Lady in the Mist (4 page)

“I know about her family.”

The mother and grandmother who had never been quite as welcoming of the engagement as he would have wished, for Tabitha’s sake.

“That’s why I thought she might be kind enough to see me,” he continued. “She might like to know I’m not dead.”

“And I can tell her, or she’ll learn in the village.” Patience sighed and pulled the door wide. “All right, come in and wait. The parlor’s clean and I was just making some coffee.” She waved him forward.

He entered the tidy parlor, with its open windows allowing the sea air and sunshine inside, and a braided woolen rug on the floor. He wanted to pace while waiting for Tabitha. He wanted to stride in circles around the house, waiting for her to arrive across the beach or from town, as he had waited many times in the past. With Patience’s bright eyes on him, he chose a chair facing the parlor door, perching on its edge so he could spring to his feet the instant the front door opened or she came down the hall from the back of the house.

He expected Patience to leave him alone to stew in private. A maidservant would have. But Patience was much more to the Eckles family and had been since the grandmother, Mrs. Nottingham, had bought the woman’s indenture mere months before Raleigh left. Now that Tabitha was alone in the world, Raleigh expected Patience had taken on an even more protective role.

“Is she truly well?” he decided to ask.

“As well as a woman of four and twenty and still unwed can be.” Patience pierced him with her eyes the green of the sea before a storm. “You’re talking like an Englishman. Did you go back to your sainted mother’s people?”

“Not by choice.” He made himself focus on the old lady. “I was on a merchantman bound for China. A British frigate hauled me aboard and asked me a lot of questions.”

Lantern light had hung in his face so he couldn’t see the officers except for the occasional glint of a blade. They’d struck his head when hauling him out of his boat and onto their deck. He’d been dizzy, cloudy of brain, sick in body.

“I made the mistake of telling them my mother is from Halifax. That made me English enough in their eyes to justify tossing me into the stinking coffin they call a man-of-war, and made me—” His fists clenched on his thighs. “I’ve tried everything to get away, to get back to Tabitha.”

“Before or after you were pressed?”

Raleigh swallowed and dug his knuckles into his thigh muscles. He couldn’t meet Patience’s eyes. “After.”

“And now you’ve managed to—what?—desert, and you want to renew your relationship with Tabitha?”

“You’re rather forward for a redemptioner,” Raleigh retorted.

“I’m free now and I’m all she has—me and Japheth, the outdoor man. Someone has to see to her welfare.”

All she had were two servants who would be free to leave her in a matter of years.

Raleigh hung his head. “I want . . . her forgiveness. I’ve prayed for two years to see her again.”

“Praying’s more than she does these days.” Sorrow filled the woman’s voice. “When your wedding day passed without a sign of you, then her mother died of a fever she contracted from a patient, my mistress stopped praying.”

Sickness roiled inside Raleigh’s belly. He should have been there to be a husband to her, a helpmeet, someone to support her—even guide her—in her spiritual life, not contribute to her turning from the Lord.

“Maybe if she can forgive me—” He broke off on a sigh to loosen the tightness in his chest. He didn’t deserve her forgiveness, but oh, how he wanted it. If Tabitha would give him her heartfelt mercy for what he’d done to her, the risks he took would be worth it. If they could start again, renew their friendship, their love . . .

“I don’t know if you’ll get forgiveness, Mr. Trower,” Patience said. “The hurt runs deep inside her.”

“Maybe if she knows—”

Footfalls sounded on the walk, swift and light. Raleigh shot to his feet, then stood motionless, not knowing whether he should wait for Tabitha to enter the house or if he should rush out to greet her. His heart raced, and he feared if he didn’t move, it would burst right from his chest.

He took a step toward the door, stopped, glanced at Patience. “Should I wait here or—”

The front door burst open. Warm air smelling of the sea swirled through the room. Carried on the breeze like a schooner under full sail, Tabitha swept into the parlor. “Patience, it’s so terrible. Three young men disappeared last night. They left the tavern in—” She ceased on a gasp. Her hand flew to her throat, and color drained from her face. “Raleigh!”

4

______

A long scratch marred the pristine surface of the silver tray where Dominick had dropped it onto the floor. He intended the incident to distract Miss Tabitha Eckles, the mermaid midwife. Instead, it drew too much attention to himself, not to mention the hour he was spending in the stuffy confines of the butler’s pantry, rubbing out the scratch with emery grit that stuck to his fingers, his sleeves, his nose.

“I should have gone to Barbados,” he grumbled to his reflection in the glittering surface of the tray.

At least in the Caribbean all he would have to worry about pertained to simple matters like yellow fever and field worker uprisings. Unlike the eastern shore of Virginia, where disaster could land on his head at any moment—literally.

“At least a bash to the skull would knock off the powder.”

He grimaced at the quantity of white froth adding its detritus to the emery grit. The pallid color aged him, making his skin appear sallow rather than lightly bronzed from the sun. Not attractive, whatever Letty told him and however the other female servants flirted with him. He didn’t need their approval.

He needed Tabitha Eckles’s approbation.

“I’ll get that when Barbados gets snow.” He shook his head, sending a shower of powder onto the nearly polished silver.

His yell of frustration brought Letty stomping into the doorway. “What are you grousing about, laddie? You were the one to drop that tray. You have to be the one to polish it up again.”

“And I’m the one ordered to wear this . . . flotsam on my head.” He yanked at a curl tumbling from his queue. “It’s utterly ridiculous.”

“It’s charming.” Letty tucked the errant strand beneath the ribbon.

“It gets over everything.”

“It wouldn’t if you didn’t stamp around here like an angry bull.” Letty softened her admonishing tone. “Dominick, you’re likely going to be here for at least four years. You may as well resign yourself to the fact and do your work with good cheer.”

“Sensible advice.”

“That you don’t intend to take.”

“I understand the gentlemen who settled this colony—”

“State.”

“It was a colony then and will be again, if my country has its way.” He flashed Letty a grin. “But as I was saying, the gentlemen who settled in this blighted place two hundred years ago were just that—gentlemen. They didn’t intend to work. They intended to get rich off of the land.”

“And most of them ended up dying of starvation.” Letty removed the tray from Dominick’s hands. “You’re going to rub right through the silver if you go about polishing thatta way. Be gentle.”

She demonstrated a light, circular motion with the cloth against the tray. The rasp of grit against metal sounded like harsh breathing in the tiny pantry, the grating breaths of a runner, someone fleeing.

No, someone chasing. He was there to chase, to catch, to stop a villainous character, not run away.

And perhaps chase someone else to keep himself safe.

“There now.” Letty returned the tray to the table with a clunk.

Dominick jumped. “I should have asked you to help from the beginning.”

“It’s not my job. It’s yours, and you’re perfectly capable of carrying on if you don’t woolgather.”

“How can I do anything else when I look like a . . . er . . . woolly lamb?” Dominick picked up a clean cloth and removed the last of the grit from the tray. “I shouldn’t have dropped it. Why don’t you simply remind me of that?”

“I can’t think how you came to do that.” Letty cocked her head, waiting to hear.

“Miss Eckles distracted me.” Dominick shrugged. “She was talking about strangers around on the beach. I seem to be the only Englishman in town, and in light of some more of your young men disappearing last night, I don’t wish to be accused of having aught to do with it by virtue of my nationality.”

“There is another English person in Seabourne,” Letty said. “She’s Tabitha Eckles’s servant.”

“And highly likely to be running about at night stealing men from their tavern haunts.”

“Their fishing boats.” Letty’s tone held a hint of ice. “And you were running about last night.”

“Not on the water.” Dominick shuddered hard enough to make the tray rattle as he slid it onto its shelf. “I never went past the beach.”

“That narrows your wanderings down to twenty miles or more.”

“Letty, are you accusing me of something?” He gave her a wide-eyed stare.

She laughed and backed from the pantry. “I’ll wager you got away with everything using those eyes like that.”

“Only with my nursemaid and mother.” Dominick grimaced. “I wouldn’t be here if I could charm my own sex into succumbing to my charms.”

“And here I thought it was charming the fair maidens that was amongst the things that got you here.” Still chuckling, Letty returned to the kitchen and her pots of savory dishes bubbling over the fire.

“If only it had been fair maidens,” Dominick murmured.

He returned the canister of emery grit to its shelf, applied a boar’s hair brush to his coat, and followed Letty into the kitchen. Dinah and Deborah sat at the worktable peeling potatoes. He hoped the young women’s presence would prevent Letty asking him questions or making further innuendos about either his activities of the night before or the circumstances that sent him bucketing across the Atlantic. Tabitha Eckles had put him through enough of that agony already this morning.

Did he have a knife indeed. What a thing for a lady to ask a gentleman.

Except she wasn’t precisely a lady. Nor was he a gentleman any longer.

Social standing aside—this was America after all, where those sorts of things weren’t supposed to matter—nothing changed the fact that she had asked. Her asking signaled one fact—she believed he was responsible for cutting that long, slender throat of hers.

Nodding to the kitchen maids, he strode through the back door and headed across the garden to the laundry. His fingers twitched with the desire to stroke away any pain that cut might cause her. Marring her skin was a crime worse than the act of threatening her at knifepoint. He didn’t understand the drive that compelled some men to violence or greed. His previous sins stemmed from nothing as ambitious as the wish to conquer or gain great wealth. And now his contrary ambitions threatened to make a manipulative, unconscionable monster of him.

He retrieved a stack of table linens from the worktable, where the laundry maid had left them for him to collect. Before stacking them in the sideboard, he must inspect each piece for wear or tear, fray or stain. Kendall expected his tablecloths and serviettes to be as pristine as his shirts and cravats, as white as his butler’s hair. Dominick had never known his parents’ stiff-necked butler to stoop to such menial tasks—he probably gave the chore to his army of footmen. Dominick didn’t possess such a luxury.

Of course, Dinah and Deborah might oblige. They greeted him with enthusiasm when he returned to the house.

“I’ll get the door for you, sir.” Dinah bounced to her feet, allowing a shower of peelings to cascade onto the floor.

“I’ll pull out the drawers for you.” Deborah followed with a little more decorum.

“You will return to your chairs and finish scraping the vegetables,” Letty commanded. “Mr. Cherrett, you will see to the linens yourself.”

Did the woman read his mind?

“But I was so hoping for some company in my lonely task.”

“It must be lonely, being the only manservant in the house,” Dinah said. “Surely I can help, Letty. It’ll take only a few minutes.”

“It’ll take less time if you both help,” Dominick suggested.

“No, you will do your own work,” Letty admonished. “Alone.”

“And here I thought the butler directed the servants.” Dominick sighed gustily enough to flutter the serviette on the top of the stack.

The scent of starch wafted into his face stronger than the stewing game, and he screwed up his features in an effort not to sneeze.

“I’ve been here longer.” Letty wiped her hands on her apron and took two cloths off the top of the stack. “I’ll need these to wrap the bread rolls for dinner. Mr. Kendall is entertaining, if entertaining a newly widowed man is the right term.”

“Newly widowed?” Dominick arched one brow in query. “Mr. Wilkins, is it?”

“Aye, so you know of that.”

“I heard through the dining room door when Miss Eckles told Kendall of the loss.”

“The poor man,” Dinah cooed. “All that lovely money of his, and he’s without a wife to enjoy it.”

“Or heir to inherit it,” Deborah added.

“He won’t be looking to either of you for solace,” Letty snapped. “Get your minds off of men and onto your work. You’re both too young for Harlan Wilkins.”

“He’s no more than thirty,” Dinah pointed out. “That’s young to be a widower.”

“Isn’t the midwife a bit too young to be a widow?” Dominick asked.

“She’s not a widow,” all the women chorused.

“The women in her family have been midwives for generations,” Letty explained. “She used to simply work with her mother and grandmother, but when they died, Miss Tabitha took on the work alone. She’s the closest medical person we have since the apothecary died last year.”

“Then the death of a patient must be even harder on her.” Dominick gazed through half-lowered lids at the bundles of herbs hanging from the ceiling. “I wonder if she needs comfort.”

“She’s so old,” Dinah and Deborah protested.

“All of four and twenty.” Letty banged a lid onto a pot. “And you steer clear of her. She’s had enough grief in her life, and Harlan Wilkins may make more for her.”

“Will he blame her for his wife’s death?” Dominick asked.

“Most likely. He’d never think it has to do with his neglect of that poor young lady he married.”

“You have a poor opinion of the man,” Dominick mused.

“No less than I have of any gaming male.” She gave Dominick a pointed glance, then yanked open the door of the oven set into the hearth. “I expect you gambled your way into servitude.”

“I didn’t gamble away my future,” Dominick shot back, then, for a chance at honesty in an existence that owed little to truth, he added, “not like you think.”

Gaming establishments hadn’t been his downfall. No, he’d taken a different sort of gamble and won at a price he still didn’t know if he could pay.

“You don’t fool me.” Letty stalked to the table and began to inspect the vegetables the girls had peeled. “Nothing else brings a gentleman down like the cards or the dice or females.”

“Not me.” Dominick shot her a smile and headed for the dining room. “Though you’re mighty presumptive that I’m a gentleman.”

The dining room door swung shut behind him before she could respond, which was good. The cook was, after all, right in that. He was a gentleman, destined from birth to become a clergyman. Third sons of Cherretts always became clergymen. If no third son existed, then the honor and living went to a male cousin. Second sons became Army officers.

Cherretts did not become redemptioners in lands barely developed out of the wilderness.

He set the linens on the table and began to inspect each piece. If he’d been an obedient son, if he’d been interested in being a politician vicar instead of a man serving God, Dominick would be sorting altar cloths for imperfections instead of serviettes. But from the moment he’d set foot in Oxford, he’d determined to destroy any of his father’s hopes that the third son of this generation would step into the role of vicar.

He’d considered himself a success until his downward trajectory flew out of control and he found himself facing a scandal that hurt his family. He chose exile to spare them. More than exile—a chance at redemption.

As he spread a cloth over the table and arranged serviettes and silver for two diners, he wondered if he could bear four years of servitude and no hope of redeeming himself, rather than take the next step in his plans. Acting as a butler-cum-valet was proving onerous. Less onerous than all the things his uncle said he might have to do to accomplish his mission. But he’d agreed. He’d practiced with his knife, the only weapon he could get away with as an indentured servant. If his life depended on it, he could use the slender, Italian blade.

But he couldn’t use it on a female.

No, now that he knew more about the lady, Dominick Cherrett made other plans to ensure Tabitha Eckles, the mermaid midwife, didn’t speak out of turn where his activities were concerned.

Tabitha crouched beside a bed of roses, breathing deeply of the heady scent. Weeds grew in too much profusion around her precious herbs, and she should be pulling them up to protect the stock that produced necessary medicines for her work and other ailments for which people came to her for help. But the roses held her attention with their deep red hues and fragrance like the oh-so-precious vanilla bean. Only the most perfect, most succulent petals would she pluck to create her favorite treat, the indulgence she allowed herself other than walks on the beach—candied rose petals. The previous month, she had plucked and preserved the violets. Already, she tasted the aromatic sweets on her tongue, the best medicine in the world for perking up the spirits.