Johanna sat very stiff and tall in her chair. Quentin smiled vaguely about the room for the benefit of the other patients, as if he had nothing at all on his mind.
“About the other night—” he began.
“There is something I must tell you—” Johanna said.
They stopped at the same moment and stared at each other.
“Ladies first, by all means,” Quentin said.
“No. Please continue.”
He lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “Johanna, I owe you a profound apology. I came into your room uninvited. I behaved like a cad. I am sorry.”
She breathed in and out several times. “Do you remember what you said and did?”
“I remember… enough.” He tried to capture her eyes. “I wasn’t myself, Johanna. Will you accept my apologies?”
“Of course, Quentin. As a doctor, I understand such things. Let us speak no more of it.”
His lip curled. There was his answer. It always came back to that, didn’t it? Her professional detachment was her shield—maiden’s armor, to protect her from unwanted intimacy or the chance of transgressing the patterns and accommodations of her life. She could still look at him and act as though he hadn’t seen her naked body, never come close to—
He tried to stop the thoughts as they spilled, unchecked, from the dark reaches of his mind, but they were stronger than he was. “Shall we speak of Dr. Bolkonsky instead?”
She flinched, hardly more than a twitch of an eyebrow.
“You took May into town today,” he said, “to see this Bolkonsky.”
“Yes, I did.”
“And something went wrong.”
Johanna drew her legs under the chair. “May is not used to leaving the Haven.”
“It was more than that. I saw both of you when you came back. She was terrified, and you were gravely upset.”
“This is a personal matter.”
“Personal? For you, or for May?” He leaned closer to her, and she angled away. “If it concerns May’s well-being, it concerns me as well.”
She straightened and met his gaze. “I appreciate your friendship for May, but she is my patient, not yours. And soon—” She broke off and visibly braced herself. “Given the complications that have attended my attempts to treat you, it seems best for everyone if I locate another doctor who can take over your case.”
He felt not so much shock as anger—righteous, cleansing anger. He clenched his fists in his lap. “You mean you want to get rid of me.”
Her eyes widened. “No, Quentin. It’s for your own good.”
“For your good, because you’re afraid.”
Her expression grew remote. “I wish only for you to receive the best of care. I may not be able to provide it… as I’d hoped.” She swallowed. “You will not be leaving right away. There are few doctors to whom I’d entrust any of my patients, and the search will require diligence. In the meantime—”
“In the meantime, we’ll go on like this, avoiding each other, avoiding the truth. Neither doctor and patient, nor friends, nor lovers.”
She paled. “I would hope that we are friends, Quentin.”
Her distress drained the unwonted anger from his body. What was he doing to her? It couldn’t have been easy to admit that she no longer felt qualified to act as his doctor, even though he was the one to blame. How could he expect her to acknowledge anything else?
“Johanna—”
May chose that moment to return to the parlor, bearing the bird’s nest in her cupped hands and a book tucked under her arm. She laid the nest at Quentin’s feet. A porcelain fragment of a blue robin’s egg rested at its center.
Quentin smiled for May’s sake. “A treasure indeed,” he said, lightly touching the nest. “Surprisingly sturdy, for all that it’s made of twigs.” He glanced at Johanna. “Very much like the human mind.”
“And should it tear, it can be mended,” she said with her usual composure. “If the desire is strong enough.”
“Not so the egg inside.” He tapped the broken shell with his fingertip. “No mending it once it breaks.”
“Then we must take that much greater care to protect it. May, did you bring your book?”