Gemma smiled at Jennie, for she was greatly fond of the outspoken farm wife, though Jennie was a few years older than herself. "Not back'ard at comin' for'ard" Farby denizens said of Jennie Gosling, but Gemma understood her. Jennie saw the village and the entire dale as an extension of her own little cottage and her own hearth.

She wasn't far wrong. The people of the Dales had been wedding amongst themselves for very long time. Most families could call each other cousins of a sort from one end of Swale River to the other, down the long valley it cut through North Yorkshire.

To be frank, Gemma's favorite thing about Jennie was that Jennie spoke to her as an equal, woman to woman, not as a farm wife to a lady. It likely broke every rule of class distinction, but Gemma most assuredly didn't care. Alone of all the people of Farby — respect her as they might, even look after her as they sometimes did, as she looked after them — only Jennie spoke to her instead of deferred to her.

Gemma hadn't noticed her isolation so severely when her husband was alive, for Edmund and his medical practice had been company enough. Furthermore, Dr. Oakes had enjoyed a vigorous correspondence with other physicians and doctors in England and afar. Those respected colleagues had visited now and again, often bringing wives and children to fill the big house with guests and energetic discussions of medicine, hunting, whiskey, tobacco, mothering, sibling rivalry, and "Gemma, darling, when are you and the doctor going to start a family of your own?"

Never. It had never happened, and with the carriage accident that had taken Edmund from her, it never would.

She was a lady alone in the dale, surrounded by Yorkshire farmers and shepherds, roughly respectful but keeping their distance. The local women shifted away from her when she entered the shop, giving her first place in line when she stopped at the little desk run by the postmistress, ducking their heads and keeping their gaze on their shopping.

How she hated that wordless moving aside, the scuff of rough shoes on the floorboards, the rustle of heavy skirts and stiff aprons. Even the way her own shoes sounded different, as her outdated but still fine skirts swished more silkily and her voice came more softly and lightly. She did not truly wish to be a Swaledale farm wife, for that would deny all that she had learned and accomplished in her thirty-four years.

What she did wish for was acceptance. That would never come, for this community that she loved so dearly seemed as closed to her as a locked room.

"We've loaded him in the cart, Missus. Best be headin' back now so we can tend to your arm."