He wondered briefly if Olive Grant really wanted to share her life with someone as slow to get the message as he was. Never mind. They could sort that out later.
“I will sit down with each child. We will talk about their picture. We will talk about it as often as we need to, until they come to understand that the great crime you and you, my lord and lady, have perpetrated on your own people can be overcome with kindness and courage. Olive, let’s leave this place. There is a foul odor here.”
Olive nodded, suddenly looking exhausted. He thought her superb in her bravery, especially now that both the countess and the marquess were on their feet, shouting their own denials and demanding their removal.
“I don’t think we did much good,” Olive whispered, “but between you and me, it felt fine.”
Douglas laughed out loud, which only increased the impotent fury of those two oblivious, cruel people on the raised dais. He saw footmen coming toward them. “Oops.”
He tightened his grip on Olive, pushing his hand down into the waistband of her skirt, determined not to let go of her, no matter what the footmen tried.
“Just one more thing!”
He stopped in surprise, amazed at the calm, splendid protest coming from the only woman he would ever need in his life. She must have taken lessons from watching her father, minister of the Church of Scotland, hold a congregation in the palm of his hand. Silence reigned again.
“Lady Stafford, I wish you would call Patrick Sellar over there to account, but I am no fool. You would probably only hire another factor equally cruel. Shame on you. Shame on you both.”
She looked around the hall, slowly eyeing everyone in turn. Douglas watched some of those men of power avoid her glance.
“There will come a judgment,” she said, her voice conversational now, but equally compelling. “Someday you, as all of us must, will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. May God have mercy on you.”
She turned then, this remarkable woman, put her condemning pictures drawn by little ones under her arm and nodded to Douglas. “Maybe I have said enough.”
“You covered the subject,” he assured her as they walked slowly from the audience hall, footmen in front of them, in back of them, and on each side.
“Really, Doug,” she said, her head held high. He couldn’t see a defeated bone in her body, and he knew enough about anatomy to pass any examination.
The footmen let him collect his luggage and his medical satchel from the alcove where he had left them what seemed like years ago. The front door slammed shut behind them.
He realized he still held her skirt in his death grip. He took his hand out, only to have her sink to her knees as if he had been holding her up. He tugged her to her feet and walked her to a nearby bench on the street. She sat down, and to his delight, discarded all propriety and rested her head on his shoulder.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Douglas gradually felt the roaring in his ears give way to ordinary street sounds. He even thought he heard a robin.
The delightful woman tucked so close to him chuckled. “When that … that odious Mr. Sellar started toward you, I was afraid you were going to try to thrash him, and you know you’re not good at that.”
Douglas leaned back against the bench and put his arm around Olive’s waist, not with a tight hold, but because she had a nice waist and he enjoyed touchingher. “No, I’m not a brawler. You could have found a better defender.”
“No, I couldn’t,” she said. “Doug, since I am sitting here with my head on your shoulder—I would even put my hand on your knee, but I have a few standards remaining—you won’t be terribly surprised if I tell you I love you, will you?”
He closed his eyes with the pleasure of her announcement, amazed at the speed with which he could go from horrible anger and indignation to nothing short of bliss. Medical science treatises suggested that such extreme dislocation of bodily humors would bring on indigestion or worse, but a little upset to his system could be easily cured with bicarbonate of soda. Or maybe marriage.
“Would you be surprised if I told you the same thing? I do love you, Miss Grant.”
She kissed his cheek then, which further stirred up those bodily humors.
“Curious,” he mused. “I came out of this endless war feeling like a man of eighty. I don’t feel like a man of twenty, but will thirty-seven do for you?”
“I’d be robbing the cradle if you felt twenty,” she informed him. “Remember my standards?”
“I’ve been thinking …?,” he began, then paused, amazed all over again about what had happened in the few months since he stopped in a shabby town to help a little boy.
“Don’t quit now,” Olive said. “I hope you’re planning to ask me a question.”
“Eventually,” he teased and ducked when she swatted at him. “I was going to make the observation, Miss Grant, that I was seriously disappointed when I came to your country, passed through Gretna Green, and didn’t see a single blacksmith marrying anyone over the anvil.”
“Disappointed, were you?” She threw caution completely to the wind and put her hand on his knee.
“Yes, disappointed.” He took a deep breath and tiedhimself irrevocably to shabby little Edgar, and work and worry for the rest of his days. “Let me propose—”
