Lady in the Mist (15 page)

16

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Dominick spied the little fishing boat swooping past the stern of the sloop. Two white faces turned his way, blurs against the blue of sky and sea behind them, the man at the wheel, the woman clinging to the taffrail. The wind holding the sloop at anchor, its bow too close in to the cove, lent the smack its wings.

“He’s a good seaman,” Jennings, the sloop’s commander, remarked. “We saw them earlier. They ran like a demon was after them when they saw us.” He slapped his well-padded thigh and laughed, as though he’d made a good jest of it. “They all run like foxes before the hounds.”

“Can you blame them?” Dominick leaned precariously out of the stern windows to get a better look at the smack. Something struck him as familiar, and he wasn’t sure if the sloop’s pitch, which was strong despite the sloop being anchored, or apprehension made him queasy. “We’ve been stealing their men right from under their noses.”

“Their men?” Jennings’s thick, dark brows drew together like a fuzzy caterpillar. “They’re our men hiding out from their rightful duty to the king.”

“Some. And is it worth it to risk war?”

“You, sirrah, are coming close to talking treason.”

Dominick laughed off the very truth of Jennings’s words. “Just keeping myself from being in trouble while here in America.”

“A pity, that.” Jennings cocked his large head to one side. “Never thought I’d see a Cherrett fall so low.”

“Neither did I.” Dominick twirled the glass in his hand without drinking the amber liquid. Spirits would definitely make him ill, if apprehension about the identity of that fishing boat didn’t do so first. “I should have listened to my tutors at Oxford.” He grinned as though making a great jest himself.

“At least you didn’t kill anyone. I’d hate to have to arrest the nephew of a vice admiral.” Jennings lifted the squat decanter from the table. “Another tot?”

“Thank you, no. I should be on my way. My . . . er . . . master will want me home to serve his supper.”

In about three hours. Yet being away so long after Sunday’s excursion was a risk, one Dominick hadn’t expected to take. He hadn’t known his uncle, the vice admiral, would have someone watching him so closely—closely enough the message had gotten out and a response back in two days.

He hadn’t expected the message, a mere slip of paper that had appeared in his shopping basket that morning. The wording had been brief, telling him to meet the sloop that afternoon. He’d gone and received a longer missive.

Uneasiness crawled under his skin like weevils through a ship’s biscuit. He didn’t like his uncle’s ship being in such proximity to the American coast a week before the scheduled rendezvous. Was war more imminent than anyone suspected?

If only Dominick had been able to hear the talk amongst Kendall’s august guests, he might know more. He might know enough to please his uncle.

He sighed. “You’ll want to be off these shores soon. We English are heartily disliked here.”

“Not until the tide turns.”

“Someone should have told you to bring a boat in instead of your whole ship,” Dominick pointed out.

“Sloop,” Jennings reminded him. “Only post captains get ships.”

“Right. Two masts. Three masts. What do you call something with one mast?”

“Depends on who’s aboard. If it’s a captain’s gig, it’s honored company. If it’s one of these Yankees, it’s bait.” Jennings laughed uproariously again.

Dominick smelled brandy fumes and realized the man was drunk at four o’clock in the afternoon. He tried not to show his contempt as he made a pretense of peering out the stern windows again so he could dump his brandy into the sea, with a silent apology to the fish.

“Please just see that the vice admiral knows I picked up my letter.” Dominick set his glass in between the fiddle boards on the table. “I can see myself out. No need to rise.”

Head bowed to avoid the low deck beams, he opened the cabin door. Although still reeking of bilge water, pea soup, and worse, the air flowing down the companionway ladder smelled like perfume compared to the stifling commander’s quarters. Dominick heaved a sigh of relief to be getting away safe and clear.

Outside the cabin, the marine guard saluted. Dominick laughed in his butler’s garb. No one saluted him, not even at home. But the marine guard didn’t look amused at Dominick’s mirth. Stone-faced, he called for someone to escort the guest over the side and into the boat that carried Dominick the dozen yards to shore.

Free at last to look at the letter the sloop had brought him, Dominick headed up the beach, quickly putting as much distance between the sloop and himself as he could. Catching sight of the walled garden, he paused, tempted to rest in its shadow to read his letter, perhaps wait for Tabitha. He had an excuse—to congratulate her on dealing Harlan Wilkins a blow at the village council.

Which was what the man needed.

Dominick’s fingers curled into fists, crumpling the vice admiral’s letter. He leaned against the wall, where the spreading branches of a cedar tree lent him some shade. He broke the seal of the letter with his thumbnail and gripped the edges of the parchment against the tug of the rising wind.

The missive began simply with, “Nephew.” The rest was brief and to the point.

Your request would take far too long. Carry on as though your suspicions are founded. If you have nothing to report by 21 June, you must wait to report until as late as Christmas. I’ll be on the channel station during that time. Good luck and God be with you.

If God was with him, did he need luck?

Dominick frowned at the last line. It felt better than thinking about the rest—about having little more than a week to find answers that would either free him or find him stranded on enemy shores, a servant, for another six months at the least.

He certainly did need luck. God might be with him, but the Almighty would do no favors for a man who had rejected Him and done his best to demoralize His church, or at least those who served in the church.

Yet those men Dominick wrote about were politicians or social climbers using the church for their personal gain, not servants of the Lord. Most men who served as pastors and vicars and other servants of God were sincere in their faith. Finding forgiveness from any of the latter he had harmed would take a miracle.

And if he believed in miracles, perhaps he could work out whether or not Raleigh Trower was truly a repentant Yankee come home to hide from the British, or something worse. Dominick would be better off with faith. It had done him well for most of his life, until he chose to go his own way and his luck had run out six months ago.

Suddenly too weary to walk back to the mayor’s house, he continued to lean against Tabitha’s garden wall. Above the aromas of salt spray and sea grass, he caught the fragrance of roses and honeysuckle. Glancing up, he saw a trailing vine of the latter and plucked a handful of blossoms to hold under his nose.

He tossed the flowers away and started walking toward the village by the short route, not along the seashore. He didn’t have time for sentimentality. He had to work for a living and, somewhere in between, spy on the very people who were giving him safe haven when his own countrymen, his own family, rejected him. And for what? Pompous and overfed drunkards like Jennings, the sloop’s commander.

Dominick glanced toward the cove. The sloop remained, riding at anchor until the tide or the wind turned so the vessel could get back to sea. Closer to him, two figures walked along the landward side of the dunes, a man in plain, dark garb, the lady in flounced pale muslin and fluttering ribbons. The two people from the fishing boat. Dominick recognized the female’s hat and gown. She looked a bit wet, the hair beneath the hat tumbled and shining russet brown.

Dominick paused and waited for them, a smile curving his lips. This should be interesting, meeting the blustering English traitor with her, with Tabitha, the lady Dominick knew he could never have and yet—

No, he wouldn’t think he wanted her. She was a means to an end, an excuse to spend a great deal of time at the seashore.

Which meant he needed to be rid of the supposed Yankee. If she decided to renew her engagement to Raleigh Trower, Dominick lost a valuable ally. Or, at the least, a valuable guise for his activities on the beach.

He straightened from his slouched stance against the wall and raised a hand in greeting. Trower stopped, his spine stiffening enough to be noticeable from a hundred feet away. Tabitha kept walking for a pace or two, then stopped, glanced back at Trower, and grasped his hand. Dominick didn’t hear her say anything, but her gesture said it all: “Come along, Raleigh.”

Dominick’s insides tensed at the sight of her holding Trower’s work-hardened hand. Those calluses would scratch her smooth skin. He probably stank of fish. Surely she wouldn’t kiss him . . . too.

They came within hailing distance. Neither of the pair called to Dominick, though Tabitha looked at him, her brows arched in question. Odd that he’d never noticed how those brows, a deeper brown than her hair, came to little points on the outer corners like wings. It lent her eyelids an upward curve, as though they smiled perpetually.

He felt as though he were back on the sloop, dipping and swaying from the waves slipping beneath the hull. His mouth went dry, and he couldn’t think what he should say, how to explain why he stood leaning against her garden wall, other than the words he would never speak in front of Raleigh Trower, or possibly even to her.

I couldn’t go another day without seeing you.

It was a lie. Of course it was. He could, he would, go the rest of his life without seeing her and not suffer for it.

Much.

That last thought roused him from his paralysis, and he sauntered forward, smile firmly in place. “Where’s your boat?”

“How do you know we were in a boat?” Trower demanded.

“I recognized Tabitha’s hat ribbons.” Dominick bowed to her. “How are you, my dear?”

“Wet and weary.” She smiled and didn’t look weary. With her cheeks a bit pink from sun, she looked more beautiful than the shiniest diamonds of the first water of London Society.

“I didn’t know you were a sailor, Tabitha,” Dominick said. “But you looked right at home on that floating slop bucket. I mean fishing boat.”

“And you looked right at home on that British sloop,” Trower shot back.

“Me on a boat?” Dominick shuddered. “I dislike small spaces.”

“We saw you,” Trower persisted. “No one else around here has hair like yours.”

“But the English aren’t from around here, are they?” Dominick looked at Tabitha. “Do you think you saw me, my dear Tabitha?”

“She isn’t your dear Tabitha,” Trower interjected.

“Is that for him to say, my dear?” Dominick continued to address Tabitha.

“As far as I know,” she said, freeing her hand from Trower’s and crossing her arms over her middle, “I’m no one’s dear anything.”

“But you are,” Trower exclaimed. “Tabbie—”

She silenced him with a glance.

Dominick suppressed a chuckle. “Forgive me my familiarity, madam.” He bowed. “I use the term as an honorific, not an endearment.”

And he was a liar of the worst order.

“So, regarding my alleged presence aboard that sloop,” Dominick continued, “why, do you suppose, would I be aboard one and then remove myself?”

“You’re passing information to them,” Trower said without hesitation.

“Information about . . . ?” Dominick gave the other man an encouraging smile.

“Don’t act the fool, Mr. Cherrett,” Tabitha snapped. “You know as well as we do what’s going on around here.”

“He possibly knows more about it than we do.” Trower took a step toward Dominick. “Were you setting up the next shipment of young men for your country?”

“That’s quite an accusation, Mr. Trower.” Dominick kept his tone neutral as he glanced at Tabitha to see what she thought of her former fiancé’s bold query.

She gazed back at him with clear, blue-gray eyes, their directness telling him precisely what he did not want to hear—she wondered the same thing.

Heart feeling as though Trower’s hobnail boots had trampled on it, Dominick heaved a sigh. Now was the time to apply the adage of: when caught, tell as much of the truth as possible.

“All right. I was aboard the sloop. But it was neither arranged nor to pass information about how the Navy can acquire more human fodder for their guns.” He held Tabitha’s eyes without a blink. “The commander of the sloop put in to take on some fresh water, as they had a leak in a main water butt. I admit I headed their way when I saw them.”

“You were headed that way before you saw them,” Trower said. “I saw you when we first set out to sea.”

Oh, he had been careless.

“I was out for a walk, yes. That’s how I saw the sloop put in to the cove.”

Tabitha broke eye contact, and his tension eased. She was beginning to believe him.

“Believe me, Mr. Trower,” Dominick pushed forward with his advantage, “if I were a spy, I wouldn’t meet my contact in broad daylight.”

“Then why did you deny being aboard?” Tabitha asked. “Since you’re here, it’s obvious you weren’t trying to run away from your indenture.”

A glance at her face showed more concern than suspicion. Dominick smiled at her. “You have such a kind heart, Tab—Miss Eckles. At least I believe you understand my motives. I didn’t want to give the appearance of improper behavior. I am a man of honor. I gave my word not to run away before my indenture ends, and I will stand by it regardless of the circumstances.”

“Tabitha, you don’t believe him, do you?” Trower sounded frustrated.

“Well, yes, I do.” Tabitha glanced from Trower to Dominick. “If I were nothing less than enslaved in England, I’d take any chance I could to talk with my countrymen.”

“But he could be passing information to them,” Trower persisted.

“I could, but you have no proof of it,” Dominick said.

“Unless someone else vanishes in the next few days,” Trower said, his eyes narrowing. “How would that look?”

“Very bad for me,” Dominick admitted with complete sincerity. He felt like praying for God to protect him. But God wouldn’t protect a man who was getting only what he deserved. Possibly getting far less than what he deserved. “I’d say you’ll just have to trust me,” he added.