“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
“No. Stop. Why are you apologizing, Lydia? I’m the one who ought to be sorry. I’m the one who left you here all on your own when you made it clear that the only thing you wanted was to come to Bath with me. I could have taken you if I hadn’t been so stubborn and serious. I should have relaxed and allowed for the possibility that you and I might simply have a good time together, even if I wasn’t yet ready to declare my feelings for you.”
“If Bath made you ready to admit how you feel, it was worth it for you to go alone,” she murmured.
“No,” he said firmly. “It wasn’t worth it, Lydia, not if the result was that you fell ill like this, and there was no one here to care for you.”
“The staff—”
“The staff listened to you when you told them not to call a physician. If I had been here, I would never have heeded a request like that. And Margaret—she went to her country house?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Lydia replied softly. “I wasn’t expecting her to leave.”
“I want you to start from the beginning and tell me everything,” Edward said firmly.
“I’m not sure I know everything.”
“Tell me everything you know. What happened the day you fell ill?”
“It began like any other day.”
“Were you feeling unwell when you got up?”
“No. I was feeling… sad, I suppose. I had been a bit sad since the day you left for Bath.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“I feel as if I could spend the rest of my life apologizing to you for this.”
“Please don’t,” she said anxiously.
It would be too painful, she thought, to watch him cope with that kind of guilt when he bore no blame for what had happened to her. He needed to understand as soon as possible that none of this was his fault.
“Your departure made me sad, Edward, but it didn’t make me ill. The two are not the same thing.”
“But how am I to know that your illness was not caused by your sadness? That sort of thing can happen.”
“You can know because I’m not sad at all now,” she pointed out. “I feel happier than I have in a very long time—but I still feel unwell. I know that isn’t happy news, but if my sadness was causing me to feel ill, your return and declaration of love would have cured me, and it hasn’t.”
Edward sighed. “I would rather think that the whole thingwasmy fault if only it meant I had the power to make you well again!”
“But at least you see that it isn’t your fault,” she said. “So, you don’t have to apologize, and you don’t have to feel guilty.”
He nodded. “I see it,” he agreed. “I wish it wasn’t so.”
“I was having a very nice day,” she said. “Perhaps the most pleasant I had enjoyed since your departure.”
“What made it such a good day?”
“I’m worried you’ll be upset if I tell you.”
“Nothing you say will upset me,” he assured her. “I just want you to tell me what happened. I want to understand everything about the day leading up to your illness so that I can help solve the mystery of what caused it.”
“Well, I don’t think this will help,” Lydia said, “but what made my day better than usual was the fact that I was spending time with Margaret.”
“This would be before she left for her country house, then.”
