Page 13 of Time for You

He fell into step beside her as she started walking, not asking where they were going.

Daphne started steering them toward the river, which was just a few blocks ahead.

She called on her Doctorsona, even though she had precious little time to spend at patients’ bedsides.

“Can you tell me about your family? Would that help?” she asked.

“Perhaps.”

Perhaps was not a no , so she kept going. “What are they like?”

He kept his eyes on the sidewalk. “It’s just my mother and my sisters,” he said. “Like I told you the first day, my father passed when I was young. Influenza. Is that—do you have that, still? Or is it like smallpox?”

“We still have it, but we have inoculations against it. They’re not perfect, but that and some medicines make it much, much easier to beat.”

A slight pause. “You are fortunate, then.”

“We are,” she agreed.

“My father owned an import firm, and after he passed, my uncle ran it. It was quite successful under my father’s leadership, and my uncle was a capable enough caretaker, so we were fortunate.

I was born in a small house just outside Edinburgh, but just before Father died and shortly after Anne was born, we moved into a much grander home in the city itself.

I took over MacDonald’s Imports once I was old enough, and at the very least I haven’t squandered Father’s hard work. ”

“Do you like it?”

“The company is my responsibility,” he said, both answering and not answering the question at the same time.

“What about your mom? And sisters?”

Henry sent her a weak smile that hurt to look at. “Maggie is two years younger than me, and Anne was born when I was ten.”

“Are they married?”

“No.”

“I swear I’m not making fun—I just don’t know the answer—but didn’t people back then get married at like, sixteen? Or at least girls?”

“As if,” he said, with another faint smile. “Did I use it correctly?”

“Mostly,” she confirmed.

“Most ladies of their age are married, yes, although generally not by sixteen. I understand you and your friends are not unusual in your time in being unmarried at your age, but women in my time do marry younger. Some nobility might have their daughters marry that young, but we’re not aristocrats.”

“You’re not wealthy? I thought you just said you were.”

“We are, or were, I guess. But I mean it in the social-standing sense. My father was a commoner; therefore we are commoners, unless Anne were to marry someone of noble rank.”

“Why not Maggie? Or you?”

“I am not someone the aristocracy deems suitable,” he said glumly. There was a story there, she could tell, but whatever it was, he didn’t want to share it.

“And Maggie? Is she also ‘unsuitable’?”

“Maggie has informed me she will not marry until women are allowed to own property in their own right, separate from their husbands.” He stole a look at her. “I know you believe me to be an unbearable boor, but I would never force my sisters to do something they didn’t want to do.”

“I don’t find you unbearable,” Daphne argued.

“But you do find me to be a boor?”

“Even you have to admit, you have your moments.”

Henry flashed her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“It sounds like Maggie’s a bit of a handful?”

“They’re both absolute hellions,” he said, shaking his head fondly. “Maggie has quite the head for numbers, and I think she would like it here. More possibilities for her, anyway. Anne spends all her time reading, but mostly loves playing pranks on me.”

“Not on Maggie?”

“No, only me,” he said, and returned her soft smile.

They stopped halfway across the bridge overlooking the Mississippi, and he leaned back against the railing.

“Maggie would have her head if she even thought about it. Sometimes Anne teases George too, since he’s been like a brother to her for as long as we can remember. ”

“It sounds like you miss them,” she said gently.

“Your patients must be very lucky, to have a doctor who cares this much,” he said, rather than answering her question.

“I don’t really have the time to talk to most of them,” she admitted. She rested her forearms on the railing, looking out toward the river while he faced the road behind them.

“Sounds as though you wish it were otherwise.”

“American health care is all fucked up, yeah.”

“So much I’ve gathered. But I meant that it sounds as though you’re unhappy.”

“I’m not,” she said, probably a little too quickly. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

Henry looked at her, his gaze unsettling. It was like he could see inside her, see things even she didn’t want to look at. And even worse, he wasn’t looking away, disgusted, or appalled. He simply looked at her, like who she was, deep down, was interesting.

She couldn’t take it anymore. “We should get back.”

Henry looked as though he were about to say something, but then he closed his mouth and shook his head. “Daphne?” he said, and as he’d never used her given name, her heart skipped a beat at the irregularity of it all. “Are we friends now?”

“Do you want to be?”

His eyes seemed to glow in the midafternoon light. “I think I’d like that, Daphne. I’d like that very much.”

And Daphne was left to ponder if it was the strangeness of having him use her given name that made her heart beat like that, or something else entirely.