Lady in the Mist (17 page)

Beyond the low wall, the village sounds of children and dogs, hammering and rumbling wagons, seemed distant. Around her, magnolia trees scented the air, and the dogwoods, now in full leaf, lent cool shade. Bees hummed from flower to flower. Life amidst death.

“How did you two have such faith through all you suffered?” She traced the date of her mother’s death—June 3, 1807. Momma had smiled when she died. So had Grandmomma. They’d gone in peace, with a comfort she had failed to bring them in life.

“And I’m still failing you. Family tradition may die with me. Raleigh was my last hope over two years ago. I don’t know how to change that now.”

She caught movement from the corner of her eye and turned her head.

Dominick stood on the far side of the wall a dozen yards away. Sunlight gleamed on his dark hair, bringing out highlights of bronze and cinnabar, gilding his cheekbones as though he were some golden statue. The sight of him made her heart leap, but he was no hope for the future. He was a flirtation for now, a means to an end.

She rose and crossed the grass to meet him. “I thought about coming to see you.”

“But changed your mind?” He glanced at the tombstones. “I thought I was a better interlocutor than that.”

“You are.” She laughed and her sadness dropped away. “I want to apologize for Raleigh’s behavior yesterday.”

“It’s not your place to apologize for him. He doesn’t like me.” He ghosted his fingertips across her cheek. “With good reason, I think.”

Every muscle in her body tightened, yet it didn’t feel awful, as it should have. “You’re rather sure of yourself, Mr. Cherrett,” she managed with dignity.

“Yes, my mermaid, I am. Shall I walk you home?”

“Do you have another rendezvous with a British ship?”

“A sloop, my dear. Ships—”

“Have three masts,” she finished with him, laughing. “In all seriousness,” she added, “that was foolish of you to go aboard that sloop. There are grumblings about you, you know.”

“I know.” He too turned sober as he offered his arm. “We make an excellent pair. Raleigh Trower is telling people I’m involved with abducting sailors and fishermen from this shore, and Harlan Wilkins is telling people you’re incompetent. Has it damaged your patients’ trust in you?”

“Not thus far.” Tabitha curled her fingers over the tensile strength of his forearm. She caught the eye of a few people crossing the square, all of whom glanced at Dominick and arched their brows in question or shook their heads in disapproval. She supposed she should release her hold on him; it looked too intimate.

But she didn’t.

“I’ll be more discreet in the future,” Dominick said. “Though I admit discretion is not one of my strong points. When I was a boy, I once admitted that I liked to read. My classmates threw me into the mill pond, and I got a thrashing for getting my clothes wet.”

“That’s awful. Why would someone do that?”

“They didn’t want me showing them up with the schoolmaster.”

“I meant the thrashing.”

Dominick laughed. “Ah, that. Well, I think I was expected to at least kick off my shoes before I went in. Fortunately, I could swim, but the shoes ended up at the bottom of the pond. So, alas, did my little New Testament.”

“You carried a New Testament around with you when you were a boy?” Tabitha stopped at the edge of the cobbles and stared up at him.

“I did.” He gazed past her toward the sea a half mile away. “I had a deep faith in God.”

“Had?”

“But now . . .” He turned away from her. “I’ve probably irrevocably damaged my relationship with God.”

“Do you still have one, a relationship, I mean?” She felt an odd twinge, rather like envy in anticipation of him saying yes.

He didn’t answer until they walked along the edge of the water, where a narrow path of hard-packed sand made the going easier, if one didn’t mind a few drops of water spraying the clothes or face. Tabitha didn’t mind the water. The silence between them stung.

It remained until they stood parallel to her cottage. Then he turned to her and took her hands in his. “I don’t know. The Bible says I do, but I can’t forget what I’ve done. Every morning, my servitude here reminds me that I am worse than the son in the parable, who said he would work in the vineyard but didn’t.”

“I should think you’re more the son who said he wouldn’t work in the vineyard but did.” She offered him a tentative smile.

“No, my dear, that’s you.” He folded her hands together between his. “You claim you have no relationship with God, but then I find out how you give to others, knowing you may never receive a farthing for your efforts. You comfort and encourage everyone from Mayor Kendall to those urchins who run wild in the square.”

Her cheeks heated despite the sea spray. “Where did you hear such nonsense?”

“From Letty, from Japheth, from one of those urchins in the square.” He drew her hands toward him, pulling her closer. “The village council will listen to Harlan Wilkins because he is possibly the second-richest man in town next to Kendall, but they won’t act against you no matter what he says, because their wives and children think so highly of you.”

She tried to shrug off the praise. “They don’t associate with me a great deal, not in a social sense.”

“Because you’re a heathen, my dear.” He grinned. “If you want to be invited to the parties, you must go to church.”

“I can’t pretend a faith I don’t have.”

“And I . . . respect you for that. But I can’t help but wonder if you’re pretending not to have faith.” He nudged her chin up with their clasped hands and held her gaze. “I recognize the symptoms, since I have them myself.”

“Maybe.” She licked her suddenly dry lips.

His gaze dropped to her lips. For a heartbeat, she thought he intended to kiss her, and she caught her breath. Then his focus flicked past her, and he stepped away. “Not now.”

Tabitha turned her head. A man silhouetted against the lowering sun stood without a hint of motion, like a cat ready to spring on a mouse.

18

______

The smell of long-dead fish assaulted Raleigh’s nostrils as he slipped into the shed a hundred yards behind his house. So did another scent, something crisp and clean and familiar.

His contact, his puppet master on American soil, had arrived before him.

Raleigh swallowed against a surge of sickness at the back of his throat. In just a few minutes, he would learn who the man was or was not. It was a risk. If he spoke the wrong words, this man might kill him. Raleigh would die knowing who his contact was, but it wouldn’t help Tabitha or bring her back to him. If he learned who the man was not, it could free him to launch a full broadside of attempts to win her back, instead of letting his guilt add its weight to her rebuffs. Seeing Dominick Cherrett in intimate dialogue with Tabitha on the beach that afternoon, about to kiss her, had given him the impetus to take the risk, to send a message to his master and request this meeting.

Now that he stood no more than a half dozen feet from the man, he realized that his desire to shove Cherrett out of his way and pursue Tabitha in earnest had driven him into precipitate action yet again. He hadn’t trusted the Lord to take care of matters in His way, in His timing. Now he couldn’t go back. The other man was moving toward him with a whisper of fabric.

“What do you want?” The voice was little more than a murmur, muffled and unrecognizable.

“I want—” Raleigh’s heart nearly stopped. “I want to—I want out of this game.” It hadn’t been his prepared speech, but he spoke his heart.

The other man laughed. “The option is a bite of the cat-o’-nine-tails aboard a certain frigate on the American station, or even hanging.”

“They can’t do that without a court martial,” Raleigh protested. “I’d have to be condemned for desertion.”

“You have been.” Satisfaction rang even through the murmur. “I got word yesterday that they held one in your absence.”

Tuesday, the day Cherrett went aboard the British sloop. Not proof, but too much of a coincidence for him to risk pursuing his plan for Dominick Cherrett. Who else in Seabourne could learn of British Navy doings?

“I thought that sloop put into the inlet for a reason,” Raleigh said.

Stillness and silence from the man.

Not stillness and silence from outside. Something bumped against the shed wall, a light tap like a windblown twig or a metal button.

The wind was calm.

“Did you invite someone along tonight?” his companion demanded.

“No, I—”

A hard hand curled around Raleigh’s shoulder. “If I go out there and find evidence of someone being here, I may save your captain a rope.”

“Go ahead.” Raleigh found the words fluent on his tongue. “I left a letter saying if anything happens to me, it’s Dominick Cherrett’s fault.”

“Did you indeed.” The man chuckled deep in his chest.

“I did.” It lay on his pillow.

“Then I’ll just have to find it,” the other man said. He moved with the speed of a striking snake, and the world went black.

Two lights still burned in the seaside cottage, one upstairs in the front, facing the ocean, one on the lower floor, spilling over the herb garden. Dominick circled the house once, glad there wasn’t a dog to bark and alert the ladies to the fact that he wasn’t certain if he should knock on the front door or the back. Never in his life had he been the one required to seek out medical assistance. And he was wasting time, while a man’s head oozed like the insides of a soft-boiled egg thrown against a wall.

He chose the front door. The shiny brass knocker gleamed in the moonlight, drawing his eye, drawing his feet up the flagstones to lift the dove-shaped knocker for a smart rap. In the quiet night, the bang reverberated like thunder. A bird woke in a nearby tree and muttered a complaint.

Inside the house, footfalls sounded, light and quick. The door sprang open. “How may I—Dominick, what are you doing here at this hour?”

“Seeking medical assistance.” He didn’t smile. He wanted her to know he wasn’t making up a tale.

She still gave him a dubious scan from head to toe. “You look all right to me.”

“I am, but Raleigh Trower isn’t.”

“Raleigh?” Her hand flew to her lips, her eyes widened, and color drained from her face. “What? Where is he?” She peered past Dominick.

He stared past her face. He didn’t want her to read his expression, a telltale twitch or blink that might betray the inner pang she’d set off with her reaction to news of Raleigh’s injury.

“I didn’t want to move him.” Dominick shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course. What do I need?”

“Bandages. Perhaps stitching things.”

“Wait here.” She spun on her heel and raced up the steps.

“Shall I come with you?” Patience emerged from the kitchen to call up the steps.

Dominick couldn’t hear Tabitha’s response, but Patience’s lips thinned and she glanced toward him, as though she didn’t like it.

“The wind’s kicking up,” Dominick said.

“All the more reason I should go too, besides it not being decent, her out alone with you.” Patience yanked a cloak off of a rack by the door. “She won’t wear this if I’m not here to make her put it on in the rain.”

Tabitha appeared at the top of the steps. “I don’t want to get ill, so I promise to wear it. As for the decency of the matter—where is he, Dominick?”

“A shed behind his house.”

“Then you fetched his family?” Tabitha raced down the steps, heels clattering, and snatched the cloak from Patience. “His mother knows what to do about most injuries.”

“Yes, but—” Dominick glanced toward Patience, took the cloak from Tabitha’s hand, and whirled it over her shoulders. “I’ll take good care of her, Miss Patience.”

“Humph.” She grabbed the edge of the door. As he and Tabitha headed down the flagstones to the gate, he felt Patience’s gaze boring into his back.

“How bad is he?” Tabitha asked.

Outside the wall, the wind hit them full force, cold and damp and smelling of the sea. They walked along the landward side of the dunes but could hear the sea, its roar a beast threatening to devour the land.

“We’d better hurry.” He grabbed her hand and picked up their pace.

“Because of the weather or Raleigh’s condition?” she demanded.

“I don’t know how bad his condition is. Bad enough I thought he needed more care than I could give him.” Or wanted to, after what he’d heard Trower say about him. “There’s a lot of blood, Tabitha. From his head.”

“You didn’t go to his family,” she said.

“I made him as comfortable as I could, then came here. It seemed . . . safer that way.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t want them to know you’re out this late.” She looked up at him. “And why are you out this late, and with Raleigh?”

“I had a yearning to see the sea during a storm. Thought it might remind me of home.”

Which wasn’t precisely a lie. He did miss the stormy English Channel.

“And just happened to be at the Trower house?” Be it the truth or not, Tabitha’s tone said she didn’t believe him.

“No, I didn’t just happen to be there. I saw him skulking around town and thought I’d follow him to see why he was out on such a night.”

“When he could ask the same of you? Dominick, you’ll have to do better than that. You wouldn’t risk having him tell Kendall about your own wanderings.”

“If he were going to tattle on me, he already would have.” He squeezed her fingers. “Then I’d let my uncle—” He bit his tongue for the slip, cleared his throat. “I’d let my acquaintances in the British Navy know there’s a deserter right here.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Thank you for your faith in me. Of course I wouldn’t, but he doesn’t know that.”

“Oh, you two.” Tabitha made a growling noise not unlike the sea’s. “I should knock your heads together.”

“From the look of it, someone already knocked Trower’s head into something.”

“Someone? You two didn’t fight?”

Dominick felt like she had knocked his head into a wall. “No, Tabitha, we didn’t fight. Why would we?”

“Maybe because he was watching us earlier?”

“That wasn’t Trower. That was Wilkins.”

“You’re sure? Why would Wilkins—of course.” Tabitha’s sigh sounded as gusty as the wind. “More evidence to discredit me. I wish it had been Raleigh and you were there tonight to tell Raleigh . . . something.”

“I followed him out of curiosity, is all. He doesn’t even know I was there, nor will he.”

Nor would either of them know of his little excursion to the Trower house after he wrapped strips of his shirt around Trower’s head and before he raced to Tabitha’s house.

Dominick hesitated, then said, “He was talking of how to destroy me.”

“Dominick, no. He wouldn’t.”

“He was, but you’ll have to take my word for it unless we find to whom he was speaking.”

“I don’t want to believe Raleigh would do that, or that you’d make it up.” Tabitha stroked her thumb over his knuckles, and he flinched. “This knuckle is swollen. What happened?”

“I struck it against the shed wall trying to help him. Not that he deserved my help after trying to incriminate me.” Dominick spoke through gritted teeth. “But you seem to think that condemns me guilty of striking him with it.”

“It seems . . . suspicious. I mean, did you see anyone else who could have done so?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?”

“I—” Her hand tightened on his. “I want to. But who would he be meeting out here in the middle of the night?” She gestured with the hand holding her satchel.

“You ask an excellent question, Madam Midwife.” They reached the shed and Dominick pushed open the door.

The metallic stench of blood mixed with mildew and fish swirled out to greet them, along with a thud and a groan.

“Raleigh?” Tabitha darted into the outbuilding. “Raleigh, can you hear me?” Concern, affection, and a hint of anxiety gentled her tone. “That’s a nasty bump, Raleigh. Are you in pain?”

“Stupid . . . question.” He slurred his words like an intoxicated man. “Never . . . Who’s with you?”

“Dominick.” Tabitha paused. “Did he do this to you?”

Dominick leaned his head against the door frame, wondering if Raleigh Trower would tell the truth or an outright lie. He expected Trower to take the latter action, claim Dominick’s guilt—a guilt that would likely get him sent to Kendall’s plantation along the James River if he was lucky . . . sent to prison if he wasn’t.

“I—” Trower’s indrawn breath was audible from six feet away. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

“But he was here. He came to fetch me,” she concluded.

“I d-don’t know anything,” Trower mumbled.

Dominick still did not relax.

“If he came to fetch you for me, I expect he is the culprit,” Trower continued.

“But we’d have to prove it, even for a bondsman, since he’s Mayor Kendall’s servant,” Tabitha mused aloud. “Maybe he didn’t mean this to happen. You’re still bleeding.”

“I feel like a stuck pig. Is my father out fishing?”

“No, not tonight. It’s gotten too rough.” Fabric rustled. “I’ll fetch him out here. Dominick stayed to help carry you.”

“Don’t want him touching me,” Trower grumbled.

“Good, I’ll leave,” Dominick said. “Perhaps I should have let you drain of blood like that stuck pig, instead of using my own shirt to help stop the bleeding. One of my three good shirts, I might add, and fetch Tabitha, and—”

“Stubble it, Dominick,” Tabitha broke in. “If you were where you belong, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“You presume.” Dominick straightened from the door frame. “I’ll be on my way.”

“And no one the wiser regarding you being here? Do I tell them his attacker fetched me before running off?”

“Tell them what you like.” He turned his back on her.

“Dominick—thank you.” She touched his arm. “You did take a risk coming to me, whatever the cause of his injury.”

“I did no one but Trower a favor if you think I had a hand in it.” Heart feeling as though it would rise up and choke him, Dominick departed.

Outside, the night had turned more wild than before. As he broke into a run on his way back to the village, he couldn’t hear his own footfalls above the surf, nor his own breath over the wind. He barely saw the ground beneath his feet or obstacles in his path. He smelled only his own wet wool and sandalwood, the sea, the memory of Tabitha’s roses. He felt only the rough wool of his coat against his scarred back, the slap of rain against his face, the ache in his heart.

He hadn’t come to America to fall in love. That was sheer folly. Love distracted the mind and caused mistakes. And no woman worth having would love a man in his position, as she saw it. Matters would be worse for the future of his heart, with the truth of his purpose in America stirred into the mix.

She thought she knew that truth. She knew too little, just enough to make her knowledge dangerous to him. He knew only enough to realize his danger. Yet how could he speak against Raleigh Trower without sounding spiteful? Without giving away what he was still trying to deny himself—how much he cared for her?

How much he loved her.