Mrs. Dougall silently held out three small dresses. Olive swallowed hard and took them in her arms.
“I said we had a daughter once,” Mrs. Dougall said, her voice so low that Olive could barely hear her. “You’ll find a good use for them: one for little Flora, and two for the MacGregor sisters.”
“Thank you,” Olive said, trying to be as cool as the surgeon, when she wanted to give the innkeep’s wife a great hug and then dance around the room with Maeve.
“I have others too, and a bonny cloak for winter,” Mrs. Dougall said. She hesitated and then cast aside her Scottish reticence much as Mrs. Aintree had done. “Some of us have not been as welcoming and kind as we could have been, have we?”
Olive had no trouble finding excuse for her fellow villagers. “We already slice a thin oatbread here in Edgar,Mrs. Dougall. Sometimes it’s hard to see how we can help others, when our own lot is skimpy.”
“That can change,” Mrs. Dougall said. “I think it must.” She left as quietly as she had come.
“Oh, Maeve, we had better get ourselves to the MacLeods,” Olive said.
“Will Gran see these dresses as charity?” Maeve asked.
“Happen she might, but I can be a bit of a martinet, if needs must,” Olive told her.
“Miss Grant? You?”
She turned around at the surgeon’s voice, to show off the dresses. “Yes! Don’t quiz me. So much for your peaceful evening. How is Mr. McIntyre’s wrist?”
He shrugged. “The scariest thing is the hematoma, which I will lance. Blood pools under the skin when things like this happen. Toss in a suture or two and Mr. McIntyre will be on his merry, and hopefully wiser, way. The venison will keep and I will eventually find my bed.” He fingered the fabric of one of the dresses she held. “This yellow one will look good on the impresario of Edgar, Miss Flora MacLeod herself.”
“My thought precisely. Come, Maeve.”
He put his hand on her arm and gave it a little shake. “Miss Grant, it appears I may have underestimated your village.”
Chapter 21
Douglas decided that theearth’s axis had somehow shifted under Edgar, and he was quite willing to give the credit to Flora MacLeod. He had mentioned that epiphany to Olive, who had looked at him a long time down her nose.
“I believe she must share the credit with you, Mr. Bowden,” she assured him the next morning when he stopped by to see Flora’s most recent crop of fancies. “The people of my village are already calling you their surgeon. I know! I know! You have no plans to stay.”
“I don’t,” he had said, trying to sound firm, but failing, in his critical estimation. “Thank you for understanding my own need for peace and quiet.”
“I understand perfectly, and they don’t need to know, sir,” she said. “You can vanish some night, once you have solved all of our problems.”
She was such a tease. They laughed together, and Olive even agreed to assist when he unfused Mrs. Aintree’s fingers.
“I can train you to be an excellent pharmacist mate,” he told her. “You can learn to handle any number of minor crises.”
The fishy look she gave him suggested that her heart wasn’t entirely taken up with medicine, as his obviously was, since he couldn’t even get through a Scottish village without stopping to heal its inhabitants and maybe walk on water.
He accepted the fact that he was an easy mark, which would have astounded his Royal Navy colleagues, who knew him only as a hard-eyed, single-minded surgeon lacking even a flyspeck of sentiment.
Fools, they have never met Flora MacLeod, Douglas decided as he walked across the street later for luncheon with Olive. The little girl had already burst into his house earlier that morning after the early coach had stopped at the Hart and Hound. She wore that yellow dress from an earlier decade, held in by a length of twine.
“Ah! Lovely!” he had said before she even had a chance to speak. “Twirl around.”
She did and then opened her fist to show him ten coins. “Mr. Bowden! Two charms to the same lady!”
“That’s what I thought might happen, Flora,” he told her. “Travelers want more than one to share with friends.”
He sent her on her way with little Pudding, who was bobbling about and disinclined to remain in the box where she had convalesced. “He needs that fine oatmeal several times a day,” was Douglas’s prescription. “Buy two pennies’ worth of oats at the greengrocer’s and feed Mama cat as well. I’ll be over in a few days to remove her sutures.”
Satisfied, he watched as Flora carefully picked up her kitten, wrapped her into a length of Gran’s shawl, and left at a more sedate pace. She looked back in the doorway and he gave her an inquiring glance.
“Mr. Bowden, you are good with kittens,” she said, her eyes kind. He looked for anxiety and distrust and saw none. He was no fool to think that Flora MacLeod would never have another nightmare or frightening turn, but he could not deny the gentle mantle of peace that had settled on her young shoulders. For now, he would count it as a blessing.
