Page 1 of Doing No Harm (Carla Kelly’s Regency Romances #5)

W hat say you, Captain? Time’s wasting. You come well recommended, and I agree with the Navy Board. The war is over, but we still need hospitals. Aye or nay?”

After twenty-five years at sea fighting in a global conflict, Surgeon Douglas Bowden, Royal Navy, wasn’t an easy man to surprise. He was surprised now. He sat back in Admiral Sir David Carew’s uncomfortable chair for guests—or was it a chair for uncomfortable guests?—and considered the offer.

Maybe he was silent too long.

“Assistant superintendent here at Stonehouse?” Douglas asked and almost winced with the stupidity of his query.

“Where else?” the admiral snapped, his patience obviously at an end. “This Stonehouse, not the one in Siam! Don’t try me, lad.”

Maybe it was the “lad” that decided the matter. I am a full-grown man and a competent surgeon , Douglas thought, wishing the slight didn’t rankle, not after all these years. I am not your lad. My father was only a cooper in Norfolk, but I am still not your lad .

“I think not, Sir David,” Douglas replied, noting with silent glee that it was the physician’s turn to look startled. “I believe I will relinquish my warrant, instead.” He hadn’t forgotten all his manners. “Thank you for the offer.”

Evidently Sir David wasn’t accustomed to being turned down flatter than a ship’s biscuit. “Twice your current salary!” he sputtered. “A house on the row here!”

Douglas hesitated. Perhaps he had been hasty. He had nothing against making money, and a house on the row would certainly announce the habitation of a man at the top of his profession, someone worthy of note.

“You’ll be considered a gentleman!”

Sir David Carew had thrown out his final incentive. He sat back, folded his arms, and glared at Douglas.

That, you old rip, is the very reason I will never take this position , Douglas thought, his mind made up by Sir David’s last dangled carrot.

Just the saying of it told him that prissy old Davey Care-Less would never consider him a gentleman and an equal, even if his surgical talents far eclipsed most physicians’ abilities.

Douglas stood up. “Alas, Sir David, I cannot oblige you, kind as your offer is. I will surrender my warrant to the Navy Board when I pass through London and be on my way tomorrow.” He extended his foot and made a proper bow to the physician. “Thank you for the consideration. Good-day.”

He closed the door while Sir David’s mouth still hung open in amazement. Douglas stopped by the yeoman’s desk, laughing to himself at the scribe’s equally wide-open mouth and staring eyes. He must have heard the whole exchange.

“Am I the first sea dog to lift my leg on Sir David’s shoes?” Douglas whispered, his eyes merry .

“Very nearly,” the yeoman whispered back.

They both ducked involuntarily when something—perhaps a medical text—crashed against the closed door.

Douglas put on his bicorn and walked into the main hall of the administrative block at Stonehouse, the Royal Naval hospital between Plymouth and Devonport. He glanced into various offices as he headed toward the main door, noting that many of them were empty now.

There was a time … He stopped, remembering the activity in the building when Napoleon stomped all over Europe, and nothing but the Royal Navy’s wooden walls kept him from jumping the Channel for more mischief.

Boney had called England a nation of shopkeepers.

Had he seen the paperwork flying about, he’d have called England a nation of clerks.

Douglas stood for a longer moment outside the main door, admiring the symmetry of the ward blocks, separate buildings on either side of Admin, connected by graceful colonnades.

He had served a brief, involuntary six months at Stonehouse only because he was supposed to be recuperating from a falling mast after a nameless skirmish on the blockade.

A month of pain between his shoulders was followed by more pain, as he rose up from his sickbed too soon and assisted the overworked Stonehouse staff. Such was war.

Thinking of his stay, he pulled his cloak closer against cold rain and hurried along the walk to Ward Four, where he had worked. The door wasn’t locked, so he went inside, sniffing stale air only, without the overlay of body stench and putrefaction.

“What are you doing?” he asked himself. He walked up the stairs to the first floor, scene of his own incarceration for a month because the officers’ block was crammed to overflowing, and his eventual residency for five more as he worked there.

The cots were still in place, and so was the ward nurse’s desk.

Douglas Bowden looked from empty cot to empty cot, remembering each wounded seaman—those who lived and those who didn’t.

It was much the same ordeal he put himself through each night before he slept as he did a mental inventory of some of his more memorable cases and anguished over the men he could not save. And then the dreams followed.

He had asked a fellow surgeon once if he dreamed that way too. The surgeon’s reply was a deep sigh, followed by a massive change of subject. Douglas never asked again.

But everyone was gone now. “How about that?” he said out loud as he turned around and went more slowly down the stairs. No smells, no moans, no screams. Why did he still hear them?

Ward Block Five appeared to be occupied. He thought about going inside just to see if he knew the attending surgeon, but it wasn’t necessary.

“Doug! I see old Davey Carew did call you in. Aye or nay?”

Captain Owen Brackett stood in the doorway, umbrella in hand. He motioned Douglas inside. The rain pelted harder, reminding him that England in May was a saucy minx, teasing with the bloom of spring one day and striking back with cold rain the next.

They shook hands. Brackett must have spent his whole career at Stonehouse, which was to the advantage of numerous wounded men, Douglas knew.

“?’Tis nay, Owen,” Douglas said, with a shake of his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to take the offer.”

“Which was … ?”

“Assistant superintendent.”

“I turned him down too,” Brackett said. “I have my eye on a private practice in Ashton, Kent, and we leave in two weeks. Aggie’s idea, and I didn’t argue. You ever marry?”

“Never on land long enough to convince some poor lady of my nonexistent charms. ”

The other surgeon held his umbrella over them both as they continued toward the street. “You can’t be a day over forty-five,” Brackett told him. “You’ll find a willing widow somewhere.”

Douglas winced. “I’ll be thirty-seven next Tuesday.”

“Beg pardon.” Brackett recovered quickly and laughed. “Nothing like a constant sea voyage to age a man, eh? You need a little wrinkle salve, that’s all.”

Douglas smiled at his friend. “I have all my parts, howsomever. I’m thinking about a practice, too, someplace where I cannot see the ocean.”

“You know that won’t work.”

“Certainly it will,” Douglas assured him. “I’m weary of water.”

Brackett shrugged. He gestured to one of the row houses that the admiral had touted as a main attraction for continued employment in the Royal Navy. “Come inside for luncheon? Aggie will be happy to see you.”

Douglas should have said yes. He had nothing more pressing on his schedule than a walk in the rain to Plymouth. He could have hired a hack, but he suddenly longed to be alone as he contemplated his unrelenting wartime career and the unease that peace was bringing.

He begged off, after promising Captain Brackett that he would drop him a line in Ashton when he was settled somewhere. Precisely where, Douglas had no idea yet, but Brackett didn’t need to know.

The dockyards still bustled with activity, and always would as long as England needed a navy.

Quieter now, the hospital would still function.

The turmoil of war had left in its wake a certain sadness that went beyond death and suffering.

Douglas did not understand his feelings, except that peace was already proving to be onerous.

He knew he could not bear to stay much longer in Plymouth, unwilling to see the worn-out ships—masts and sails gone—placed in ordinary.

They were now as superfluous as he was, and he didn’t relish watching the end.

He stood another few minutes at the dry docks, which gave him the most concrete indication that the war was over.

Of the three docks, a keel had been laid in one, and the other two graving docks were empty.

He wondered if the shipwrights and carpenters had retired like him or if they had been dismissed. The ropeworks lay idle.

Improbably, the two miles to Plymouth through still-busy streets cheered him.

He was unused to the nearly forgotten pleasure of walking and walking in any direction, unimpeded by a ship’s railing.

True, he had walked up and down the deck, mulling over this wound, or that amputation, or that scrofulous tumor until he either solved the problem or wore himself out.

He knew exactly how many steps in any direction were his allotment on the average frigate of King George.

Satisfied, Douglas watched people at work, laborers passing, children arguing, women hawking fish. He saw ordinary life through new eyes, since it was not ordinary to him.

Once back in the Barbican, that rabbit warren of medieval narrow streets and buildings so old they leaned, Douglas went directly to Carter and Brustein’s counting office.

He was ushered in with all usual politeness and welcomed in a few minutes by David Brustein, looking older and grayer than Douglas remembered, but didn’t they all?

David introduced him to his son, Solomon, a youth still, but evidently learning the family business that began when the late Jonathan Carter took on a Jewish clerk, name of Ezra Brustein.

“Yes, another generation coming up,” David said. “How may I help you, Captain Bowden?”

Only a bare half hour served to assure Douglas that his prize money earned through the years was chugging along sturdily and growing his funds at a pleasant rate .

David leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across an ample chest. “I predict that you will be able to live quite comfortably on the interest alone, Captain, until you are at least one hundred and twenty.” He looked heavenward. “God willing.”

They laughed, the satisfied sound that men of means can make.

Douglas left a few minutes later, his inside breast pocket heavy with sufficient for his needs until such time as he found a permanent home.

He bid them a fond good-bye, still amazed, somewhere down deep, that a cooper’s son could have done so well.

Maybe Napoleon had been good for something, even if the price had been extraordinarily high.

He arrived at the Drake in time for late luncheon, which he knew Mrs. Fillion had held back for him. With fewer officers lingering about the premises these days, she couldn’t afford to be less than obliging to latecomers.

After a peek in the empty cardroom, where he reflected on the death of the perpetual game of whist that had lasted through a generation of war, Douglas seated himself in the dining room.

Mrs. Fillion started him with her excellent soup, hot and flavorful and worlds better than anything on board ship.

“Leek soup?” he asked, supremely pleased.

“I know how you men like it,” she said.

She hesitated a moment, and while she hesitated, Douglas gestured to the chair beside him. Mrs. Fillion was no lady, but she had manners.

“Well, Captain?”

“I turned him down.”

“I thought you might.”

He appreciated the kindness in her eyes.

Maybe they understood one another. Mrs. Fillion had begun her career at the Drake as the scullery maid, and now she owned the property.

He had joined the Royal Navy as a loblolly boy, feeding the wounded and emptying urinals.

He knew how far from his station in life he had risen, compared to some of the titled officers he had served with.

His modest status mattered nothing to Mrs. Fillion, after he saved her second son from pneumonia.

Too bad that he died at Trafalgar, but that was war.

He could unbend with Mrs. Fillion. “Trouble is, I have no particular plans, beyond finding a place to live far from the ocean.”

She had the same look on her face as Captain Brackett when Douglas had mentioned his miniscule plans.

He waved it away and beat her to the point. “I do not require a view of the ocean to be entirely happy,” he assured her.

“We’ll see,” was all she said.