Page 3 of Doing No Harm (Carla Kelly’s Regency Romances #5)

H e crossed the Scottish border in the rain, which, all things considered, was appropriate.

He had heard rumors about Scottish weather from the first luff of the Corinthian, when they were stuck without wind in the South Seas and sitting practically bare in their smallclothes on the deck years back.

“Nobody in my village would believe this much sun,” the luff had said. “I swear it rains every day at home. Thank the Almighty that I joined the Royal Navy and discovered sun.” He had laughed and turned over, to toast the other side. “Did’ye not know that God is Scottish? Frugal with the sun.”

Douglas smiled at the memory as the coach bowled along.

He had left the Royal Mail behind in Carlisle and trundled his goods into a less colorful bonecracker that took him to Gretna Green, a town famous for marriages over the blacksmith’s anvil.

He looked around with interest, but no one appeared to be lined up for matrimony.

He spent the night at Dumfries. In the morning, this innkeep, in his well nigh impenetrable brogue, informed him of an even smaller carriage headed south to Dundrennan and on to the Gatehouse of Fleet on Solway Firth.

The helpful man may have suggested other routes, but Douglas was already having second thoughts about trying to live and work where he could barely understand the natives.

Still, the clouds lifted to show off the Firth of Solway. Douglas saw little fishing boats, nets stretched behind them, trolling the cold water. He felt his whole body relax and his respirations slow down because he knew he was watching salt water again.

Luncheon in Dundrennan was a hurried affair, with the coachman itching to make up time lost lollygagging behind a flock of sheep.

Douglas ate what looked like a pasty, all crisp and light brown, but with the disturbing taste of liver, mutton, and oats that he knew he would be belching up for at least a week.

He checked Scottish food off his mental list. He had eaten far worse in his years with the fleet. I could stand by a window in my dining room, eat this loathsome fare, and still have a view of the ocean , he thought, which made him smile.

Before they left Dundrennan, he asked the coachman if the little town had any physicians.

“Och, aye! Twa. And aren’t they always going after each other’s patients?” the man exclaimed. “They’ve divided the town clean in half!”

Douglas crossed Dundrennan off his mental list as he began to wonder if Scotland was a good idea after all. “Tell me, please, about the other towns on this route?”

He shrugged. “There’s Wilcomb, a bonny place if you don’t mind smugglers; Castle McPherson, ditto; Whitby, where the people are daft, half of them; Edgar …

” He stopped, as if trying to think of something kind to say about Edgar.

“Smells like fish.” He brightened. “Miss Grant’s Tearoom.

” He leaned closer. “I’ve seen grown men weep over her lemon curd, although I am partial to orange marmalade. ”

“I’ve never considered settling in a place just because of a tearoom,” Douglas joked.

“I suppose many a man has said just that,” the coachman joked in turn.

His face turned serious then. “Nay, not Edgar for you. It’s a poor fishing village.

You’d mentioned physicians. Lad, if you’re in need of one, you’ll die before ye find one close to the likes of Edgar.

” He rubbed both his thumbs and forefingers together. “Doctors need money like us all.”

“No money in Edgar?”

“Nay. A physician there would get no more than herring and neeps in payment.”

Douglas gave the grimace that he knew was expected of him, but didn’t cross Edgar off his mental list. He could at least try Miss Grant’s lemon curd on some toast so the stop wouldn’t be a total waste.

The coachman glanced at his timepiece and evidently discovered he had no more time to discuss Scotland’s more obscure destinations.

He hurried three old ladies into his carriage and asked Douglas to help him heave his traveling case and duffel on top, where they were strapped down.

He shook his head over the odd-shaped hatbox with the Royal Navy fouled anchor embossed on the side.

“What in blazes is this?” he asked as he tied it down.

“My bicorn. I’m recently severed from the Royal Navy,” Douglas said. “Looking for a place to settle down.”

“And ye came here?” the coachman asked in amazement. “Laddie, good thing I warned ye about the fish and rain and poor folk.” He chuckled and climbed into his box. “Weren’t you listening to me?” he called down.

Maybe I should consider Whitby, where only half the people are daft , Douglas thought, wondering why a reasonably intelligent man should suddenly turn stupid once out of the Royal Navy.

He seated himself next to one of the ladies, a thin one, who still frowned at the space his medical satchel took up.

He sighed inwardly and put it on his lap, vowing to travel north to Glasgow tomorrow and inquire about passage to Canada.

Still, he found his gaze lingering on the view outside the little coach’s window: low hills that particular shade of green that meant spring in the British Isles, a sight he had not seen in years.

To look the other way meant to watch the firth, which would do for the ocean.

He saw fish and kelp drying on racks and children running along the shore barefoot, for the most part, even though the air was chilly and damp. Tough people, these Scots , he thought.

The hour lacked half to noon when they turned slightly north and paralleled a river. They crossed on a stone bridge that arched so prettily over the water. The arch was pronounced enough to suggest that fishing boards could likely travel underneath.

Still training north, the carriage bumped over a marginal road for another vertebrae-compressing mile, then slowed.

He tried to peer ahead and was rewarded with the view of a village, nothing as charming as Dundrennan, with its competitive physicians.

This was a sturdy, no-nonsense-looking town, but with pastel-colored stone houses that surprisingly reminded him of the Italian coast.

He looked at the thin woman seated next to him. He hadn’t said a word to her or any of them, because they hadn’t been introduced, but he asked, “Is this Edgar?”

She nodded, and no more. He tried his luck again. “And the river?”

“Dee,” she said, either marvelously frugal with words, or determined not to speak to an upstart she didn’t know; probably it was both.

He smiled inside, wondering that if it had been the Albemarle River if she would only have said “Alb,” figuring that was all courtesy demanded.

“Home of Miss Grant’s peerless lemon curd?” he asked the other travelers in general, idly wondering if any of these serious-faced ladies would unbend .

One of them opened her mouth—whether to reply or shush him—when the coachman pulled to a sudden stop. Douglas looked out the window, drew in his breath, and was out the door before the wheels quit rolling, already yanking at his neck cloth.

A woman far gone in pregnancy stood in the road, screaming for help, as she carried a boy too big to lift, but whose oddly bent leg spurted blood.

“Set him down,” Douglas demanded.

The woman stared at him with terrified eyes, almost as though she did not understand what he demanded.

When she made no move, Douglas grabbed the boy from her and laid him in the road, swiftly tightening his cravat two inches above the wound where a snapped bone protruded.

The boy, pale as milk, stared at him, then quietly fainted.

“I’m a surgeon,” he told the woman as she tugged at his arm. “Leave me be!”

She understood him now. She sank down beside him, her bloody hands to her face. “I’ve been telling and telling my man to fix the stone steps to the cellar, but does he ever do anything but drink?”

By now, heads were popping out of store doorways. They drew back in as a man staggered toward Douglas, a stick in his hand, which he slammed down on the woman’s back, shouting in a language Douglas recognized as Gaelic.

Douglas leaped to his feet and grabbed the stick, forcing the man backward until he fell down in a sodden heap and made no move to get up. Douglas handed the stick to the woman, probably the drunkard’s wife. “Use it on him if he makes a move.”

“I daren’t,” she said softly.

“I wouldn’t mind,” the coachman said as he got down from his box and took the stick from her.

Douglas turned back to his unconscious patient, relieved to see that his jury-rigged tourniquet had done its duty. He took a long look at the compound fracture .

“I can reduce this,” he told the boy’s mother. “Which is your house?”

She pointed to a stone building with an unpainted door open and hanging onto its hinges for dear life. She struggled to her feet until Douglas gave her a hand up. Disturbed, he looked around at the small crowd, wondering why no one offered to help.

“What’s the matter with people here?” he asked the coachman in a low voice.

“No one lifts a finger for Highlanders,” he replied. “Nobody wants them.”

“I was better off at sea,” Douglas muttered under his breath. He picked up the boy and carried him toward the hovel faintly disguised as a house.

The mother hurried ahead of him and opened the door wider. He stood on the threshold, stared at the filth within, and turned around.

“Madam, I wouldn’t put a dog in there,” he snapped. “The poor beast would die of infection.”

Uncertain what to do, he walked back to the coachman. “Do you know … is there someplace clean in this pathetic village where I can treat this child?”

The coachman shook the stick at the man lying on the road, who was beginning to groan. “Wouldn’t know, sir. I just drive through to the Hare and Hound. It’s a noisy inn. You wouldn’t want to tend him there.”

“Can anyone here tell me where to take this boy?” Douglas asked, pitching his voice to hurricane strength, a voice used to shouting orders to be heard above the roar of cannons and the shrieks of wounded men on a bloody deck.

“Only one place for you to take Tommy Tavish,” one hardy soul told him, stepping out from the growing crowd. “??’Tis Miss Olive Grant’s Tearoom.”

“Where?”

“Follow me.”