Doing No Harm (7 page)

He did as she suggested, shutting the door on Miss Grant and her charming tearoom. The lowering clouds had cleared away to demonstrate that southwestern Scotland did have blue skies. Hand in his pockets, he walked the length of the High he had not traversed yet, which took him past the posting house name of the Hare and Hound, the ubiquitous Presbyterian church, and what looked like a combination tobacconist and lending library. On a whim, he stuck his head inside to inquire about the annual fee for borrowing books and was pleasantly surprised.

A smaller road angled away from the High in that manner of village roads, which meandered where people did, and eventually turned into actual byways. He remembered such roads from his childhood in Norfolk, spent largely in his father’s workshop and barrel yard, helping make kegs of all sizes, many intended for the holds of Royal Navy ships.

The only boy with two older sisters, he had left home in shocking fashion. The death of his mother had rendered him melancholy, but with no one to discuss the matter. Papa just worked harder, his face more set, and the vicar in his local parish reminded him that he and others in Norfolk, at least, were born to trouble as the sparks flew upwards.

It wasn’t enough to assuage a twelve-year-old boy’s heart. The day Papa entrusted him to take a load of kegs to the Great Yarmouth docks was the last day he saw his father. He fulfilled his assignment, sent the money carefully wrapped and addressed to Nahum Bowden’s Cooperage in Walton, Norfolk, and offered himself to the Royal Navy.

He was given the choice of powder monkey or loblolly boy, and he took the latter, because medicine interested him. Dumping emesis basins and urinals began his hard school, but his absolute, unyielding calmness in the face of terror moved him quickly to pharmacist’s mate. One year in a Spanish prison rendered him nearly fluent in the language, which eased his escape and reunion with the Royal Navy’s White Fleet, off anchor on blockade duty.

On the surprising endorsement of a fleet physician, after five years, he spent two years in London Hospital, learning the trade he practiced for the duration of Napoleon’s wars. He was skilled, talented, and footloose now.

Walking felt so good. Why seeing water still meant so much to him, he could not have said. He climbed higher up the road, moving aside for wagons, horsemen, and one carriage. When he came to a spot where the road widened, he turned to look down on Edgar. He watched the docks and the fishing vessels, clouded now by competing gulls, which meant the day’s catch was ashore.

He studied the High Street until he located the tearoom. A small figure in the back garden, probably Maeve, was pulling laundry off the line. He admired the graceful arch of the stone bridge that crossed the River Dee, and the ruined castle on the opposite height from where he stood. Miss Grant had mentioned a manor of sorts belonging to an Englishwoman, and there it was, easily the most elegant building in town. Just this side of the Dee, he noticed a smaller two-story stone house, painted a soft yellow. No smoke curled from the chimney, even though it was approaching suppertime, and the windows had no curtains.

Maybe the house was empty. Maybe he could start a practice in Edgar. Two rooms on the bottom would suffice for an anteroom-office and a surgery, and there was likely a kitchen, which would be useful for the pharmacology part of his business. He could live upstairs. He reminded himself that he had entertained this same fiction in Pauling.

He convinced himself he had better keep looking, once Tommy Tavish was this side of death and not in danger of infection. A larger, more prosperous village probably waited just around the bend in the land. What was the hurry, anyway? He had leisure for the first time in his life. He could take a carriage or even a post chaise all the way to John o’ Groats, at Scotland’s rooftop, and travel down the other side.

“That’s what I will do,” Douglas informed the lupines just poking out for their first view of spring aboveground.

Even so, he took a coin from his pocket and tossed it in the air. “Heads I remain here only a week,” he said as he flipped George III over and over. Sure enough, buggy-eyed George stared up at him on the road. Douglas chuckled, pocketed the coin and headed down the road, wondering why he flipped the coin. His plans hadn’t changed, and a faulty coin toss wouldn’t have mattered. What, three or four days for Tommy to be well enough to leave behind?

Chapter 7

T
ommy woke only long enough
to ask for a urinal, mutter something, pluck at his arm, and swallow another sleeping draught. The pallet Miss Grant had provided was surprisingly comfortable. Douglas thought of other nights standing on a sand-covered deck in his surgery to keep from slipping on blood, and decided quickly that Miss Olive Grant’s tearoom was vastly superior.

I do not miss that
, he thought, to no surprise. Once Tommy’s needs were met, he returned to sleep, only to wake hours later with a soft hand on his arm. His muscles tensed, but he did not move.

“Miss Grant?” he whispered finally, not sure if he should be chagrined or pleased that she was touching him. She seemed much too proper for what sprang immediately to mind.

“You were calling out and muttering in your sleep,” she whispered back. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“No, I …” He stopped, and indulged in the truth. “I have bad dreams.” He took a deep breath and said something he never thought he would say to anyone, let alone a lady he barely knew. “Would you mind awfully just keeping your hand on my shoulder until I return to sleep?”

What on earth was he asking? He closed his eyes in the deepest humiliation, ready to cry, except he was too old for that, too long at this war business.

She said nothing, but increased the pressure of her hand on his shoulder. He didn’t mean to, but his head seemed to naturally incline toward her hand. The last thing he felt was his shoulders relaxing. When he woke next, it was morning.

He took a deep breath and smelled wonderful fragrances from the kitchen below. Shame covered him as he remembered what had happened last night, and he knew he could never go downstairs again in this lifetime.

“Sir? Sir?”

Douglas sat up, instantly alert. He looked into brown eyes about on the level of his own brown eyes. He got to his knees and automatically put two fingers on Tommy’s neck and then smiled.

“I am going to live?” the boy asked in all seriousness.

“Your regular pulse would indicate precisely that,” Douglas replied. He felt the boy’s forehead, which was cool. “Are you hungry?”

“I could eat a seagull, feathers and all,” Tommy assured him, which made Douglas laugh.

“I don’t think it will come to that.”

Douglas got to his feet and stretched, fully confident that his days of sleeping on a pallet were numbered. A young surgeon could do it, but he wasn’t a young surgeon anymore. “I’ll get you something from downstairs after you do your duty with this.”

Tommy obliged him, muttering something about being perfectly capable of standing up.

“Not yet, you’re not,” Douglas replied. “Two more days with this extra-long splint, and then we’ll see. Steady as you go.”

Douglas took a long look at his surgical handiwork, relieved to see no redness. He sniffed the bandage. Other than the fact that Tommy Tavish was long overdue for a bath, there were no telltale signs of rot.

“Would you at least let me sit up?” the boy asked.

“That I will do and we’ll see how you like it.”

Gently he pulled Tommy into a semi-recumbent position, listening to the boy’s sharp intake of breath and barely stifled groan.

“Maybe not just yet. Agreed?”

Tommy nodded with no argument. He closed his eyes when Douglas lowered him down. “Me mam?”

“She said she was going to stay with a Mrs. Cameron. Is she … will she do?”

Tommy nodded again. “She’s a good’un. Me da?”

“Hard to say, lad. Let me get you some food.”

There was nothing else Douglas could do but go downstairs to the kitchen. Had there not been a patient involved, he was certain he would have gathered his belongings together and slunk out the front door, never to be seen again in Edgar. He took a deep breath and opened the kitchen door.

Her red hair gathered into an untidy topknot, Miss Grant was just preparing one of six loaves of bread for the oven. She smiled at him, not a hint on her face of embarrassment. Her cheeks were rosy, but the kitchen was warm.

“How is our patient?” she asked, and somehow that made all the difference. She was inviting herself into his world, and he was happy to let her in.

“Wanting some food,” he replied. “Said he could eat a seagull, feathers and all.”

“Too fishy for a convalescent,” she said. “Tell him I said no. Baked oats will do, with cream on top. Some for you too? I have boiled eggs, as well. That’s what my breakfast crowd likes. Sit a minute.”

He did as she asked and felt his face grow warm when she sat across from him. With no hesitation, she took his hand in hers.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Bowden. How on earth could anyone go through a lifetime of war and not have a bad dream or two?” She released his hand and just looked at him, her face so pleasant, even with freckles and funny eyes. He couldn’t think of a time he had seen such kindness, which made her face nearly beautiful.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “If … if that happens again, just leave me be. I’ll wake myself up and go back to sleep.”

She shook her head slowly. “Not under my roof you won’t,” Miss Grant said, her voice low and full of emotion. “My father was a minister, and he didna raise me to ignore suffering.”

Douglas swallowed. “It’s not much suffering, not in the great scheme of things.”

He tried to turn his nighttime anguish into a joke, but she wasn’t buying it.

“Not under my roof,” she repeated, but softer now. “Let me fix a tray for Tommy and you.”

She did an odd thing then, something he never expected. Without a blush or qualm, she took him by the chin and held his head steady so she could look into his eyes. “Do we understand each other?”

He nodded and she released him.

“This will not come up for debate or discussion again, Mr. Bowden.” She shook her head, as though vexed with herself. “You must think me a dreadfully managing sort.”

“I wish you had been my pharmacist mate in any number of battles,” he told her, which did bring out the red in her cheeks, making her even more colorful. “Done and done, madam. How about that food, and handsomely now.”

Miss Grant laughed and moved quickly to do his bidding. He poured some coffee and filched a piece of cold toast.

“Try my lemon curd on it,” Miss Grant said as she sliced two squares of baked oats and poured cream over them.

He had no plans to ever argue with Miss Grant again, so he did as she said, which meant he ended up licking the knife too. He had never eaten anything so good in his life. “Magnificent,” he said. “The coachman mentioned it yesterday. I was skeptical because I have been nearly three days in Scotland and my taste buds died when I crossed the border.”

“Wretched man,” she joked, which made him smile, because she rolled her Rs even better than other Scots he knew. Maybe it just sounded better, coming from a lady.

And so it was with good humor and calm heart that he took a tray of food upstairs for a brave boy and a man beginning to suspect that peace had its perquisites.

But he had forgotten about the horribly named Duke, who looked at him, ever hopeful, when he came into the room with the tray. “Oh,” was all he said, because Miss Grant came up the stairs right behind him with a bowl of scraps.

She held it under Duke’s twitching nose, his tail wagging rapidly, and then walked with it into the hall and down the stairs, the pup in hot pursuit. “I’ll bring him back when he has had a turn in the garden,” she called, making it sound for all the world like Duke was a valued guest who needed to take the air.

“Amazing lady,” Douglas said as he set the tray on the bedside table and helped Tommy into a sitting position.

The boy was so hungry that he forgot his pain. He wolfed down the baked oatmeal and inhaled the blood pudding Miss Grant had added. He looked around, still hungry, at the same time Douglas declared that he couldn’t eat another bite and offered the remainder of his breakfast to the boy.