She bit her lip. She couldn’t say that word, not to a man. She couldn’t. But he was looking at her, and somehow she found the courage.

“No group less deserves my cheer than the men who are interested in my vagina. But we were not talking about me. We were talking about you.” She looked down. “Now that I’ve discovered that you aren’t as bad as I thought, I’m amazed anew. How is it that you could have been fixed on one person for so long? I can understand her not returning your regard—that makes perfect sense.”

“Of course,” he said repressively.

“Not that I mean to be cruel, but you are a little…”

“I am well aware of my flaws,” he said. “We can save their enumeration for some later time, if it pleases you.”

“So—she has refused your suit. Unequivocally. And you are still fixed on her? That seems surprisingly illogical of you.”

Grantham looked at her. “She has not refused my suit. If you must know, I haven’t asked.”

“Haven’t asked her? Doctor Grantham, you can tell a patient straight out that she ought to make a rubber mold of her cervix. You cannot make me believe that you are unable to propose to a woman.”

“The time has never seemed right.” He folded his arms. “There were other people about, or she didn’t seem to be in the proper mood, or I ruined everything by making a stupid joke about gonorrhea. I have not completely crushed my sense of social obligations. In any event, even I have fears. I am afraid that she will turn me down. And once she does so unequivocally, that will be the end of it all.”

“Does she even know that you feel this way about her?”

“She knows,” he said calmly. “At this point, she would have to be an idiot not to know, and she’s not that. I suspect that for her own inscrutable reasons, she doesn’t want to admit it to herself. I am ornery and difficult, but I am not a particularly subtle individual, and there can be no other explanation for my attention to her.”

He looked into her eyes as she spoke, and she felt an unwelcome thrill deep in her belly, as if these words had found their target deep in her solar plexus. She shook off that odd feeling and turned away from the direct intensity of his gaze.

“Believe it or not, Doctor Grantham, I am beginning to like you. Your personality may be…well, a bit abrasive, but it grows on me. I want to help you, give you a push. Even abrasive, difficult men deserve happiness. I should be able to figure out who you’re enamored of without too much difficulty.”

“Yes, you should,” he said.

Every sentence sent a little pulse of excitement through her.

She made herself look up at him with a smile on her face. “Maybe I could help you. Put in a good word for you, that sort of thing.”

He smiled faintly. “When you figure it out,” he said, “I’d be much obliged. Tell her that I may be difficult, but I am remarkably constant in my affections, that I have thought of her every day for these last sixteen months. Even when it made no sense.”

And that left her with the biggest thrill of all, her whole body vibrating with an unexplainable urgency.

Chapter Nine

FOR THE SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW, Doctor Grantham had left Lydia in a state of bewilderment. After he’d returned her to her doorstep, her confusion had refused to untangle. She’d thought of what he’d said as she entered the house, throughout dinner. She was still thinking about it when she joined her parents in the back parlor.

He’d admitted that he’d been taken with a woman for more than a year. It was such a romantic thing to say. Which was why she could hardly countenance it from him.

If someone had asked her before today, she would have imagined that he was the sort to say that all women were alike. He’d use medical terms. One vagina, he might say, was much like another. Both provided the same stimulation to the pleasure centers. She bit her lip, imagining him saying that in his dark, gravelly voice.

But he hadn’t said that. And today, behind the tree…

She would never be able to explain how much it had meant to have his arms around her. He’d made her feel that all would be well, even though she had never cried like that before. Even though that scent of pine had reminded her of that long-ago hurt. He’d helped her, at the cost of his personal embarrassment. It was only fair that she try to advance his cause.

As she sat next to her mother, embroidering her tablecloth, her mind kept shying back to Grantham.

“Mother,” she said, finally, “what do you know of Grantham?”

“You’re going on a few house calls with him, aren’t you? Is there any interest there?”

Lydia colored. “No, no. Of course not.” She wasn’t so foolish as to become interested in a man who wanted another. Even if she did want to know who it was.

Her mother looked at her for a long while, until Lydia dropped her eyes. There wasn’t any interest on her part. Just…curiosity, that was all. She wanted to know what sort of woman would capture the imagination of that sort of man.

He was singularly straightforward. His regard would be a compliment in a way that another man’s would not. He wouldn’t be the sort to imagine a girl perfect because he was confused by his physical desire. He would see her—all her faults—and would decide that he wanted her anyway. Lydia simply wanted to know who this paragon was who had earned his affection.

Whoever it was, she had to be pretty. He wouldn’t have made a list of pretty women if he didn’t value the characteristic. Maybe it was Joanna Perkins. She was absolutely lovely, with that bright golden hair and that brilliant laugh. He’d like a woman who laughed—they could laugh together.

But he’d said he’d paid her marked attention, and she could not recall Grantham once walking with Miss Perkins and courting that laugh of hers. She tried to remember seeing him talking to another woman. He was so tall that he would have to bend to murmur sweet nothings.

That mental image—the idea of Grantham leaning over another woman the way he had with Lydia today, giving her that dark, wicked smile that seemed meant for her alone—that made her fists clench in a way that she didn’t care to examine. She would have remembered seeing him talk to another woman that way. She couldn’t have helped but remember it.

Maybe he was more circumspect than she’d imagined. She’d tell him that tomorrow that he needed to be more marked in his affections.

Her father had joined her mother today. They sat next to each other, she embroidering, he reading through a list of reports, his spectacles perched on the end of his nose.