grateful for her words; he smiled. “There’s no way for me to know. I simply must go forward in the way I think he’d be proud of, now.”

She nodded with finality, as if he’d come to the most logical conclusion and she was proud she hadn’t had to steer him there.

“What of you?” he asked. “What are your plans for your life? Did you want to become a governess, before…?”