Lady in the Mist (11 page)

A wholly inhuman shriek woke her. Her feet hit the floor and she had her dress half over her head before her eyes opened. She knew that kind of cry.

Sally Belote was in labor.

Unless she was a complete coward or in a weakened condition, she was well along in labor.

Tabitha took the steps two at a time and followed the cries to the girl’s chamber. For once, the door stood open. Cookie, Abigail, and Mrs. Belote circled the bed, the first two looking like they were praying, the latter wringing her hands.

Golden-blonde hair soaked with perspiration and blue eyes dull, Sally writhed on the bed.

“Why didn’t someone call me sooner?” Tabitha demanded.

“You weren’t needed.” Mrs. Belote turned on Tabitha. “How dare you question my actions?”

“It’s my responsibility to do so.” Tabitha approached the bed. “Everyone out of here. I need hot water and strong soap and all the cloths you’ve prepared for the baby.”

No one moved.

“Now.” Gently she nudged Abigail away from the bedside and clasped Sally’s hand. “I’m the midwife. I’m here to help you, but you’re going to have to help yourself too.”

“I can’t do this.” Sally’s fingers squeezed Tabitha’s hard enough to crunch them together.

Ignoring the pain she’d felt more than once in her career, she smoothed damp hair from the girl’s brow. “I’m afraid you’ll have to, child. You got yourself into this fix, and now you’re the only one who can get yourself out of it.”

“You shouldn’t talk to her that way,” Mrs. Belote protested. “She’s frightened.”

“Of course she is.” Tabitha gave the mother a hard stare. “I didn’t have time to prepare her or examine her to ensure things were going well. Now leave the room so I can do so.”

“You’ll bully her.” Though her tone was harsh, her chin quivered.

So the mother was scared too.

Tabitha softened her tone. “Ma’am, I have to find out who the father is. It’s required of me. But I promise to go about it as gently as possible. Now, if you please, get the things I need.”

“Don’t just stand there,” Mrs. Belote snapped, turning her anxiety on the servants, “do what Miss Eckles ordered.”

The maid and cook fled.

“Now you, Momma,” Tabitha said with a smile.

“But . . . my baby.”

“Will be in good hands, Mrs. Belote,” Reverend Downing said from the doorway. “Tabitha has delivered more babies than you’ve probably seen in your lifetime.”

“And the last one di—” Mrs. Belote slapped her hand over her mouth.

Tabitha felt sick. Even this far away Wilkins had managed to malign her skill.

“Sally will be—” A shriek from the girl drowned out Downing’s words.

Hands to her ears, Mrs. Belote charged for the door. From the color of her face—a pea green—she looked as though she might be better off keeping her hands over her mouth to hold in the sickness.

Downing slipped out behind the mother and closed the door.

“Whew.” Tabitha heaved a sigh of relief and gave her patient her full attention. “As soon as they bring me hot water so I can wash my hands, I’ll give you a thorough examination. That means I’m going to . . .” She proceeded to explain exactly what she was going to do to see what was going on with Sally and the baby. Some of her explanations had the girl staring bug-eyed and gasping instead of screaming as her womb contracted.

“That’s . . . that’s . . . indecent,” she croaked.

“Not at all.” Tabitha tried to keep her tone light. “I’m specially trained. Women in my family have been midwives for generations.” Tabitha frowned. Labor was intense, but this looked worse than usual. She feared a breech. If she couldn’t turn a breech, few babies and nearly as few mothers survived.

But you’re good at turning babies
, she reminded herself.

She began to manipulate Sally’s belly through the sheet since she hadn’t yet washed her hands, a stricture passed down through the generations of Eckles women. From what she could feel externally, all was not well.

“Sally,” Tabitha asked, “when did your pains start?”

“In the morning. Right after breakfast. It made me sick.”

Tabitha glanced at the clock on the mantel. Nearly twenty-four hours ago, and no one had thought to tell the midwife.

Please, God, don’t let anything go wrong because—

Realizing she was praying, she stopped and, her hands on Sally’s belly, looked her patient in the eye. “Who is the father, Sally?”

Sally closed her eyes.

“You have to tell me.”

“No.” Sally’s abdomen contracted, and the girl cried out. “Help me.”

“I can’t until you tell me who the father is.”

The girl called her a rather rude name.

Tabitha set her jaw. She’d been called worse by laboring mothers and husbands alike.

“Who is—”

Cookie slipped in with a copper can, steam rising from the top. Abigail followed, her arms loaded with clean cloths.

“I’m to stay and help,” Cookie said. “Abigail be too young to watch.”

“Go away,” Sally bellowed.

“Do you want me to stay, Miss Eckles?” Cookie asked Tabitha.

“Please. I need help washing my hands.”

Abigail deposited the cloths on a chair near the bed, and Cookie hefted the copper can over the washbasin.

“Wait.” Tabitha left Sally’s side. “Pour it over my hands.”

Cookie did so. After repeating the process, Tabitha returned to the bed and the wailing girl.

“I’m going to examine you now.” Tabitha lifted the sheet.

Sally snatched it from her. “No.”

“Cookie, will you take her hands, please?”

While Cookie kept the girl from hindering Tabitha, she made a thorough examination, then straightened to look Sally in the eye between contractions.

“The baby is breech. You have to tell me who the father is, or I can’t turn the baby and help you.”

“He’ll die,” Sally sobbed.

Not sure if she meant the baby or the father, Tabitha said, “Then you’ll be responsible.”

The names Sally applied to Tabitha had Cookie’s eyes widening to twice their normal size.

“You hush that,” Cookie scolded. “Where’d a nice girl like you learn such talk?”

“Or end up like this,” Tabitha murmured. She watched as another contraction brought more blood than she liked. “Tell me now, Sally.”

“All right, all right!” Sally screamed.

12

______

“Today’s reading is from the eighteenth chapter of Matthew.” The sonorous quality of the pastor’s voice reached the servants’ gallery without apparent effort. “‘Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?’”

Dominick squirmed on the hard, backless bench. He knew that chapter. One of his Oxford tutors had reminded him of it as Dominick began his campaign. But Dominick, like the forgiven servant, had gone out and forced payment from those who owed him—in a manner of speaking.

Others got hurt because of his hardened heart. No doubt they suffered torment too, possibly worse than his, all because he couldn’t forgive one time, let alone seven or seventy, and claimed his actions were for the good.

How did a man pay a debt when he was locked away? Dominick always wondered how, when someone he knew ended up in debtor’s prison. If he couldn’t work, if he couldn’t oversee his property or investments, he couldn’t earn the money necessary to discharge his debts.

Most of Dominick’s debts weren’t monetary. On the contrary, at the moment he felt more comfortably off than he had since the day his father threw him off of the family estate, broken, bloody, near to penniless. Kendall’s guests proved to be generous with their vales, and he now possessed the equivalent of two pounds, more than enough to go to the fete with Tabitha.

Not enough to discharge his debt to the society of his homeland, to his family, or now to Kendall. What he needed was information, and when those same generous guests had taken up so much of Dominick’s time without divulging a snippet of good information in front of him, he’d gained nothing.

If only he could contact his uncle before June 21. He would admit failure and go to Barbados. At least he would have freedom of a sort there, could come and go as he pleased, could be a guest at the table instead of serving.

Although it might increase his family’s wealth, however, going to Barbados would never redeem him. For that, he must, must, must suffer torment and come out the victor, all debts paid.

He rubbed his palm where the stitches itched. If Tabitha didn’t return soon, he would have Letty remove them, though he’d much prefer Tabitha’s feathery touch against his skin.

Next to him, Letty gave him a poke in the ribs with her elbow, reminding him not to fidget like a schoolboy.

Clamping his hands between his knees, he scanned the congregation. The Trower fellow sat halfway back amidst three females and a man who looked enough like Trower that he must be his father. The women were likely his mother and sisters, again bearing a family resemblance, all tall and stately and pretty. Trower appeared intent upon the sermon. The girls looked disinterested.

Trower. True believer or hypocrite? He’d been ready to fight Dominick for Tabitha. Not very Christian behavior, but he had restrained himself, which was. But the extortion, the threat, set Dominick’s hackles rising. If he hadn’t been suspicious of Trower’s release from the Navy, Dominick would not have had a chance to win in a battle of words.

Those suspicions still teased his mind. The British Navy wasn’t in the habit of releasing men once they felt they had a good enough reason to keep them. Raleigh Trower’s mother being a Canadian, Raleigh being born in Canada—regardless of the citizenship of his father—was enough cause for the British Navy to hold a man until he died in battle, was maimed too badly to be of use aboard ship, or grew too old and feeble. Unless, of course, his ship had been paid off. Not likely with the war going far too strongly and the British not doing well since their defeat in Spain in January. Even the citizenship of Trower’s father could be made suspect by the British. The man had been born in America before their revolution.

The way Trower had backed down from their contretemps convinced Dominick that Trower had deserted.

Most Americans wouldn’t care. In fact, most would consider him a hero for defying the enemy, for depriving them of one more man. That didn’t concern Dominick. That Trower had gotten away from another British frigate last Tuesday morning made Dominick wonder, speculate, suspect.

He needed to get word to his uncle before the twenty-first of June. That was all there was to it. He needed to ask him if he could learn something about Trower. Doing so could take weeks, even months, so the sooner the better. If Dominick could get a message to one of the frigates or schooners cruising around the American coastline, they could contact his uncle.

The risk would be great. The captain might not believe his story of who he was and might take him aboard as an able-bodied seaman.

Feeling as though he were about to suffocate in the tight, airless confines of the gallery, Dominick ran a finger around the inside of his collar.

Letty grasped his arm as they rose for the final hymn. “You are the worst congregant in history. If you were a child, I’d send you to your room with bread and water after a thrashing in the stable yard.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, m’dear,” Dominick responded.

The skin on his back crawled. At that moment, his room with bread and water sounded like as much as his belly could take in.

“This balcony is worse than the hold of a ship,” he added. “Let me out of here before I do something womanish and swoon.”

He spoke louder than he intended. Although the service had ended and the congregation began engaging in conversations, several of the females in his vicinity must have heard him, for they gave him indignant glances.

“Servants don’t have time to swoon.” Deborah stuck her pert nose in the air. “That’s for arrogant English aristocrats.”

“Weak ones, more like,” Dinah added.

“Who says I’m an aristocrat?” Dominick feigned annoyance. “It seems an unkind retort to my unintentional insult to you ladies.”

The girls giggled along with several other servants waiting for their betters to leave the church so they too could file out.

“Senator Lee says you talk like one,” Deborah said. “I heard him asking Mayor Kendall how you managed to get yourself stranded here.”

“And what did the mayor answer?” Dominick’s tone held as much ice as the chill crawling down his spine.

“He said you probably gambled away your inheritance or were running away from a female,” Deborah said.

Dominick laughed, relaxing. “Would that I’d enjoyed myself that much. And now we may depart from this oven. Letty, have you considered bringing your bread rolls up here to bake during the service?”

“Dominick Cherrett,” Letty scolded, “you are the most irreverent man who ever lived.”

“I’ve heard that before too. Now, may we leave? I can scarcely breathe.”

They filed out of the gallery and down the narrow staircase. Outside, again they had to wait to leave until their betters departed, while congregants milled about the yard, talking and laughing and greeting one another as though they hadn’t met for a year. Light breezes off the ocean lifted frills on the hems of the ladies’ gowns and fluttered the ribbons on their hats, catching the eye and creating a flower garden of temptation. Like bees drawn to those flowers, the men, young and old, swarmed around the females, and a number of them left the churchyard in pairs.

Dominick rolled his eyes. “Church as Almack’s.”

“Where?” Letty asked.

“A private club in London whose primary purpose is to make matches. A sort of marriage market.”

“I can’t believe you failed there,” Dinah said from his other side.

“Failed to get a wife there?” Dominick laughed. “My dear girl, I failed to get accepted into such august halls of society. By the time I might have been interested—” He broke off.

Across the church yard, Mrs. Phoebe Lee was looking at him. A man several years her senior stepped between her and Dominick. Though the man’s back was to them, Dominick recognized Harlan Wilkins.

“Looking for his next wife?” His tone dripped contempt.

“With Mrs. Downing’s approval.” Deborah grimaced. “His wife not in her grave three weeks and he’s escorting that young woman home.”

One of Wilkins’s brawny arms went out. Mrs. Lee grasped it in her tiny, white-gloved fingers, and they headed for the parsonage.

“The poor girl,” Dominick murmured.

“Poor?” The other servants stared at him.

“I hear tell she’s quite wealthy,” Deborah said.

“I don’t like him.” Dominick gazed after the retreating pair and the rest of the Downing family. “He’s trying to make trouble for Miss Eckles.”

“That’s mean-spirited,” Deborah declared.

“We shouldn’t talk about our betters like this,” Letty admonished them.

“Harlan Wilkins is hardly my—” Dominick made himself shut up. Right now, everyone there considered a merchant superior to a mere redemptioner.

Dominick’s good suit of clothes chafed as though made of the cheapest of wools. He wished to tear off the coat at the least and dive into the cold waters of the Atlantic—dive deep and swim far.

He trudged back to Kendall’s house, his heels kicking up puffs of sandy soil in the rising heat of mid-June. Kendall and his guests were dining at the home of some local landowner, so Dominick was free the rest of the day, Letty informed him after their dinner. He could go where he liked.

“But see you’re in at sundown,” she reminded him.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He changed his clothes for the casual garb of a country gentleman, laughable under the circumstances. But the Hessian boots and buckskin breeches gave him far more freedom of movement than his servants’ garb, and he needed the ability to stride along the dunes until he reached a certain cove. His uncle wouldn’t be there for nearly two weeks, but perhaps he would have the foresight to send a boat in the event a message lay in their agreed-upon place.

Standing at the edge of the cove not much bigger than a village pond and nearly as still at low tide, Dominick doubted his uncle would take the risk of sending one or more of his men ashore. Even trusted men might be tempted to fly. If they didn’t succumb to temptation, they might be caught. A house lay on the other side of the nearest dune. Its occupants could too easily walk in this direction for fishing or viewing the sunrise, though it was in the opposite direction of the village. If more dwellings spread along the coast, the occupants might have business that could bring them—her—in the cove’s direction.

No one stirred on the hot Sunday afternoon. Even the sea merely rippled and swirled on the surface with wavelets no bigger than what a cat’s paw would produce as it speared a fish.

Certain of not being observed, Dominick pulled the note from his pocket. Oiled paper protected it from the elements to some extent. Unless the tide rose unusually high, a pile of rocks like a cairn would provide the rest of the protection and keep the message from flying away. Without much hope of anyone finding the message before June 21, Dominick slipped the note inside the pile of rocks. It said little, but that little could alert the wrong party of interference close at hand, for Dominick needed to use a name to begin the process of gleaning information.

“And if I’m not too much of a sinner for you to listen to me, God,” Dominick said aloud, “don’t let the information about Trower take the months it could to get to England and back.”

He held out little hope that God heard him. He was too busy taking care of the good people in the world, like Dominick’s second-eldest brother with the Army, or the eldest one, the heir, helping their father run the family estates. They were good men, devout in their worship of God, strong in their faith.

Dominick didn’t think he would have been suited for the Army either. He feared he was doing a poor job of spying. At least he had done something by asking for information on Raleigh Trower’s release from the Navy.

Still tempted to dive into the inviting coolness of the water, Dominick turned away and headed back toward the village. If he got home before sundown, no one would suspect a thing about him taking a long walk on a Sunday afternoon. He hadn’t seen another soul since leaving the paved streets of Seabourne.

But he saw someone now. She stood at the edge of the water, wavelets teasing her bare toes and threatening to soak the hem of a faded blue gown. Tied back with an equally faded blue ribbon, her auburn tresses hung in wildly curling abandon to her waist.

Dominick swallowed the groan that rose in his throat. His fingers ached to reach out and bury themselves in her hair, gather it to his nose to see if it smelled like lavender and roses, rub it against his cheeks to feel its silken texture, press it to his lips . . .

“A mermaid indeed,” he said in a voice no louder than the muttering surf.

She cried out and jumped as though he’d shouted in her ear. One of her feet slipped in the loose sand at the water’s edge, and she flailed her arms for balance.

Dominick leaped forward and grasped her around the waist. He drew her to more solid ground.

“I am sorry.” He continued to hold her, noting even through the stays she wore beneath her gown that she trembled. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“No, you simply make a habit of sneaking up on unsuspecting females.” Her voice and the breath that followed quivered too. “Now, if you please, release me.”

“I’ll release you.” He did so. “Even though doing so does not please me.”

“Mr. Cherrett.” She sighed again and turned to face him.

He caught his breath.

Her eyes looked like someone had struck them, so dark were the bruises of fatigue around them. Their clear blue-gray now resembled a misty morning, and the whites shone with red veins. Her creamy skin held no hint of color, and her wide cheekbones stood out above hollowed cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” Dominick pressed the back of his hand to her brow. “Are you ill?”

“No.” She took a step away from him. “Thank you for asking. My health is good.”

“If you don’t object to me saying so, Madam Midwife, your health looks anything but good.” He’d felt no fever, but all was not right. “Tabitha—”

“I haven’t given you permission to use my Christian name.” The words should have been snapped, especially when she interrupted him to utter them, but her tone remained quiet, neutral.