“Tha wouldn’t believe the size of it,” Maeve declared.
“Take this slat and find a capable-looking man. I can recommend the coachman, if you’re at a loss.” He turned to Olive. “My dear, do you have an ax in your woodpile?”
“Indeed I do. How long do you want the splint?” Olive said.
“Twelve inches, for one, and three times that for the other. Maeve, can you do this? All of Scotland is depending on you.”
The scullery maid flashed him a smile and tore down the stairs with the slat.
“You are a remarkable manager of people,” Olive told him.
“I get what I want,” he replied, all complaisance, because he meant it. “He’s coming around, Miss Grant. It is Miss, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is.”
Why that should have made her face go warm, Olive Grant couldn’t have said. She was thirty years old and long an antique virgin. No need to feel embarrassed about her lot in life. She turned her attention to Tommy, who was starting to moan now and tossing his head.
“Just sit down by his head and put your arms around him,” the surgeon said simply. “Just hug him. It feels so good when someone is terrified.”
By the time Tommy opened his eyes, Olive’s arms were tight around him. He was dirty and smelly, with hair so greasy that she should have been repelled. She felt Tommy’s long, shuddering sigh, followed by a sob, and then silence, as the surgeon put his hands gently on both sides of the boy’s face.
“You’ve been as brave as men I have cared for in the middle of battles,” Douglas Bowden said. “Tommy Tavish, you’re a wonder. Just hold still now, that’s a good lad.”
Maeve pounded up the stairs, followed by Tommy’s mother, moving slowly, exhausted with such effort in her late pregnancy. Olive ran next door to her own room and brought back a chair. Mrs. Tavish sank down gratefully, her face a study in worry and fright. Tears filled her eyes, but she remained silent.
“Can you spare a sheet?” the surgeon asked. “I have bandages, but I need more.”
Olive sent Maeve to the linen closet. In a moment, Olive was ripping one of her lovely sheets into three-inch-wide strips. Working with sure hands, careful not to hurt Tommy, Mr. Bowden bound the splints in place, the smaller one inside Tommy’s leg, and the longer one outside, going all the way from his ankle nearly to his armpit.
“I can’t move,” Tommy said, fearful again.
“Precisely,” Mr. Bowden told him. “After a few days like this, if all is well, I’ll get a smaller splint for the outside.”
“But if I can’t … how can I …” Tommy’s face grew red.
“Not a worry, lad,” the surgeon told him. “I’ll take care of you.”
Olive felt her eyes fill with tears then, because she knew this stranger, this confident, capable man she hadn’t known an hour ago, would do exactly that. She couldn’t help her tears then, but Mr. Bowden took it all in stride. He motioned her closer. She stood up and walked right under his outstretched arm.
He hugged her, and then Maeve on the other side, both of them in tears.
“Watering pots,” he murmured. “Just watering pots. Do all Scottish women remain firm in the crisis and fall apart later? I like that order of things.”
Chapter 5
No argument; he did likethat. How Miss Grant managed to smell so sweetly of vanilla scent, even after embracing as filthy a little boy as he had ever tended and in a room awash with blood, Douglas couldn’t have said. Long experience had taught him to take what came, with appropriate rejoicing.
She freed herself quickly from his impromptu embrace, but she smiled, so he knew he had not offended her. She touched his heart when she went to Tommy with a clean cloth dipped in warm water from the brass can and wiped his face, his dirty neck, and then his arms, crusted with what looked like fish leavings.Tommy must be a dock boy, Douglas decided.
“May I fetch him some food?” she asked.
Tommy’s eyes had been closing. At the wordfood, they opened and he nodded. Douglas saw the hunger in them, which even eclipsed the pain of a compound fracture.How to do this without shaming the lad?Douglas thought a moment.
“Tommy, I know you hurt, and I am going to give you a sleeping draught,” he began. “When did you last eat?”
Tommy glanced at his silent mother. “I don’t remember,” he said finally, the words dragged out of him.
Douglas considered his little patient, an independent being, unlike the men of the Royal Navy, who had to take what he dished out. He looked into the boy’s eyes again, and suddenly knew what he was doing. It had nothing to do with him but everything to do with his mother.
