Doing No Harm (39 page)

Chapter 36

W
ell?” The marquess asked, quite
out of patience.

They came closer, moving as one. Olive took the children’s drawings from the portfolio she carried. She quickly sorted through the tragic pictures, drawn by children who had no resources to protect themselves from evil they did not understand.

“I hardly know where to begin,” she said, “but I will be brief, since I am evidently taking you away from something more important.”

The countess nodded. When she seemed to realize that Olive’s words were said in sarcasm and not concern, her eyes narrowed. A glance at the marquess told Douglas that he wasn’t partial to nuance.
What a slowtop you are
, he thought, disgusted.

She brought out little Margaret Randall’s drawing of a kitten on fire. “Meggie’s mother tells me that her daughter cries herself to sleep each night, remembering this. Take a good look, please,” she demanded in a voice so compelling that everyone in the room looked.

“The family was yanked from their home and a torch put to it,” Olive said, her voice even, under supreme control. “Meggie’s kitten fled the flames, and the soldiers threw the wee morsel back into the burning house. Two times the kitten tried to escape, the last time on fire. She was thrown back into the flames. Meggie Randall still wakes up in terror, hearing her pet suffer and die.”

“It’s just a cat,” the marquess said in a voice so bored that Douglas wanted to pummel him.

“It was a wee child’s pet,” Olive said and handed the drawing to Douglas. She pulled out Tommy Tavish’s drawing. “This is perhaps more serious and is what makes Tommy Tavish shudder and grind his teeth in his sleep. I’ve heard him do that.” She held out the drawing of the Tavish family huddled against gravestones with a less-than-adequate tarp covering them. “They tried to find shelter in the cemetery after their home was destroyed. The soldiers drove them away even from the graveyard. The Tavishes fled with a Bible and two candlesticks.” She handed this one to Douglas.

Doug looked over her shoulder as she stared down at Flora MacLeod’s drawing. He knew what it was, but his gorge rose anyway.

“Take a good look, my lord and lady, at this pleasant tableau. A good look!” Her voice rose, as though all the pain of the dislocated Highlanders was funneled through her heart and soul. Douglas thought her magnificent.

She showed the picture to the others standing close.

“Apparently it wasn’t enough that Flora’s mother was dying of consumption and lying on a mattress in the cold rain. One of the soldiers decided to vent his anger in the way that the worst of men do while Flora and her grandmother were forced to watch. Take a good look!”

Her voice rang to the rafters. Doug prepared to grab Olive and run before anyone laid a hand on her, but the audience hall was silent, waiting. From the corner of his eye, Douglas saw other audience members craning to see the picture. More than one turned away.

“Let me add that this tormented, violated woman’s husband had fought and died with your Highland regiment, Lady Stafford, in New Orleans, America, brave to the end and fighting for his king and country.”

“I have seen quite enough,” the countess said. Douglas noted with dismal satisfaction that her face had gone chalk white.

“Only one more then,” Olive countered and pulled out Euna MacGregor’s drawing. “Little Euna stays awake at night remembering Mary MacKay burning to death inside her cottage because she was old and bewildered and refused to leave it. Don’t you dare turn away from this!”

There was something mesmerizing about Olive Grant. No one in the room dared to turn away. He remember the more skillful drawing that Joe Tavish had given him, and which he had stowed in the same sleeve that contained his rejected yacht sketches. He pulled it out and held it up.

“This one goes with that one,” he said. “Joe Tavish said this man, this factor of yours, Lady Stafford, watched the whole thing. I do believe his name is Patrick Sellar.”

He heard whispered voices and glanced to the source, only to stare in shock at the man in the drawing right there in the hall. “You, sir,” he said. “You. Joe told me that when someone objected to what was happening, you said, ‘She has lived too long. Let her burn!’ ”

“That’s a lie!” the man shouted. He started toward Doug, but someone restrained him.

“Is it?” Olive asked. Douglas had to hold her back when she started toward Patrick Sellar, her hands balled into fists. “These children and Joe Tavish have sealed these images in their brains.”

She turned to Douglas and he saw the tears in her eyes. “This good man is our surgeon in Edgar. Tell them what you told me about these drawings.” She put the rest back in their pasteboard sleeve.

“When I … when I return to my village …” There. He had said it. His village. Edgar was his perfect medical practice and had been all along.

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 touching her. “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 tied himself irrevocably to shabby little Edgar, and work and worry for the rest of his days. “Let me propose—”

“High time.”

“—that we go to Gretna Green and give that blacksmith something to do. I have a post chaise located at a nearby hotel, and the post riders said they would remain in my employ until they heard otherwise from me.”

“Aye, then,” she said. “If that was a marriage proposal, I accept.”

He laughed, loud and long until Olive gave him a shake.

“What in the world … ,” she began.

“It’s this, my love,” he told her. “I just remembered that I promised Joe Tavish I would keep you from doing something rash in Edinburgh that you would regret.” He inclined his head toward hers. “Any regrets yet?”

She appeared to give the matter significant thought, which assured him that he was marrying a woman with a sense of humor.

“Well?” he asked.

She leaned in closer. “Only that Gretna Green isn’t just around the corner. I am thirty and ready for misbehavior right now.”

“It’s not misbehavior if we’re married,” he assured her.

“Then no regrets, Doug,” she said so softly into his ear.

Hang propriety. Anyone passing on the street in front of the Countess of Sutherland’s manor would have seen a middle-aged man with graying hair wrapped up in the embrace of a woman a little younger and with red hair. No one could have seen her interesting eyes because they were closed as he kissed her once or twice, maybe more.

They came to their senses eventually and sat in pleasant silence. He remembered the other drawing in his portfolio with the yacht sketches. He took it out and handed it to her.

She sucked in her breath as she looked over his sketch of a man sitting up in bed and staring with wide eyes at a circle of imploring, pleading hands raised all around his bed.

“I see those men every night,” he said softly. “I assure them I did everything I was capable of, but it’s never enough.”

She was silent a long time, looking at the picture, then traced the drawing of the man with fright in his eyes. She kissed her finger, touched his image, and then tore the sketch into small pieces. She threw the pieces into the air and they watched them scatter down the street.

“It’s not that simple,” he said.

“Nothing is,” she agreed. “I believe that we will be bearing one another’s burdens after that anvil business. You can rely on me, Doug.”

“And you on me.”

Then hang propriety again.