“Yours is no folly. Joe Tavish tells me you were in a rare state after looking at all the drawings, and you abandoned ship to spread around a little indignation.”
“Obviously I will not succeed. I … I thought you were leaving Edgar. Why are you here?”
“Because you are.”
She sighed. “I feel so alone right now.”
“Not any more.”
He moved a little closer until their shoulders touched. Olive pressed her lips into a tight line. Her eyebrows came together, and Douglas saw that his touch had rendered her close to tears. He moved away slightly, sad to think what would have happened if he had not arrived in time.
“I would have been here sooner, but we came across an accident on the road and …”
“You are an amazing man,” she said, interrupting. Her face reddened. “About that paper I slid under your door.”
“It can wait. Right now I … ”
“Captain Bowden, come this way, please.”
He stood up and grabbed Olive’s hand, tugging herup with him. The footman walking ahead didn’t even notice. To his relief, the footman at the ornate door at the end of the hall had left his post, perhaps because Douglas was the final petitioner, since the woman would never be allowed in.
He released Olive’s hand and put his arm around her waist, pulling her close. If the footman realized his mistake and tried to separate them, Douglas wasn’t going to give up easily.
They came to the end of the endless hall and the footman opened the door without looking back. “Captain Douglas Bowden, late of the Royal Navy and part owner in the Telford Boat Works,” he announced and ushered Douglas forward.
The footman blanched as he realized his mistake too late. To say anything now would expose his own error, or so thought Douglas as he nodded to the astounded man and hurried inside with Olive Grant. He held his breath, but the door closed behind them.I hope they sack you when they find out, Douglas thought. He smiled and bowed. Olive Grant performed a magnificent curtsy and they walked closer.
The Irish street sweeper had been right. Two ordinary-looking people sat near each other in gilt chairs on a raised dais. Douglas saw some beauty in the brown eyes and handsome carriage of the Countess of Sutherland, but years and childbearing had given her a double chin and a waist that was only a memory now. She looked bored and ready to be done with petitions and audiences. Douglas thought the reddish tinge to her face suggested elevated blood pressure.
The Marquis of Stafford was of slighter build, possessor of an unfortunate hooked nose and a vanishing chin. Douglas thought the marquess wouldn’t have lasted a day on board any ship he had sailed with in the past twenty-five years. His air of disinterest equaled his wife’s.From the way he sat, at a slight angle on his chair, Douglas gleefully diagnosed a case of hemorrhoids.
“What have you to do with us?” the marquess asked. “Is this your wife?”
Douglas took Olive’s hand. “Not yet. I am a surgeon retired from the Royal Navy. I am now part owner of the Telford Boat Works, and Edgar’s doctor.”
Her heard Olive’s little intake of breath, and he squeezed her hand.
“We are principally employing the Highlanders, your Highlanders and former tenants who were summarily dumped on Edgar and other villages on the southwest coast.”
Other than Lord Stafford’s uncomfortable shifting to his other haunch, Douglas saw no discomfort in the complacent people who sat before them. He wondered what might stir them to call for his removal and continued.
“They have no skills beyond those of their glens. They were dying of starvation because some were too proud to eat at Miss Grant’s tearoom, where she has been providing modest meals out of her own inheritance.”
The countess tossed a benevolent look Olive’s way. “No skills. Exactly!” she declared in a triumphant voice that bore no trace of a Scottish accent. He wondered where she had been raised. “We are creating these improvements for their own good.”
“Burning their cottages around their shoulders and leaving them to die in the rain?” Olive asked. “How is that for anyone’s good except your own, my lady?”
“Oh, now,” the marquess began. “We took many of them to the coast and told them to fish for a living.”
“Did anyone think to show them how?” Olive asked quietly. “Did anyone provide cottages to replace those torn down and burned? Did it occur to anyone that the residents already along the coast might resent this threat to their own livelihood? I thought not.” Her voice hadincreased in intensity, if not volume, with each condemning question.
The silence was less than congenial. As much as he loved Olive, Douglas wanted to tread on her foot. He turned his attention to the marquess, although he suspected that the countess was really in charge. He opened his folder and took out Joe Tavish’s lovely drawings of the yacht in the shipyard.
“I have hired an excellent shipwright from Plymouth, now out of work and not happy to be retired because the war is over,” Douglas began. “He agreed to come to Edgar and run the boat works. He brought journeymen, who are training as many Highlanders as want to learn a new trade.”
“See there! Initiative is wanting among my people,” the countess said. “We decided to stock those glens with sheep, which pay out much better than a few straggly cows and thin crops. Removing them should teach them something.”
I’m beginning to dislike you, Douglas thought.It isn’t hard. He plowed ahead, holding out the drawings to the marquess. “We were wondering if you might be interested in purchasing this first yacht, my lord. It’s made by people from the land I assume you control because you married the countess. It would be a kind gesture and a welcome one.”
