In this house, she’d been both the merriest and most sorrowful of her life. But she wasn’t walking in as an interloper now. She was wanted, asked for, brought home. There’d be more of the happiness and none of the heartbreak. She was certain of it.
Shethwankedthe knocker against the deep green door. Her joy at being home again, her excitement that Baz—as she’d always called him—had asked her to return was warring with other, more difficult memories. Life had taught her that being stingy with hope saved a person from drowning in disappointment. That was too strong a lesson to shake even when her dreams were promising to all come true.
The door opened.
It was not Baz on the other side but rather a woman likelytwenty years Gemma’s senior and as much a stranger to her as would be the president of America.
She kept still as stone. “Is Baz—Dr. Milligan in?”
“He’s not.” The woman spoke gruffly but not unfriendly. “I’m his nurse. If you’re ailing, I can help you.”
“I ain’t ill or injured.” Baz’s letter hadn’t indicated this complication. “I’d like to pop in and wait for the doctor to return.”
The woman shook her head. “I’ll give him a message for you.”
“Tell him I received his letter asking me to come and telling me that, if he were out, I was to make myself at home and wait for him and that I’d’ve very much liked to follow his instructions, but I weren’t permitted to do so.”
The woman’s gaze narrowed. “He asked you to call on him here?”
“That he did.”
“What’s your name?”
“Gemma.”
That didn’t strike the woman as meaningful. “Do you have a surname?”
With shoulders set proudly, she said, “Milligan.”
Finally, the woman seemed to think there might be something to Gemma’s arrival. “You’re kin to him, are you?”
Not the response she’d expected.
“He ain’t never mentioned me?”
“He’s never mentionedanyfamily aside from his mother. And even she’s only whispered about.”
That hadn’t changed, then. Baz had loved his mother deeply, and he mourned her with every ounce of himself. Perhaps he didn’t speak of Gemma because his feelings for her were tender as well. That’d explain a great many things.
The woman motioned her inside, eyeing Gemma’s carpetbag.Let the woman stare. Gemma was home at last, and she’d endure no clouds marring her sunshine.
“You’d do best to wait in the library,” the woman said. “We might have patients drop in, and that’d require the use of the sitting room.”
Gemma gave a single nod, then turned toward the library door.
“You know where the library is?”
“I’ve been here before,” Gemma said.
“Not in the last two years. I’d know you otherwise.”
“It ain’t been in the lastthreeyears.”
This woman, who’d worked for Baz for years and seemed intelligent and keen, hadn’t the least idea who Gemma was. That sent a wash of worry over her.
Had Baz not ever mentioned his vagabond wife? Not even in passing? That weren’t a comforting possibility.
He’d sent for her. He’d asked her to return, to come home again. On those simple truths she was steady as castles.