She rattled on, telling him about the folk in the village and how she had come to love this wide open sky and changeable yet eternal landscape. How she rejoiced in the lambs each spring and reveled in the patchwork gold and orange that took over the Dales in the autumn. She spoke of the harsh winters and how they had become a welcome time to close shutters and stack wood and conserve one's resources. Winter gave her time for thought and the patience to prepare the painstaking tinctures and ointments for the coming spring, when the folk of the dale would burst from their doors and go about their springtime tasks with such energy that her help would be much needed again. She read Dr. Oakes's medical books again and again, she told Mr. Worthington, and longed for the opportunity to gather more such knowledge. She watched what the sheep and cows and horses ate out of instinct and took note of which wildflowers the bees most rode attendance upon. In the fall, she collected those seeds and planted patches in the garden behind the coops.

"My little physic garden, full of weeds and nonsense" she called it in a self-deprecating way. She was proud of the knowledge she had gained and longed for someone to share it with, someone who would not brush her off as a silly woman or scold her for stepping into a physician's shoes. "It is not that I would not wish a true doctor for the dale," she assured him. "If someone should come to take up residence and practice here I would welcome them, and do everything I could to assist them and learn from them."

She was silent for a long moment. "But there is no one but me. I know they call me the Lady of the Dale, but it isn't so. I have all the responsibility of a lady with none of the power."

Or the pleasures. "I've never even been to a ball." She was embarrassed to hear the wistful tone in her voice. "Nor has any woman in Farby, and they deserve a fine evening, if anyone does." She politely forbear to mention that a certain recent event had been canceled due to excessive wreckage.

"Of course, Edmund had no thought of such frivolity. He was such a fine man, with a truly fine mind. It wasn't his fault that —" She felt a sudden urge to confess Edmund's distance and her own loneliness, even while her husband still lived. Horrified, she snuffed out that impulse. She looked down as she folded her hands in her lap. "Really, such a gifted doctor."

Mr. Worthington simply waited through the silence of the next few moments. Gemma forced herself to take a deep breath and smile at him. "Matters long passed do not belong in such a lovely afternoon."

"How long?"