Doing No Harm (18 page)

“Maybe after a night’s sleep I’ll have something. Would you think I had taken entire leave of my senses if I told you I want something that will put money in Flora MacLeod’s pocket, so she and her Gran will visit your tearoom once a day?”

She had no answer for him, but she did recite what she knew of the MacLeods, how Flora’s father had stood firm with the 93rd Highlanders at New Orleans, America, only last year, where he died and was buried.

“I doubt Flora ever knew him,” Olive said. She didn’t even try to mask her own bitterness. “The 93rd was the Duchess of Sutherland’s own regiment, raised by her father in her honor! And what have she and her husband done but drive out the families of the men who so loyally served King George to the death.”

She hadn’t meant to raise her voice. She put her hand over her mouth and looked toward the door, hoping Flora had not heard anything. Douglas got up and walked quietly to the kitchen door, peering in.

“She’s singing to little Pudding,” he reported.

“Forgive my outburst,” Olive said when he returned. “It was unmannerly and uncalled for.”

“And true,” Douglas concluded. “So it’s Flora and Gran?”

“Flora’s mother had been ill for some time.” It was Olive’s turn to cover her eyes for a moment. “I have this from one of the other Highland families, but apparently Gran pleaded with the Countess’s factor to let them stay until Annie MacLeod passed away. Apparently it would have been only hours.”

“No luck?”

“None. Neighbors helped Gran get Annie outside on her mattress. Soldiers burned down the cottage as the MacLeods watched. Apparently Annie died that night, lying on a mattress in the rain.”

She watched Douglas’s head rear back as if someone had slapped him. “And all this for sheep,” he murmured.

“More pound per animal than cattle. Those tiresome Highlanders who have been raising cattle for centuries can … can do something else,” Olive said, suddenly not caring how angry she looked or how shrill she sounded. “They can stop speaking Gaelic, discard their kilts for trews, and forget bagpiping.”

“The world is not a fair place,” he said as though to remind her. “My father worked so hard on his barrels, each one near perfection. One shire over, an inferior cooper who married into a scrap of money set up his shop and undercut my father at every turn.”

“At least no one burned down your family home,” she countered, unwilling to be placated.

“True, but inferior barrels did send me to sea at twelve years of age. There was no future in quality.”

He sighed and she felt shame at her hot words. “Edgar used to be a bonny little town, where everyone cared for his neighbor. With the dry dock falling apart, and fishing not what it was, and the young men gone, things changed. And when Highlanders fleeing their troubles landed here …” She couldn’t finish.

“And you’re trying to carry the whole burden?” he asked, but it was no question.

He crossed the room, gave her a hug, and kept his arm around her shoulders as he walked her to the kitchen door, where they watched Flora singing to her kitten, her cheek on the floor, her eyes on her pet.

“Don’t give up, Olive,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s too soon to give up. I haven’t thought the matter through yet. Don’t give up.”

Chapter 17

O
live stayed a few more minutes
, after making Douglas taste one of the biscuits she had brought.

“I told Flora to test one and see if they weren’t too stale,” Olive said, when Flora was sitting up and listening to her.

“It’s fine,” the child said, her eyes on the bag. She took one out, looked at it, and handed it to him. “You try one, Mr. Bowden.”

Douglas took the biscuit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Olive give a slow wink with one of her heterochromatic eyes.
You are a sly one
, he thought. He took a bite and recoiled. He held it out to Flora.

“I have never really enjoyed biscuits made with anise,” he told her. “Begging your pardon, Miss Grant, but Flora is going to take these home to her gran.”

Olive sighed. “Flora, do me a favor and take them. If your gran complains, she can take it up with me.”

“She won’t,” Flora said in a small voice.

He could tell Olive wanted to stay. He wanted her to stay, but there were probably social rules that made her give him a bright smile and close the bag. “Don’t forget these, Flora. Mr. Bowden, I’ll think about what you told me.”

“Do it.”

He saw her to the door and watched her cross the street. She waved at him from her own stoop. He stood there a long moment, looking down the street to see Tommy Tavish making his way to Mrs. Cameron’s house, rollicking along at a clipping pace on his crutches. Douglas turned and looked at Mrs. Aintree’s tidy place next to the tearoom, wishing he could convince the woman to do a great service for a little family hanging on by a thread.

He thought of Mrs. Campbell, who had sat with Tommy when he couldn’t and whom Olive paid with meals. Tommy managed on his own now, and Mrs. Campbell had returned to her own cottage, back to meals of weak tea and toast. And he knew that for one Mrs. Campbell, there were others in want, and not just the Highlanders. Life was less complicated at sea.

Maybe Olive was right, and why not? She knew her village better than he did. Maybe everyone in a poor village would look with suspicion on their own countrymen from far to the north until the refugees died off or crept away to become someone else’s challenge. The pie only had so many slices.

Flora proved to be an excellent nurse, petting her little patient, singing to her, and then feeding her the thin gruel. He stood in the doorway and watched Pudding lap up the gruel, then curl up in her blanket-lined box and go to sleep.

“Flora, I have something you can do to help me,” he told her, holding out his hand to her. He walked her into the surgery and pointed to two boxes on the floor. “I’ll carry these into my waiting room, where I want you to organize them into piles.”

She nodded and followed him back into the waiting room. He pried up the box top and indicated that she come closer.

He enjoyed her sharp intake of breath.

“Mr. Bowden, where did you get these?” she asked, touching the shells with the same delicacy she had used on Pudding.

“When I was only seven or eight years older than you, I started collecting shells,” he told her. “Before us are shells from all of the seven seas.” He set down three squares of ship’s cloth. “Small, medium, and large will do for now, until I figure out what to do with them. Will you help?”

“Aye, but it’s not enough to pay my debt for Pudding,” she said, and followed that announcement with a solemn shake of her head.

“It will do for right now,” he assured her.

He saw three patients that day, two of whom were able to pay his modest fee, and the third who brought him fish, which did perk up Pudding for a brief spell. He took a thoughtful walk to the greengrocer’s to find mother and son doing well.

Lunch was fish soup at the tearoom, where he sat in the corner and watched Olive Grant with her diners. They paid so little, but Olive smiled at each one, stopping to chat before she went to the next table, and the next. He had enough left of his own luncheon to share with Flora across the street in the kitchen that had become Pudding’s convalescent home.

Only with difficulty could he convince Flora that Pudding needed to stay overnight and that she should return home. He walked her down one of Edgar’s narrow closes and into a row of decrepit stone shelters barely deserving the title of homes. Olive had told him those were the poor houses, provided by the Church of Scotland.

Flora hung back, her eyes apprehensive, as she took a scolding from Gran.

“I told her to drown the wee beast,” Gran said and shook her finger at Flora. “She was not t’bother thee.”

“No bother,” Douglas assured the old woman. “I’m not too busy yet, and it seemed a pity to drown a perfectly good kitten.”

“There’s always more where that one came from,” Gran told him with a sigh. She lowered her eyes, and Douglas felt the shame that filled the little room that appeared to be parlor, bedchamber, and kitchen for Gran and her dead daughter’s child.

He felt a sudden burning anger at the Duchess of Sutherland and her progressive estate managers, who had convinced her that her Highland holdings could be squeezed for profit. He knew enough about the woman to know that her husband, the Marquess of Stafford, was England’s wealthiest man. He wondered if the countess had any idea of the misery she had unleashed on her own people, many of them now as helpless as the kittens he saw kneading and nursing the equally tired mother cat in a corner of the room.

He swallowed his anger, determined that Flora not think he was angry at her. “You have a fine granddaughter,” he told the old widow. “She took good care of Pudding after I finished.”

“We’ll pay you when we can,” the widow murmured, her eyes still on the dirt floor.

“I’ll think on the matter and find a way for Flora to pay me,” he said. He touched Flora’s shoulder. “And you’ll report to Miss Grant tomorrow morning for more porridge for Pudding.”

Flora nodded. “Thank’ee,” she whispered. “I knew you would help me.”

He had spent a lifetime helping men with great and unmanageable wounds. He had heard other heartfelt thanks, which he had brushed off because he was too busy and too hardened by suffering to dare them to sink in. An old surgeon ready for retirement had told him when he was newly back in the fleet as a surgeon that it wouldn’t do to get too close to his patients. “If you care too much, you’ll go mad, laddie,” the surgeon had told him.

And here he was, caring with all his heart, and his patient was a kitten. He shook his head at his own folly. “I was glad to help, Flora. Good night to you both.”

He stood a long while on the bridge, looking up at Lady Telford’s mansion, where one wealthy woman lived, and then down the river toward the fishing docks, where the boats had been buttoned up for the night. He looked at his own place and then across the street to the tearoom.

A breeze came up and set the wind chimes outside the door to Miss Grant’s Tearoom in motion. He smiled at the sound, thinking of years of creaking timbers and violent motion in his other homes. He recalled the high-pitched whine in the rigging when the wind was stiffening and the crash of waves onto the deck during storms at sea. All told, he preferred Olive Grant’s wind chimes, both soothing and predictable.

Inside his house, he assumed the duties of mother cat and cleaned up his little charge. Pudding offered only a squeak in protest before sinking back into the kind of sleep he was familiar with, that of patients lying in their hammocks in that stupor of the wounded. He gathered up the kitten and box and carried them upstairs because he was a conscientious surgeon who had spent many nights in service to his patients.

He raised the window because the upstairs air needed to circulate. He didn’t bother with a light as he stripped and pulled on his nightshirt, happy to surrender to the mattress again. With his hands behind his head in his thinking pose, he considered what to do about Tommy Tavish, who had pleaded with him only that morning in the cow bier to be allowed to return to his mam in their wretched cottage.