Chapter Seventeen #3
She watched, her heart in her throat (where it most decidedly did not belong), as he descended the stairs step by purposeful step, his countenance cast in shadow until he reached the very last one.
“Abigail.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. He looked tired, she thought. Almost as tired as she felt. A bone-deep exhaustion that dwelled not in the body, but in the soul. “What are you doing here?”
What was she doing here?
Behaving madly.
Without reason or logic and beyond the confines of science.
“I wanted to see you,” she blurted. “I don’t have a patient until this afternoon, and I . . . I wanted to see you.”
“Here I am.” He spread his arms apart as he approached her, then let them fall to his sides, his face revealing nothing. “What can I help you with?”
“Nothing.” When her fingers itched to once again take hold of her spectacles, she tucked them behind her back. “There’s nothing you can help me with. That’s not why I came.”
His head canted. “Why did you come?”
“Because . . . because love is intangible and scientifically unproven.” She swallowed hard. “It cannot be viewed with a microscope. It cannot be diagnosed with an exam. It cannot be stitched. It cannot be set. There is no treatment for it. And yet, I fear . . . I fear my case is most advanced.”
“What are you saying, Abigail?”
Oh, why did he have to make it so difficult?
“You’ve made me ill!” she cried, throwing her hands up. “Ever since I left Summerwind House, I have been suffering from a most inconvenient malady. I’m sick from loving you, and it is all your fault!”
“Is that right?” he asked softly, advancing a step.
She nodded so vigorously her spectacles fell to the end of her nose. “That’s right. I’ve tried every medicine and tonic I have in my possession, but no matter what I do, I cannot cure myself.”
He plucked her hands out of the air, fingers curling around her wrists as he smiled, ever-so-faintly, down at her. “This sounds like a terrible disease.”
“It is,” she agreed. “Most terrible.”
“Are you certain there’s no cure?”
“Only one that I can think of.”
“And what’s that?” he murmured, his hands gliding up to her shoulders as he drew her into his embrace and they clicked together like a fractured bone after it splinted.
“To be your wife. Your wife and a doctor,” she clarified quickly.
“I have been giving it an enormous amount of consideration, and I believe I’ve found a way I can be both.
I will maintain office hours four days a week during the Season with scheduled appointments between the hours of nine and eight—”
“Four.”
“Seven.”
“Five.”
She pursed her lips. “I will have scheduled appointments between the hours of nine and six, with one week off per month. There will be emergencies, of course—”
“Of course,” he said solemnly, tucking a loose curl behind her ear.
“—but I will do my best to manage my time efficiently.”
“What about Summerwind House?”
“Mrs. Robbins did mention that the local village is without a doctor.”
“How fortuitous, then, that I’m married to one.”
“I thought so. Do you think it would work?” she asked cautiously, trying to search his expression for an answer.
“I know what I am proposing is not a traditional marriage, but I cannot give up being a doctor. Nor, it seems, can I give up being your wife. I . . . I love you, Stephen. I have loved you, I think, from the start. But it took not having you at all for my symptoms to materialize.” Her temple creased.
“There is no scientific evidence to support my hypothesis, however—”
“I love you too, Abigail.” His husky laugh washed over her like a caress before he lowered his head to kiss her, a warm brush of his mouth that she felt all the way down in her toes.
“I’ve loved you since I first saw you, and I’ve been waiting eight damned years for you to figure out that you love me back. ”
He kissed her again, and this time he lingered.
When they finally broke apart, Abigail was breathless and blushing and certain of one thing: Scientific evidence or not, she had made the correct decision.
The hard decision, yes. For both of them.
They would be forging a new path as husband and wife.
A path filled with hills and valleys, mud and thorns.
But at the end . . . at the end was a sunset worth walking through fire for.
“What—what do we do now?” she asked.
“If I’m not mistaken, you have a patient to attend to. When you’re done, I’ll be here, and we’ll have dinner together. Then we will figure out the rest from there.”
“That’s it?” she said, vaguely amazed at how easy he made it all sound.
Nearly a decade of uncertainty and doubt solved in three sentences.
Except it was more than that. It was a journey of self-discovery.
Of fighting for something that no one had wanted to give her, except for the man standing in front of her.
It was learning to trust her heart and knowing when to ignore her head.
It was not being afraid to pursue the unknown .
. . and embracing what might be instead of clinging to what was.
“No, Abigail, that’s not it.” Stephen cupped her cheek. “That’s just the beginning.”