Pleased as pudding, Gemma packed her few belongings into her well-worn carpetbag. She’d dragged herself so many places she hardly had to think about the ins and outs of it. Perhaps it was telling that she wouldn’t miss this place or the people she’d come to know. If there was one thing Gemma was a dab hand at, it was moving along. Only once had leaving a place broken her heart. But now she was returning to that very place and the man who lived there. A man she adored to the depths of her soul. A man whose heart had grown tender toward her.

At last.

At long last.

The Finsbury house Gemma had lived in as a new bride hadn’t changed much on the outside. Still tidy as seasons and neat as a new pin. The brass plaque on the door, kept polished to a shine, declared this three-story home a “Doctor’s Infirmary.” The peony bushes weren’t in bloom, but she had no doubt they would in abundance when the season was right.

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.

She thwanked the 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 likely twenty 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.”