Page 147 of The Summer Country

“Is it?” Nathaniel made a jerky gesture with his hands, never taking his eyes off her. “You might be mistress of all this.”

“I don’t want to be mistress of all this! Which you would know if you had bothered to ask—or if you knew me at all, which you ought by now.” Emily felt her temper rising, her jangled nerves finally snapping. “And if you thought I was to marry Mr. Davenant, what in heaven’s name were you doing kissing me?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” said Nathaniel honestly. “That is— Oh, bother.”

He had kissed her because he wasn’t thinking. Emily was rather sure she had just been insulted. She clung to anger, the one emotion that made sense at the moment. “You weren’t thinking? That’s all you can think to say to me? That you weren’t thinking?”

“What was I meant to say? That I love you?” Nathaniel snapped, and then froze, staring at her with an expression of raw panic. “Don’t tell me you would have welcomed such a declaration.”

Would she? Emily felt frozen, panicked. She hadn’t thought about the kiss. She had been busy; there had been cholera, lung fever. . . . She admired Dr. Braithwaite; if she was being honest, she desired him. She had seen enough in her father’s parish, had heard enough, to know there was more to married life than thinking of England, but she had never felt it, that burning in the blood, until yesterday, until their kiss.

But would she have welcomed a declaration?

“That wasn’t your decision to make for me,” Emily said fiercely. “You don’t know whether I would have welcomed it or not, because you never made it.”

Nathaniel stared at her. “And if I were to tell you I loved you?”

The words were soft, but they seemed to echo around her. Emily’s ears were ringing and there were little black spots in front of her eyes that might have been dust motes or might not.

Emily grabbed the banister, feeling the reassuring solidity of mahogany beneath her palm. If I were to tell you, he had said. Not I love you but if.

She took a deep breath and said stringently, “Then I would tell you that I can’t reason in hypotheticals. If you loved me—if you loved me—you would have the courage to say it, not dance around it like a Frenchman at a ball.”

Nathaniel looked at her bemusedly. “A Frenchman at a ball?”

That was what he chose to notice? Emily flapped her hand distractedly. “You know what I mean, all mincing and capering and, oh, I don’t know! People are dying, Mrs. Davenant is dying, and you’re talking in riddles. If you decide you have something to say to me, you know where to find me.”

“People are dying,” said Nathaniel, his voice low. Emily wasn’t sure whether he was reasoning with himself or her. “Your cousin is dead, Mrs. Davenant is ill. Your emotions are disordered. . . .”

He made her deepest feelings sound like a drunken doxy on a spree at the public house. “Don’t you dare presume to lecture me on the state of my emotions. You have no idea what they are. You don’t even know your own.” It was a case of pot and kettle, but Emily was too angry to acknowledge that. “If you loved me—if you loved me—you wouldn’t let conventions stand in your way.”

“Emily . . .”

She couldn’t bear it a moment more. “Don’t Emily me. That’s Miss Dawson to you, Dr. Braithwaite. I wouldn’t want to presume.” Turning in a fury of starched petticoats so he wouldn’t see her tears, Emily said thickly, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have patients to see to. You can . . . go to Bridgetown.”

She stomped up the stairs, leaving Nathaniel standing behind her, trying very hard to contain her mouth, which had an unfortunate tendency to quiver. She dashed the back of her hand against her eyes, feeling like an idiot.

She paused outside the makeshift ward, waiting for the clatter of footsteps behind her. But there were none. Instead, she heard a faint click as the door of the house was closed, very, very softly.

Chapter Thirty

Christ Church, Barbados

August 1854

Emily felt as though the inside had been scooped out of her like a melon.

She folded against the wall, her forehead scraping against the whitewash, her chest convulsing in silent sobs, the tears sliding down her cheeks no matter how much she screwed up her eyes to try to stop them.

All of that, every bit of that miserable, painful scene, had been her own fault. She could blame Nathaniel all she liked, with his hypotheticals and his if I loved you, but the truth of the matter was that she had sent him away, because she couldn’t bear to admit to herself that she didn’t know her own mind.

Would she have welcomed a declaration? The question haunted her. A day ago, in Mr. Turner’s drawing room, she thought she would have said yes. In fact, she was almost sure of it. But that was a different day and a different woman. That was Emily Dawson, who knew her own mind.

And heart? Did she know her own heart?

Hearts were more trouble than they were worth. She had, not so very long ago, smiled benignly upon those giddy souls who spoke of falling in love as though it were an infection, who did foolish things and claimed they couldn’t help it.

She had hurt Nathaniel. She had hurt Nathaniel and it clawed at her gut because she knew it wasn’t his fault but her own. She had called him here, heedlessly, selfishly, and then she had pushed him away because she felt like a porcelain figurine that had been smashed and put back together again with the pieces in all the wrong places, and, if she were being very honest, part of her was angry at him for not being able to see that, for professing to care for her but not being able to look at her and diagnose in a glance the trouble that ailed her, and cure it with the strength of his own surety.