“That may be, but it does not excuse what happened. It is our everlasting shame that some of the townsfolk turneda deaf ear to the sermons my father preached about charity being kind and not puffed up,” Olive said.
“When did this begin?”
“Some years ago,” she answered. “We in Edgar have only been affected by the more recent clearances. I regret that any help given to them was provided grudgingly. Some of the women work on the dock cleaning fish. A few of the men went to sea and never returned. A few of the men are scavengers.”
“Scavengers?”
Spots of color bloomed among her freckles. “They clean the vaults under the necessaries, when they grow full and start to reek.” She paused to let him absorb that one. “Some Highlanders took to drink, like Joe Tavish. My father did all he could to feed them.” She bowed her head and her voice became scarcely audible. “He died about the time the first Highlanders straggled here two years ago. I have continued his work.”
He knew Olive was a plain speaker. He was too. “What happens when you finally run out of your own money?”
His blunt question did not seem to surprise her. “I have another year or two before that happens,” she said, and no more. That was her answer. She looked straight ahead then, avoiding his eyes.
“What about the empty dry dock or shipyard?”
“The men with skill to run it moved to Glasgow, and some to your country, to build man o’ wars to challenge Napoleon. The fishing fleet is greatly diminished because press gangs came this far north to kidnap seafaring men for the Royal Navy. They have never returned either.”
He winced inwardly, knowing the truth of what she said. As a ship surgeon, it was his duty to pass judgment on the general health of those men clubbed into the navy by press gangs. Some were too feeble and he dismissed them. Where they went after that, he did not know, but itseemed unlikely that the Royal Navy escorted them home again to Scotland. He looked at Olive Grant with even more respect because some sense beyond the usual six told him that if Olive had been on the docks in Plymouth or Portsmouth, she would have fed those forgotten men and gotten them home somehow.
“Why do you do this?” he asked her.
She seemed surprised by his question, even flustered, which he found endearing. And when she spoke, he felt the tiniest grain of hope squeeze into his heart. “I’m the same as you,” she told him. “We just try to do some good wherever we can.”
He felt his face grow warm. “Olive, I have always been paid for doing good,” he reminded her. “You appear to be going through your own inheritance to do good.”
“No one paid you to mend Tommy Tavish’s leg,” was her quiet reply.
“But …” He stopped, knowing full well that he had money and she did not. He couldn’t pursue this discussion, so he stood up. “Come, come. I am looking for a house to let. Lady Telford awaits, even though she doesn’t know it,” he told his … his what? He considered the matter, suddenly bowled over with the unvarnished reality that he had a friend in Edgar. “See here, Olive Grant,” he said impulsively. “Will you be my friend?”
Her smile could have lit a lighthouse, which flattered him right down to his shoes. “I’d like nothing better, Douglas Bowden.”
She meant it. Olive tried to recall her last chum, which meant scrolling through her brain for ten years, as she had watched her childhood friends flirt, marry, have children, and discover they had nothing in common anymore. She had become an afterthought to those who had invited herto parties and teas and who had swung with her in the swing behind the vicarage.
A friend at thirty would be a different sort of friend. She also knew he had no plans to stay long. Still, even a temporary friend was better than none at all. The retired surgeon would be a friend to remember long after he was gone.
“Good,” he said. “Bring on this Lady Telford. What should I expect?”
How to describe Lady Telford? “She is crabby and complains a lot, according to Maeve Gibson’s sister, who works for her,” Olive said, not one to mince words, which had probably cost her at least one suitor. “There is an air of pretension about her because the late Sir Dudley was a baronet and we are remarkably common.”
“Any lingering, mysterious illnesses that I can save her from and earn her undying gratitude?” Douglas joked. “Or is that what only happens in bad novels?”
“Bad novels,” Olive agreed. “She likes money, I have heard, so she will overcharge you for that house.”
“Can I appeal to her better nature?” he persisted.
“She has no better nature. I am sorry to disappoint you,” Olive assured him. “Prepare to be cheated on the rent.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Gossip,” Olive replied, which made him laugh. “She keeps to herself, and we don’t interfere.”
“Coward.”
Oh, this was good. No need for him to know that she had a few qualms about the visit, not the least of which dated back to the time Lady Telford scolded her father for wasting so much of his resources, not to mention his strength and energy, on people who would never appreciate his efforts. Olive felt braver already because she wasn’t fighting this little battle by herself. She had a friend now.
“She frightens me a little,” Olive said, just to warn him.
“My dear Miss Grant, I have been hip deep in a sinking ship, with a wounded man on my back, trying to take him topside to a cutter. I can probably survive being cheated on the rent.”
