By the time he made the trip across the street to luncheon, Flora had found her way to Olive’s tearoom with the MacGregor sisters, who now had a dress apiece.
The smaller sister, introduced to him by Flora as Euna, stood on a table in the corner of the tearoom as Mrs. Campbell pinned the hem. “Euna and Sally MacGregor,” Flora said. “They will help make our little fancies. Miss Grant says we have formed a corporation.”
Douglas laughed. “You’ll have to declare a name, register it, and pay taxes to the crown.”
“We’re not paying the crown a single penny,” Flora assured him.
“I wouldn’t either,” Olive said. She sat hemming one of the dresses.
“A revolutionary,” Douglas warned. “Aux barricades!”
She shook her finger at him and returned to her hemming, looking as content as he had ever seen her. He looked round the tearoom, where Olive’s usual customers chatted quietly and ate what looked like venison sandwiches.And when was the last time anyone here ever had meat, he asked himself, pleased.
“The girls are paying me a penny each to alter their dresses,” Mrs. Campell said, speaking around the pins in her mouth, which made the surgeon in Douglas Bowden give a silent yelp. Why did women do that?
“Mrs. Campbell is a treasure,” Olive said softly, after clearing off a spot for him to sit. “I sold a lot of that venison haunch last night to some of my neighbors who don’t always stop in. I was able to buy some squares of cloth from the dry goods store this morning for more serviettes. Mrs. Campbell will hem those too.”
“I see commerce all around me,” he told her. “Flora, I have written to Plymouth and you will have more shells soon enough. Have you and your … your board of directors made more fancies?”
“Done and done,” Flora told him. As she turnedaround, Douglas noticed that the twine belt had been replaced by a lovely length of yellow cotton, probably bought at the same time as the material for serviettes by the kind lady he sat next to, the one with the deep red hair in its now-familiar disarray, pins poked here and there, because she was too busy thinking of others to give a minute to herself. He hesitated only a second before he tucked in one of those pins about to lose its moorings. She flashed him a smile that did something funny to his heart.
“We’re starting small, here in Edgar,” Olive said. “We need a bold stroke, Douglas. You can’t leave until we have one.”
“Leave? Who is … Oh, yes, I am.”
He ate his venison sandwich in thoughtful silence, watching the girls peacock about in dresses given to them by another kind lady. None of them wore shoes, but it was spring now. He doubted they had worn shoes this past winter, but some knowledge deep inside him assured him that they would have shoes by the time cold returned to Scotland. How he knew, he couldn’t have said. It was absurd to think that he was changing too. He was an adult quite set in his ways.
A brief consultation with the kind lady assured him that she would meet him in the surgery with Mrs. Aintree, once the dishes were done.
“Do you mind?” he asked. “I am starting to assume that you are a willing accomplice. Doesn’t everyone love surgery?”
She wagged her finger at him again. “Mr. Bowden, you’re stretching it.”
Stretching it or not, she knocked on his door that afternoon and helped in a pale Mrs. Aintree and a delegation that warmed his heart a little more.
Mrs. Tavish and her son came in too. Douglas closed the door firmly on Duke. “We will expect the beast to guard us,” he told Tommy. “Outside.”
He looked out the window to watch Duke turn arounda few times and then sink down, as dejected as only a gregarious dog could look.
“We’re here to provide comfort,” Mrs. Tavish said, with nothing in her tone suggesting that she would leave until Mrs. Aintree was safely back in her own bed.
He made his own swift assessment of Mrs. Tavish, amazed at the difference a few weeks, a little hope, and a home of her own could make. “Do you feel able to tend Mrs. Aintree?” he asked, mainly because it was a doctor thing to ask.
She gave him a little smile, the kind of smile he never saw at sea, because he did not see many women aboard Royal Navy vessels. He had seen it enough in Edgar, though, the smile that suggested men had no idea what women were capable of.
“Aye, Mr. Bowden,” was her answer, delivered with sufficient steel to guarantee that although Mrs. Tavish had fallen on hard times, she had not remained in them. The set look to her lips and in her eyes reminded him of other Highlanders he had doctored through the years. He knew them as people who did not complain because they were already well acquainted with the cruelties of life.
“Sit here with your boy,” he told her and indicated the mismatched chairs in his waiting room.
He turned to Mrs. Aintree and took her by the hand. She looked at him with all the trust in the world. He had seen the look before, even in times when he felt less adequate than a barnacle. It had moved him the first time, and it did not fail to move him now.
She had brought along a nightgown as he had asked. “I just want you comfortable,” he had told her last night when he had spent time in her parlor.
She had asked last night why he could not separate her fingers in the ease of her own home, and he had explained about the light. He could tell she was skeptical but a polite lady. She looked around his surgery and nodded.
He had borrowed two lamps from Olive, who had talked the minister’s wife out of two more.
“I understand now,” Mrs. Aintree said, looking around with understanding. “There’s not much light comes into my chamber, tucked there under the eaves.”
