Page 135 of The Summer Country

But what else did she expect? What could possibly come of it?

“Emily?” Laura poked her head around the door. “They told me you were back.”

“Oh, Laura.” Emily jumped out of her seat, and stopped, unsure of herself. It was the color that struck her first, or, rather, the absence of it, the black of Laura’s widow’s weeds blending with the black of her hair, contrasting with the translucent pallor of her skin. “I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

“Thank you,” said Laura.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you blame me,” said Emily miserably. “I did try, you know. I thought he was getting better. He seemed to be getting better. It was so sudden, in the end.”

Laura stepped inside, closing the door behind her. She had reefed up the top hoop of her dress, but it did more to emphasize than hide her condition. “I’m sure you did everything you could.”

Emily tried very hard not to stare. “I would have come back sooner. I would have told you about Adam myself and not by letter. But I didn’t want to bring the infection back to you. Not in your condition.”

“You knew?” Laura looked ruefully down at her bulging belly. “I suppose Adam told you.”

“No. Nath—Dr. Braithwaite guessed.” Emily choked over his name, feeling, obscurely, that she hadn’t the right to use it anymore, not unless he explicitly granted it to her. Not after the kiss. Turning her attention back to Laura, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? Adam said you didn’t want me fussing over you.”

Laura shook her head, drifting over to the dressing table, where she fiddled with Emily’s silver brush, moving it from one side of the table to the other. “That wasn’t it.” She looked up at Emily, looked at her directly for the first time in months. “I didn’t want to tell you because if I told you, it would mean it was real, that I was married, and—and having a baby.”

“But you are married and having a baby,” said Emily, thoroughly confused. “It’s not as though you weren’t married and having a baby. I was at the wedding. Unless—don’t tell me there was some irregularity?”

“Irregularity?” said Laura. “Oh no, nothing like that.”

“Oh good. I wouldn’t have put it past Adam to have married a barque of frailty and then tried to hide it to make Aunt Millicent happy, or just pretended it never happened.” Remembering to whom she was speaking, Emily abruptly broke off. “Not that he would have done such a thing. What I mean is—”

“No,” said Laura eagerly. “What you mean is exactly what you meant. You used to speak your mind to me, you know, before I married Adam. But then it changed everything. You looked at me differently. As though I weren’t myself anymore. And Adam—”

“I didn’t mean to shut you out.” Emily stared at Laura in confusion, the past nine months running through her head in a jumble. “I thought you didn’t need me anymore. You were a married lady and I—I was just a spinster cousin.”

“You’re his cousin. And you were always so close.” Laura sat down heavily on the little chair in front of the dressing table. “What could I say to you? I couldn’t tell you how unhappy I was. It would have put you in an impossible position. How could I tell you? You would have gone straight to Adam.”

There was no denying that. She had put Laura’s distance down to the constraints caused by the new gulf in their circumstances. It had never occurred to her that Laura might be unhappy, that Laura might need her. “Well . . . yes. But mightn’t that have helped?”

“Or made it worse.” Laura pleated her fingers together against the black stuff of her skirt. “I’m not sure how to explain it. He wasn’t . . . unkind. But once we married, it was as though he became someone else entirely. Anything I found interesting bored and frustrated him. I bored and frustrated him. When we were courting, Adam seemed so sure. He was sure enough for both of us.”

“You never said,” said Emily softly. She felt awful. She had prided herself so on her ability to judge character, and yet she had misjudged Laura so entirely, had misunderstood everything that had passed between them.

“I didn’t expect him to be tied to my skirts.” Laura looked up at Emily, delicate purple circles under her eyes. “I didn’t need him to share my interests. But for him to pretend to it and then . . . At least, you never pretended.”

“Laura—”

“Truly, I never minded that you had no patience for poetry and no ear for music,” said Laura earnestly. “You never claimed otherwise.”

“Thank you?” said Emily. She’d always thought she sang rather nicely, but now wasn’t the time to quibble about her ability to carry a tune, not when Laura was baring her soul.

“You had your interests and I had mine and we each respected the other for it. If Adam had told me honestly . . . But it was as though, once he had me, he wanted me to be something else entirely, and I wasn’t sure what it was or how to be what he wanted. I’m not sure I know how to be anyone other than myself.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be.”

“Adam did. Everything I wore, everything I said, was wrong. He was so concerned that I might make a poor impression on the Turners, that I sounded too rich or not rich enough.” Laura took a deep breath, letting it out in a gusty stream. “I was so unhappy. I think he was too.”

“He had other worries,” said Emily, remembering Adam’s frantic attempt to make good, his determination that he wouldn’t go back to Bristol empty-handed.

“But he didn’t share them with me,” said Laura. She paused for a moment, and then said, with difficulty, “I felt so guilty about you. It haunted me, that I had stolen him from you. I know your grandfather always intended you to marry. If ours was a great love, then it was all for the good. But if it wasn’t . . . I had wronged you to no purpose.”

“That was Grandfather’s project, not mine.” Emily knelt by Laura’s chair. If Laura could be honest, so could she. “It was comforting to think that Adam was there should I need someone to marry. Had it come to that, I don’t think either of us could have gone through with it. We knew each other too well. I always knew Adam would marry someone else one day.”

“One day,” said Laura, and Emily didn’t need her to say more to know what she was thinking.