Page 43 of Doing No Harm (Carla Kelly’s Regency Romances #5)

The Irish street sweeper had been right.

Two ordinary-looking people sat near each other in gilt chairs on a raised dais.

Douglas saw some beauty in the brown eyes and handsome carriage of the Countess of Sutherland, but years and childbearing had given her a double chin and a waist that was only a memory now.

She looked bored and ready to be done with petitions and audiences.

Douglas thought the reddish tinge to her face suggested elevated blood pressure.

The Marquis of Stafford was of slighter build, possessor of an unfortunate hooked nose and a vanishing chin.

Douglas thought the marquess wouldn’t have lasted a day on board any ship he had sailed with in the past twenty-five years.

His air of disinterest equaled his wife’s.

From the way he sat, at a slight angle on his chair, Douglas gleefully diagnosed a case of hemorrhoids.

“What have you to do with us?” the marquess asked. “Is this your wife?”

Douglas took Olive’s hand. “Not yet. I am a surgeon retired from the Royal Navy. I am now part owner of the Telford Boat Works, and Edgar’s doctor.”

Her heard Olive’s little intake of breath, and he squeezed her hand.

“We are principally employing the Highlanders, your Highlanders and former tenants who were summarily dumped on Edgar and other villages on the southwest coast.”

Other than Lord Stafford’s uncomfortable shifting to his other haunch, Douglas saw no discomfort in the complacent people who sat before them. He wondered what might stir them to call for his removal and continued.

“They have no skills beyond those of their glens. They were dying of starvation because some were too proud to eat at Miss Grant’s tearoom, where she has been providing modest meals out of her own inheritance.”

The countess tossed a benevolent look Olive’s way. “No skills. Exactly!” she declared in a triumphant voice that bore no trace of a Scottish accent. He wondered where she had been raised. “We are creating these improvements for their own good.”

“Burning their cottages around their shoulders and leaving them to die in the rain?” Olive asked. “How is that for anyone’s good except your own, my lady?”

“Oh, now,” the marquess began. “We took many of them to the coast and told them to fish for a living.”

“Did anyone think to show them how?” Olive asked quietly.

“Did anyone provide cottages to replace those torn down and burned? Did it occur to anyone that the residents already along the coast might resent this threat to their own livelihood? I thought not.” Her voice had increased in intensity, if not volume, with each condemning question.

The silence was less than congenial. As much as he loved Olive, Douglas wanted to tread on her foot. He turned his attention to the marquess, although he suspected that the countess was really in charge. He opened his folder and took out Joe Tavish’s lovely drawings of the yacht in the shipyard.

“I have hired an excellent shipwright from Plymouth, now out of work and not happy to be retired because the war is over,” Douglas began. “He agreed to come to Edgar and run the boat works. He brought journeymen, who are training as many Highlanders as want to learn a new trade.”

“See there! Initiative is wanting among my people,” the countess said. “We decided to stock those glens with sheep, which pay out much better than a few straggly cows and thin crops. Removing them should teach them something.”

I’m beginning to dislike you , Douglas thought.

It isn’t hard . He plowed ahead, holding out the drawings to the marquess.

“We were wondering if you might be interested in purchasing this first yacht, my lord. It’s made by people from the land I assume you control because you married the countess.

It would be a kind gesture and a welcome one. ”

He probably could have withstood nearly any insult, if the marquess hadn’t started to laugh.

He heard more laughter, and realized for the first time that there were other gentlemen in the audience hall.

Maybe they laughed because the marquess laughed and they owed him something.

Maybe they were as oblivious and mean-spirited as the hawk-beaked, simple-looking marquess and his stout wife.

“I get seasick in my bathtub,” the marquess declared and looked around, pleased with his wit, which made the others laugh harder.

He waved away the drawings. “Peddle these somewhere else.” He gave Olive a look of supreme distaste.

“Are you entirely through? It’s late and I have had enough petitioners. ”

His face warm from embarrassment, Douglas knew he was done, disgusted and ready to shake the dust of Edinburgh off his shoes. He glanced at Olive to confirm her own willingness to leave, and he saw something that alarmed him: the great anger that Joe Tavish swore frightened him.

Olive’s eyes had taken on a hard look quite out of character. In alarm, he watched her nostrils flare and then her lips tighten. She took several deep breaths, and he knew she was trying to calm herself.

It was useless. The great injustice inflicted on her dear ones bubbled to the surface and ruffled the calm demeanor of the kindest lady he knew.

Should I stop her? he asked himself and knew the answer.

He moved closer to her instead, not to grab her and hustle her from this awful place where no one cared, but to stand with her.

Whether Olive Grant knew it or not, he was her man and he wasn’t about to desert her.

It had nothing to do with duty or oaths or vows made to higher powers.

This feeling was elemental and long overdue in his life and in his heart.

He put his arm around her waist and felt her tremble. “I’m not leaving you alone. Not ever again,” he told her. “Say what you came here to say, my dearest.”