Page 30 of Doing No Harm (Carla Kelly’s Regency Romances #5)

D awn was coming, but a full moon still lit the sky.

They stood in silence together outside the shed.

Olive knew it was well past time to drag herself upstairs into her own bedchamber, but she knew she would only stare at the ceiling until she heard Maeve laying a kitchen fire below and another day would begin.

Maybe Douglas had the same idea. He looked at her, his face so serious, and crocked out his arm. She tucked her arm through his and walked with him to the bridge.

“I’ll never sleep tonight,” he said a minute later as they both leaned their arms on the railing and watched the River Dee below.

“I have a feeling that you have seen yourself coming and going on many a morning,” she said.

“Aye. I rather thought those days were done, but here I am.” He stared downriver toward the docks where the fishing boats were neatly tied.

She looked where he looked, thinking of their ordinary days in Edgar, one following pretty much the same.

She thought of Joe Tavish in Glen Holt, where the sameness of two centuries had ended in eviction, flames, and death.

“It could happen to any of us,” she said. “We think it will not, but what proof do any of us have against people such as the Sutherlands?”

No answer. Douglas stared at the boats. Slowly, he stood upright again, his eyes still on the distant view, as far as she could tell, except that he seemed suddenly alert.

“Let’s go for a walk, Olive Grant,” he said. He crooked out his arm again and she twined her arm through his. “The moon is full and the sun is coming up anyway, so let’s take the path along the river.”

They walked in silence behind the row of houses like his with their back walls to the River Dee and then walked onto the fishing boat dock. He kept walking past shabbier homes now. Somewhere a child cried, which made him stop and listen for a moment and then continue on.

They walked until they reached the outskirts of Edgar, and she suddenly knew what he had in mind. Is this even possible? she thought. Evidently I do not think big enough .

They stood at the abandoned shipyard and dry docks. He tucked her arm closer to him. “Do you remember when the shipyard was active?” he asked.

“I must have been about ten years old,” she replied, after long thought. “I was never allowed to come down here. Papa said it was dangerous, and besides, he didn’t want me hearing such foul language.”

“Like Hadrian’s Wall?” Douglas teased, and she laughed.

“Oh, especially that one.” She looked across the yard. “Two really large bathtubs, eh?”

“As near as,” he replied. He looked and then nodded, as if pleased with what he saw.

“The brick ones like these are called graving docks.” He pointed to the massive open gates.

“A ship needing repair would sail in here, and the gates would close. Big pumps would take off the water and leave it dry. Talk about our modern age—the pumps in the Plymouth yards are steam-powered now.” He pointed to the uniform rows of open space in the masonry.

“The shipwright runs in long poles that, in essence, balance the ship upright. Carpenters go down there once the water is gone and commence repairs. When it’s done, the gates open, water flows in and the ship sails away. ”

He pointed to the second graving dock beyond, and the long wooden structure behind it.

“It’s probably full of mice and birds now, but that’s the shiphouse.

You could build a right fine vessel in there, out of bad weather, and then slide it down the ways into …

into the bathtub, and then out to sea, once it was masted and rigged.

Nothing huge, mind, no frigates, but …” He stopped and his chuckle was self-deprecating. “You probably think I am a lunatic.”

“No, I do not,” she assured him.

“It shut down because … ?”

“We could ask Mrs. Aintree, or maybe even Lady Telford. Sir Dudley bought the whole thing, plus some other houses.” She hesitated and then realized that grand ideas shouldn’t be strangled at birth.

All she had to offer was gossip, but there was probably some truth in there somewhere.

“The talk about the village said that the shipwright, a man long dead, got into a fearful row with some of the fishing fleet captains. They took their repair business elsewhere—Dumfries, I think—and that was the first nail in the coffin.”

“And then the war probably enticed what builders remained to go to Clydeside near Glasgow,” Douglas suggested. “I do know that shipwrights in Plymouth and Portsmouth commanded a respectable wage, likely better than anything Edgar could offer. It was probably the same in Glasgow.”

She nodded and leaped closer to Douglas when a whole fleet of bats—one was too many—flew swiftly into the shiphouse. He put his arm around her.

“Only bats,” he whispered in her ear. “Aren’t you the brave lady who just shook Joe Tavish’s teeth until they rattled, bullying him into taking Christian charity?”

“Don’t remind me. That was not my shining moment,” she said, trying for dignity. “Bats are different.”

“I will concede that bats are different,” he said. “Just think, Olive: This shipyard and dry dock could employ a lot of men. Granted, our stubborn Highlanders might prefer to remain proud and starving.”

“Not if they see others making good money and working.”

He turned to face her. “Tell me honestly, Olive Grant: Is this going to look like a stupid idea once the sun is up and I have had some sleep?”

“It might,” she said cautiously. “No! It is a wonderful idea.”

He yawned. “I believe I could almost curl up among the bats …”

“Hang from the ceiling?”

“I suppose not.” He yawned again. “Such rag manners, Olive. Two hours of sleep, if I’m lucky, will enable me to check on Mrs. Aintree, then delouse Joe Tavish—horrors—then visit Lady Elsie Telford.”

“Do you know a shipwright?”

He started walking back, still holding her close. “That is the only sure entity of this decidedly sketchy plan. I know three. I also took a good look at the shipyards in Devonport before I left Plymouth. The demand has certainly dropped off, now that Boney is cooling his heels on St. Helena.”

She bid Douglas good night, or maybe it was good morning, from the middle of the street.

She went up her own front steps and watched in amusement while Douglas just stood at his door, key in hand, as if wondering what his next move should be.

Just go inside and lie down , she advised, from her side of the street.

She smiled as he stared at the key in his hand, as if it had suddenly grown lichen, and then finally turned it in the lock.

Two hours was just enough to fool Douglas’s brain into thinking he had enjoyed sound sleep. A few minutes later, he stood over Mrs. Aintree, her eyes half open (matching his), her hand free of overmuch swelling.

“Are you ready to take a stick to me because I am the author of all your pain?” he asked her. “Give yourself a few days to feel better.”

The widow shook her head. “You left me in good hands. Oh, dear, that is amusing.” She laughed and then closed her eyes and slept again, while Rhona Tavish tidied up the already spotless room.

He debated for a long moment whether to say anything to the Tavishes about Joe, then he decided he couldn’t leave them ignorant. After helping Tommy with the milk pans, he gathered them into Mrs. Aintree’s kitchen.

Mrs. Tavish surprised him. Her arm around Tommy, she listened to the whole story, sniffing back tears when Douglas described her husband’s mean supper of oats and cow’s blood, mixed in a bowl of dirt. When he finished, she looked at her son.

“Well, lad?”

Tommy nodded. “We’ll clean’um up, Mr. Bowden. He’s still Da, and he needs us.”

“I’m not so certain that Mrs. Aintree will allow him here,” Rhona Tavish said.

“No worries. He can stay in my shed for now.”

“I’m not even certain that I want him here, either.”

“You’re quite entitled,” Douglas said.

She shrugged. “For richer or poorer, although we’ve only been poorer. I’ll see if Mrs. Aintree has some clothes that might fit.” She left the room .

“Tommy, did you know he was back?” Douglas asked. Something in the way the boy wouldn’t look at either of them had made him suspicious.

“Aye,” the boy said in a small voice. “One morning Lucinda had already been milked and the milk put in pans.”

“Anyone could have done that.”

Tommy dug into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. He held it out to Douglas, who wondered if he would ever fathom the human heart. Joe Tavish had sketched Olive’s backyard and his daughter’s grave. “Only one man did this.”

Satisfied, Douglas had his usual bowl of porridge in Miss Grant’s Tearoom, disappointed because Olive did not make an appearance, but grateful that she had better sense than he did and still slept.

He thought about the times—he really had no idea how many—that she had come into his room and given his shoulder a shake firm enough to dislodge his bad dreams, but not wake him up entirely.

Flora MacLeod nearly tackled him as he crossed the street to return to his house.

She tugged his arm and announced that she and her business partners had sold four Seven Seas Fancies yesterday.

She tugged his heart next. “We have enough money to eat all week, and it is only Tuesday,” she told him.

“My partners and I have decided to give some of it to the Hannays and the Elliotts.”

I am surrounded by the kindest people , Douglas thought, and then he sobered. Let us see if I can include Lady Telford in that number .

A visit to Lady Telford should have included a bath beforehand and clean linens at least. The Tavishes had already borrowed his tin tub, so Lady Telford would have to be satisfied with just a clean neckcloth.

Whether she would even see him, when her maid announced his rumpled presence at the front door, gave him cause to worry. He knew precisely who she was, making him likely the last person she would invite into her sitting room.

“Brace yourself,” he said to his mirror as he tied his neckcloth. “The enterprise will die right here if you cannot convince one old woman that you are not an idiot.”

It was not a sanguine observation. And why in the world should he suddenly feel ten years old again and unsure of himself, facing Elsie Glump across the high counter in the butcher shop? Come to think of it, why was he doing any of this?

He thought about that as he took another look at Mrs. Aintree, who was being watched over by Mrs. Campbell now, and who gleefully informed him that the girls made two more sales of fancies just this day.

“We’re getting low on shells, mind,” Mrs. Campbell said.

He assured her that his shell source in Plymouth would rise to the occasion, which earned a grunt from Mrs. Campbell and a pithy remark best rendered in Gaelic and never translated.

He knew he would find Joe Tavish in the shed, sitting with no good grace in the tin tub on loan from his house.

Tommy managed to balance himself and sweep out the shed, or at least lay the dust on the dirt floor.

Rhona kept up a wicked-sounding scold in Gaelic as she scrubbed her husband’s back.

Ah, blissful marriage , Douglas thought as he smiled at them all and closed the door on Rhona Tavish’s pointed remarks.

Still, there they were, three people tossed into a murky stream like wood chips, to bob or sink on their way to the ocean.

They were not as alone as he was Douglas had to admit.

True, Joe Tavish was probably getting a well-deserved trimming.

One couldn’t really tell with Gaelic because it always sounded harsh and peremptory to Douglas’s ears.

If Rhona Tavish had felt nothing for her louse-ridden, defeated husband, he’d be sitting in dirty water in an empty shed.

He stood a long moment on the bridge, looking uphill to Lady Telford’s manor, thinking what an excellent hospital it would make, once the current occupant quitted the place. He shook his head over that piece of folly, wondering if every doctor had similar thoughts.

And here he stood at the front door, scarcely aware how he had got there.

He looked back at Edgar, smiling (and a little flattered) to see Olive Grant on her front stoop looking at him.

He waved to her and she waved back. He directed his gaze toward the abandoned shipyard, thinking that if he squinted hard enough, he could see a yacht under construction and workers swarming about.

“I’m not asking much,” he said out loud, wondering if this constituted a prayer. In case it did, he said “Amen,” and knocked on Lady Telford’s front door.