She'd made one decision and Jennie had died. If she'd made another decision, Jennie may have lived but she might never have recovered from the loss of her child. Gemma now understood that for all her flaws of ignorance and arrogance, she was not a killer.

But Mr. Worthington was.

Dr. Edmund Oakes had been militant that a physician should never do harm, never take life, no matter how dire the circumstances. Edmund would abhor a man such as Mr. Worthington.

"Life is sacred to me," she said hoarsely. Her voice sounded rough and strained coming from a throat so frozen with sorrow. "I'm a healer. It is all I believe in."

You believed in it so much that you ignored the danger signs — Jennie's red face, her puffy ankles, her terrible thirst — so that you could dance with this man and play lovers' games on the study carpet.

That was nothing less than undeniable truth. Raw and heartbroken, Gemma absorbed that fact, taking the blow as one well deserved. She hadn’t seen Jennie's ailment in time, for she had been too distracted by the hint of spring in her life after so many years of winter.

Yes. Of that I am guilty as well.

"You took the life of your closest friend," she whispered. The hideous irony was not lost on her. So had she. Oh, Jennie! What I wouldn't do to go back and undo it all! Turn away the stranger, stay focused on my duty — then surely I would have recognized your illness in time!

Mr. Worthington just kept twisting his cravat in his hands, twisting and tightening it. "Yes."

Then he seemed to comprehend his own horrible gesture and he flung the worn-out length of linen away. Gemma watched it unfurl and float to the grass, to lie there like a flag of surrender on a field of green.

I don't want to know this. I don't want to look at his hands and think of them taking a life, of killing a helpless man. The hands that touched me.

It was all too much. Too much truth. Too much death.

What had she done?

She'd been foolish. Believing that she could toss aside her responsibilities for springtime romp with a handsome stranger? A man she know nothing about?

That was part of the appeal, surely. Not knowing him, she could paint him with the brush of fantasy. She could pick and choose the facets that she wished to see and excuse or ignore the sides of him that didn't fit into her creation.

Then she'd flung herself headlong and foolish into his arms, fleeing her isolation and her burdens.

Deserting her duty and responsibility.

She had been better off living her life alone, assiduously focused on caring for her people. That seemingly dreary life had been calmer. Simpler. Safer. At this moment, she longed to have it back, to return to the way things had been.