She nodded, relishing her own delight to see Joe Tavish always beside Homer Bennett, sketching what the shipwright wanted. “I heard Mr. Bennett say that he had never worked with a finer draughtsman. Joe smiled and looked so pleased.”
Doug gave her arm another gentle tap. “Tomorrow’s the day I remove Tommy’s splints. He’s been pestering me for a week, but I’ve been busy.” He kept his hand on her arm. “And Flora and her colleagues have a tidy business.”
“I know,” Olive said, enjoying the warmth of his hand. “She came to me only this morning in near-stupefaction and holding a pound note. Apparently Lady Telford herself has requested an … an extra-fancy fancy made of scallop shells in graduated sizes. She was quite specific and Flora is over the moon.”
He nodded and said what Olive had been dreading. “I’ve done what I set out to do here, or nearly so. Homer has the names of several men who might be interested in buying the yacht. Two are in Edinburgh. He wants me to take Joe’s sketches and test that interest. I can easily do that after I leave Edgar, perhaps as early as next week.”
She couldn’t help the tears that welled in her eyes and only hoped the room was dark enough to hide them. It wasn’t.
“Olive, I had no plans to stay in Edgar,” he reminded her, after a painful silence. “I’ll certainly come back and visit now and then, but …” He shook his head. “I’m stilllooking for the ideal medical practice. I just need to look a little more. It’s out there somewhere.”
She nodded and tried to swallow her misery. Her traitor tears continued to fall. All she could do was wish him a good night and leave him sitting in her parlor with a frown on his face.
She heard the door close a few minutes later and looked out her bedroom window. Hands shoved in his pockets, Doug crossed the street. He stared at his house for a long moment, then passed it and walked to the bridge, where he stood for a long time, watching the water. Discouraged, she went to bed, certain she would not sleep.
She resolved in the morning to write to Nancy Fillion in Plymouth. There was no one in Edgar she could talk to, and Mrs. Fillion seemed to understand what made men like Douglas Bowden tick. She stared at the ceiling for a long while, wondering what on earth she would say in such a letter that wouldn’t sound like whingeing.
He simply isn’t as interested in you as you are in him, she thought at last, and decided there was no reason to write to Mrs. Fillion. A spinster she was and a spinster she would remain. Her tears slid from her eyes to her pillow. “I do not want to be a spinster,” she said out loud. It didn’t sound like whingeing to her self-critical ears. It sounded like a sensible woman realizing that as much as Edgar might change, she would not.
She must have slept then, because when she woke, the room was full dark. The moon had not yet risen. She lay in bed, uncertain why she had awakened.
There it was again, someone knocking on her door. She crossed to the window and looked down to see Flora MacLeod, wearing a shift that barely came to her knees.
“My dear? What do you need?”
The child looked up. “It’s my gran,” she sobbed. “She fell out of bed and I canna lift her back in. And her eyes are rolling around. Oh, please.”
Olive grabbed her robe and ran down the stairs. She threw open the door and Flora tumbled inside, reaching for her. Olive knelt beside her on the floor, holding the child close, feeling the rapid beating of her heart.
“I didna want to bother Mr. Bowden,” she sobbed into Olive’s shoulder. “Ye said earlier how hard he works and how tired he is, but Miss Grant, it’s my gran.”
She sat Flora down. “I’m going to dress and I’ll be right back,” she called over her shoulder as she took the stairs two at a time.
She threw on her clothes, despaired of doing anything about the hair so wild around her head, knowing that Gran was more important. After stuffing her feet into her shoes, she ran downstairs to see Flora with her head down on the table, looking as alone as anyone could. Olive put her own shawl around the child and took her hand.
“Let’s go wake up Mr. Bowden.”
They crossed the empty street, Flora pressing close to her. She wondered what terrors the child was revisiting, to walk in the dark by herself.
“I believe Mr. Bowden keeps his house unlocked,” she said. Sure enough, the door opened at her touch. She sat Flora on one of the chairs in the first room that had become his surgery waiting room.
She took her own deep breath and went up the stairs quietly, startled to hear Douglas talking. She recalled the few times she had wakened him from his dreams in her own house, when Tommy lay so desperately ill, and he had his own bruises and black eye.
Olive listened a moment to a reasonable man talking to patients. As she listened, her terror gave way to compassion. She wondered how many dead men came to him each night in his dreams, pleading for his help, demanding his services. She stood there with her hand on the doorknob as she finally understood this complex man who only wanted some peace. Treaties could besigned, Napoleon sent far away to St. Helena Island, and navies and armies reduced, but Douglas Bowden’s war still raged.
“They don’t ever let you alone, do they, Doug?” she whispered. “How do you even dare close your eyes?”
Chapter 32
Doug?”
He sat up in bed, mentally hushing the scores of patients that had grouped themselves around him. He almost told Olive to mind her steps so she did not tread on any of the wounded, but he woke up fully before he committed that felony which could probably get him tossed into an asylum.
No one else called him Doug. He shook his head to clear the mental fog, and saw Olive Grant before him, dressed, but her hair wild, curly, and magnificent. “What in the world …”
“It’s Flora’s gran,” Olive said. She didn’t come any closer, which should have relieved him but didn’t. For one irrational moment, he wanted to grab her, sit her down beside him, and babble out his own night terrors about patients that refused to let him alone.
“I’ll be downstairs in a moment. Get my satchel. You know where it is,” he ordered, in control again. He was out of bed and looking for his trousers before she even left the room.
