Doing No Harm (32 page)

Olive gasped and grabbed Mrs. Fillion’s hand. The woman squeezed back and her eyes became tender. She swallowed and pressed her hand and Olive’s to her bosom.

“Douglas Bowden sat with my little boy for hours. He did everything he could. As it turned out, he bought us another ten years of life together as mother and son. Could I do any less?” She bowed her head over their twined hands.

Olive leaned against her shoulder. “You don’t even know these people, these Highlanders, you are helping,” she whispered.

“I know they are little people, as we are,” she said. “They are common and frightened and angry and deserve so much better. Do I need to know anything else?”

Olive shook her head. She swallowed her own tears as she saw, in her mind’s eye, Joe Tavish grubbing in a hole in a dirt floor for oats and cow’s blood to keep him alive one more day. She heard Flora’s plea for someone to help her and her mother and Gran. She could almost see Patrick Sellar and his troops driving out hardworking crofters from their glens and slaughtering their cattle, all because the Countess of Sutherland wanted sheep.

She waited a long minute, glancing at Lady Telford to see eyes less hard now. From the sound of the solicitor, deep in his handkerchief, he was not a man inclined to cynicism.

She had to try, which meant several breaths, and the deepest wish of her heart that Douglas sat there too. “Before my father died, he told me to wait upon the Lord,” Olive said. Her voice cracked like a schoolchild’s, but how could that matter? “I did not understand what he meant. I do now.”

Chapter 29

D
ouglas Bowden closed his eyes
against a headache so powerful that everything from his neck up seemed to throb. He knew it wasn’t a migraine. It was just the kind of headache that had been his lot after days of battle and surgery and no rest, and shirt and trousers, despite his apron, soaked with other men’s blood.

He had swallowed the anchor by retiring and assured himself as he left London that those days were done.
I am an idiot
, he thought.

Perhaps he was too hard on himself. All he had to do was look across the narrow space in the post chaise to contradict that he was far from being an idiot.

Even now in a bumpy chaise, Homer Bennett, shipwright, was sketching plans for a yacht. And farther back on the Great North Road, Homer’s two journeymen and one apprentice were making do on the mail coach. Under Homer’s directions, Adam Pine, first journeyman, had been given the assignment to locate the other two, promise them more-than-adequate wages, and point them north to Scotland.

Homer had batted away Douglas’s worries that the men might not wish to inflict Scotland upon themselves. “Look here, friend, and make no mistake: As disagreeable as war was, at least it employed all of us.”

That same man—the competent, even-keeled Devonport shipwright Douglas had known for years—had confessed to Douglas in the quiet of his bookroom that retirement was proving to be a harder mistress than war. “But don’t tell Amy,” he had whispered, even though his wife of some thirty years was playing piquet with her best friend three blocks over on Granby Street. “She thinks I am satisfied to be home and doing next to nothing. Blast and dash it all!”

Despite his headache, Douglas had to smile at another whispered conversation he had that same evening with Mrs. Amy Bennett herself, begging Douglas to find something for her husband to do. “He wears a hang-dog expression all day, and mopes, positively mopes, and overeats,” she had told Douglas, after swearing him to silence on the matter.

Since he knew nothing of marriage politics, Douglas had cut through the Gordian knot by taking both husband and wife by the hand and sitting them down in their own parlor, where he explained his need for a shipwright in far off Edgar, small village in the shire of Kirkcudbright. “Homer, you are bored,” he had said. “Amy wants you to be busy. Admit to each other what you have both disclosed to me.”

Both husband and wife had stared daggers at him and he had stared back, arms folded, wondering if Olive Grant would ever resort to such silliness. He decided she probably could, because most females had a curiously devious nature, rather like cats. The matter was moot, however, because he would never be bored. The scope of his thoughts took his breath away, because his mind was wandering farther afield than ever before. What had Olive Grant to do with his happiness? Never mind; the matter at hand was to get the Bennetts on the same even keel.

He had faith in good friends. In a few moments, the thought-daggers lobbed his way had mellowed. Douglas knew Homer Bennett to be a realistic man. How could he have been otherwise, when for years he was saddled with relentless deadlines upon which the fate of the nation seemed to hang?

“He’s right, Ames,” Homer had said finally to his wife. “I am filled to the brim with boredom. Not with you,” he hastened to add and then sighed. “It’s harder than I thought to let go of a career.”

Amy Bennett was a bright woman. Douglas thought she could probably read frigate blueprints as well as her husband. Heaven knows that shipbuilding had probably been the chief discussion around the Bennett dinner table during years of national emergency.

“He’s not a young man,” she had said to Douglas, by way of preamble. “He shouldn’t have long hours.”

“Indeed no,” Douglas had assured her. “This is strictly an eight to six o’clock day. He’ll be building and teaching at the same time, which will require the patience of Job.”

And then the Bennetts were holding hands and listening as he laid the dubious charms of Edgar—misty days, horrendous odors when the tide was out, and nowhere of interest to shop—side by side with the utter need of hardworking men rendered impotent by expulsion from their distant glens to find meaningful work. “Amy, your man will be busy, paid well, and providing a desperately needed service.”

He could tell from the expression on her face that she hadn’t heard any word beyond “busy.” He knew the Bennetts were comfortably well off, thanks to war. Homer didn’t need the work, except that was precisely what he did need. Idle days stretching into idle weeks could put a man into the grave almost as fast as gas gangrene.

By the time bedtime rolled around, Homer Bennett had agreed to resurrect Edgar’s shipyard and train his workers. Before she closed the door to the bedchamber she shared with a much happier man now, Amy Bennett had kissed Douglas Bowden’s cheek.

“I’ll be there as soon as a house is ready,” she assured the blushing Douglas. “Truth to tell, I am bored too. A lady can only play so much piquet.”

“Doug? You’re woolgathering,” he heard from the man seated across from him in the post chaise. “Twice now I’ve asked you about lumber.”

“Beg pardon. I will suggest that when your number one journeyman arrives, that the two of you spend several days in Glasgow. Olive—Miss Grant—tells me there is a mighty rope works there, as well, to answer your rigging needs. They’ll provide you with no false leads, since the Telford Boat Works is no competition.”
So I hope
, he thought, and crossed his fingers.

“I know a few ship builders Clydeside who will help, now that you mention it,” Homer said and returned to his sketches. “I have heard they are even experimenting with steam power in Glasgow.”

Douglas sat back, contemplating the wonders of this modern age. More than that, he wanted to contemplate the wonders of Olive Grant, and not for the first time.

Not for the first time, some sense assured him that once Olive dug herself out of the financial pit her own generosity had placed her in, she would change in no way. He would probably have to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t take herself back down the same path. She had the heart of a servant, probably much as her parents before her. She wasn’t a woman to shirk hard things.

And how was he to keep an eye on her, except to marry her? There, he had thought it, even though he knew Edgar was not the place he had in mind during lazy days at sea when he had time to lie on deck in the sun and contemplate a future beyond war.

That had been early in his career, on long voyages to the South Pacific, when he was still optimistic and before war stretched from one year to the next and finally had no end in sight. He had stopped imagining anything but war. And so dreams died.

First things first, he told himself. There was a shipyard to make fully operational. He had put off his own wants and desires for so long that he did not know how to introduce them into his life. Maybe they were better left alone, to be considered later, when he found his ideal medical practice. Maybe he didn’t even remember what they were.

They spent the last night away in Dumfries, where Douglas replenished his medical supplies and pharmacopeia in the morning. He followed Homer Bennett into a stationery store and watched as his shipwright bought many tablets and pencils, and single sheets of stiffer paper.

While Homer made his purchases, Douglas wandered next door to a shop simply titled “Clothier.” Trust the Scots to be frugal even with signs. The shop seemed balanced evenly between apparel for ladies and gentleman. He bought him a pair of gloves, banking on winter eventually returning, and then found himself drawn to the ladies side of the store.

“Something for your wife, sir?” asked a young woman in a black dress.

“Oh, no, I … Yes.” What was the point in trying to explain his relationship to a shop girl he would never see again?

“Do you have something in particular in mind?” she asked.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” he assured her, hoping she would leave him to roam alone.

He did know it, a fringed shawl made of silk—if he could trust his fingers—woven into little kidney shapes of yellow, red, and orange design, with splashes of royal blue. He had seen something like it in the Persian town of Qerm, in the Straits of Hormuz, where they had once taken on water and vegetables.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The shop girl had materialized at his elbow without his being aware of it.

“Aye. What do you call it? I saw something like it in Persia once.”

“Paisley,” she said. “There is a town named Paisley not far from here where the weavers use those Persian designs.”

Maybe she wanted to spare his feelings. He was wearing one of his new suits, but he had been traveling in it for days. She leaned closer and whispered. “It’s rather dear, sir. I can show you something less expensive and more practical.”

“No matter. The lady I wish to buy this for has had her fill of practicality. This will do.”

She named the price. He winced inwardly but forked over the money. She wrapped the impractical bit of cobweb in prosaic brown paper and knotted it with twine. He was out in the street, purchase tucked under his arm, when Homer emerged from the stationery shop with his more substantial burden. Douglas took on his share of the load as they ambled back to the waiting post chaise.

Purchases stowed, Douglas could barely understand why he looked forward with such eagerness to Edgar; he knew what Edgar was: worry and work.

But there Olive was, standing on the stoop of the tearoom as the post chaise swept past and deposited them at the Hare and Hound. The day was cool and she had bundled herself in her Grant tartan. He waved to her as they went by and she clapped her hands, either pleased to see him, or pleased to see that he had not returned alone. He hoped it was both.

He directed Homer Bennett inside the Hare and Hound, where Mr. Dougall took charge, his broad face wreathed with smiles. Telling Homer he would return, Douglas went outside and nearly ran into Olive, who was coming up the steps. He took her by the shoulders to steady her and walked her back down to the street.

“I did what I said I would,” he told her, his hands still on her shoulders even though she was perfectly capable of standing on a sidewalk without his assistance.

“I knew you would,” she said. She touched his face, then withdrew her hand quickly when she must have realized how forward that was. “There you go! Which eye are you looking in?”

“Both at the same time. I’m talented.” He held out the brown paper package. “A little trifle for you, alas, from nowhere farther than Dumfries.”