Lady in the Mist (12 page)

Dominick smiled and touched a forefinger to her lips. “You did when you didn’t smack my face for kissing you.” He half expected her to do so now and be done with it.

A delicate pink tinged her pale skin and she dropped her lashes over her eyes. “I have never struck anyone in my life, Mr. Cherrett. Even if you deserved it, I am a healer, not a person who harms others for my own satisfaction.”

“Then I can kiss you with impunity.” Dominick grinned at her.

Her lips compressed. “I don’t recommend you do so.”

“Not even after I take you to the fete?” He hadn’t meant to invite her now, but no time like the present one. “You will go with me, will you not?”

“The fete?” She looked vague. “Oh, you mean the Midsummer Festival?”

“I do indeed.”

He gave her a hopeful smile.

She said nothing, simply gazed out to sea.

“Or am I too presumptive in asking you, being a bondsman and all.”

“No, I’m not much more than a servant myself, but . . .” She bowed her head and rubbed her temples. Her hair cascaded around her face like a curtain, but not so much that he couldn’t see her switch from massaging her temples to massaging her eyes.

“Tab—Miss Eckles?” Dominick brushed her hair back, finding it every bit as soft as he’d anticipated. Above the aromas of salt water and seaweed, he caught a hint of rose petals. His toes curled inside his boots.

He swallowed. “Let me walk you home. You can claim you’re well, but you don’t look it.”

“I’m not ill,” she insisted, then lowered her hands and offered him a half smile. “I would just do well with a good night’s sleep.”

“Was your journey difficult?” He took both her hands in his and began to chafe them as though the day were cold instead of sultry.

“No, we returned last night, but I haven’t slept since Sal—” She bit her lip. “I must be tired if I was about to tell you something about my patient.”

“Then let me escort you home. Even mermaids need rest.”

“If I can sleep.”

“Were things difficult?” Remembering Wilkins and his threats, he felt his heart skip a beat. “The baby didn’t . . . die, did it?”

“No, it’s a healthy boy. But there were circumstances . . .” She drew her hands free. “I should be going. It’s time for supper.”

“I’ll still escort you.”

She didn’t object, simply headed up the beach. He fell into step beside her, watching the way her toes flexed and extended in the soft sand above the tide line, the way her skirt swirled around her ankles. He wanted to ask her if she’d forgotten her shoes but feared he would embarrass her.

“Can you tell me anything about your journey?” he asked instead of inquiring about her lack of shoes.

“I prefer the seaward side of the eastern shore to the bay side. But then I’ve grown up near the Atlantic, so maybe I’m simply used to it.” She glanced up at him. “Did you grow up near the sea?”

“The English Channel. I never saw the Atlantic until my fortunes”—he laughed—“or should I say, my misfortunes, brought me here.”

“Never saw the Atlantic.” She shook her head, sending her hair flying in a quickening wind. “Did you never leave your village?”

“Often. I went to the east and north and not the west. London, Ox—”

“Oxford. You can say it, Mr. Cherrett. I know what it is. My father was a schoolmaster educated at Princeton because William and Mary had lost its charter during the revolution. He could have taught anywhere, but ill health brought him back here to the seaside, where he met my moth-ther.”

With her hair flying about, Dominick couldn’t see for certain, but he thought a tear glistened on her cheek. He hadn’t mistaken the hitch in her voice on the word
mother
.

“Tabitha—Miss Eckles—dash it all, I’m not calling you Miss Eckles when you don’t slap my face for kissing you and you are trotting alongside me in bare toes with your hair down like an urchin.”

She stopped, glanced at him with red-rimmed eyes definitely glazed with tears, and emitted a throaty laugh. “All right, Mr. Cherrett—”

“Call me Dominick.”

“I can’t. You don’t have bare toes.”

“But I do have my hair down.”

They shared eye contact and a smile that felt far more intimate than that brief kiss. His innards turned the consistency of syllabub cream.

“I miss my mother too,” he said gently. “She died when I was ten.” And was spared the shame he brought onto the family.

“I was twenty-two. She was a skilled midwife and healer, but she couldn’t stop herself from contracting the patient’s fever.” Her voice broke.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am. I should have gone to that lying-in instead of her. She was so tired from working . . . and I no longer have her counsel when I need it—like now.”

“Because of what happened on your journey?” Dominick laced his fingers through hers and headed in the direction she’d been going. “You need a colleague to talk to.”

Raw pain crossed her face. “I had one, before my mother then my grandmother died. The midwife in Norfolk is too far away and not highly respected.”

“You could always take on an assistant.”

“I will when I have a daughter. Until then . . .” She sighed. “We are sworn to uphold the sanctity of secrets divulged to us when a woman is in her lying-in, except for one circumstance.”

“What is that?”

“If the name of the child’s father is in question.”

Dominick took a moment to understand her meaning. “Because she’s unwed.”

“Yes.”

“And you have a patient who told you who the father of her child is.”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t tell me?” he pressed.

“If things go badly with me before the council tomorrow, I can’t tell anyone.”

“You’re going before the council?”

“Wilkins’s doing.” She grimaced. “My qualifications have been called into question after all these years.”

“And you’re losing sleep over it.” Dominick slowed their pace. He saw the house now, a neat white cottage with a walled garden to protect the plants from the sea. The trees cast shade over house and wall, looking cool and inviting, but he didn’t want to reach the gate. Even if she invited him into her home, her servants sat behind those walls, and he wanted Tabitha to himself for a few more minutes.

Tabitha didn’t slow with him. “Come inside. I’ll remove those stitches.”

“Wait.” He stopped, still holding her hand.

“I don’t wish to discuss it further.” She faced him. “I’ve already said more than I should.”

She’d certainly said enough for him to work things out and know her very real danger.

“I don’t want to discuss your patient.” He smiled and brushed a lock of hair from her brow. “I want you to say yes to accompanying me to the fete.”

“I don’t go to the festival anymore.” She avoided his eyes. “It holds . . . memories.”

“Of Raleigh Trower?”

“What do you know of Raleigh?”

“Know of him?” Dominick chuckled. “We’ve met. But I’ll let him discuss that encounter. Far be it from me to be a tale bearer. But don’t let it be far from me to have you come with me, if it won’t be a disgrace for you to be seen with a redemptioner.”

She released his hand and folded her arms across her chest. “I suppose I don’t need to ask if you have the price of the tickets.”

He straightened his shoulders. “Of course you needn’t ask. I do and then some.”

“Will you go if I do not accompany you?”

He studied her face for a moment, trying to judge how he should answer. Certain he caught a twinkle in one bloodshot eye, he said, “No, I couldn’t.”

“All right then. I’ll go with you.” Answer given, she turned on one bare heel and marched toward her gate.

He followed. “What changed your mind?”

“The idea of an Englishman contributing to the welfare of American sailors.” She laughed, a sparkling fall of notes in the still afternoon.

Dominick laughed too. If she only knew.

13

______

Tabitha wished she had bitten her tongue rather than make such an outburst in front of Dominick. At the present, spouting her distrust of God’s motives for her life was not a wise action, especially to the man who worked for the mayor, who was bonded to the mayor.

“Remember that bit of it,” she muttered to herself as she wiped a few bread crumbs off of the kitchen table and spread a clean towel over it. “His loyalty lies with the mayor.”

Or England.

At that moment, his loyalty to the mayor concerned her more than his loyalty to England. She must remember not to trust him, that he wasn’t a friend, however much she must pretend to like him.

She wished she pretended to like him. She’d wanted to burrow into the sand like a crab when she heard his voice behind her on the beach. He’d seen her with her hair down and her toes bare like some slovenly maidservant.

Yet his eyes had expressed admiration, then concern.

That concern had nearly undone her. Only years of her mother’s training had stopped her from resting her head on his shoulder and weeping from fatigue and fear and frustration.

He was just another one of God’s cruel jokes upon her life—a man she could let herself care about, if he weren’t a bondsman who would leave as soon as his indenture ended, and an Englishman who couldn’t be trusted.

The time had come to encourage Raleigh’s courtship.

Except she’d said she would go to the festival with Dominick. What had she been thinking?

Tabitha slapped a bowl of water onto the table hard enough to make some slosh over the edge. She wiped it up and fetched another clean towel from the linen press in the hall, then poked her head around the edge of the back door to find Dominick talking to Japheth about her aging horse.

“I’m ready for you,” she called.

He shook hands with the older man and strode toward her with his easy grace. “Your nag looks as tired as you do.”

“At least you didn’t tell me I look like the horse.” She smiled and took his hand in hers. “Come to the table. I’m going to wash and inspect the wound.”

To her surprise, sand was caked in the stitches and beneath his normally spotless fingernails.

She glanced at his face. “What have you been doing? Digging for clams?”

“No, but I’d like to. Do you go crabbing?”

“Often. But tell me how your hand got so dirty when the rest of you didn’t.”

He shrugged. “Just looking at some rocks on the shore. Will you take me crabbing one day?”

“Maybe.” She plunged his hand into the bowl of water. “You’ll need to be more careful with this wound in the future. It’s healed well, but not completely.”

“And what a pity it would be if I had to come back and have you care for me.” His fathomless brown eyes gazed into hers in a way that made her pulse skip more beats than was healthy. “It would be an excellent excuse to see you if you won’t go crabbing with me.”

“You may have better luck crabbing with me than getting medical treatment from me, after tomorrow.” Tabitha rubbed gently at his palm to ensure no sand would creep into the minute holes left behind by the removal of the stitches. “Wilkins is angry about his wife’s death and wants me to suffer by taking away my livelihood.”

“Is it just his wife’s death he wants you to pay for?” Dominick caught hold of her hand to keep her from concentrating on his wound. “Is there more?”

“I can’t tell you.”

Which, of course, told him too much.

“I don’t mean regarding your patient. I mean, do you know things that could harm his reputation, so he has to harm yours first?”

“I don’t talk about my patients.”

The now faint mark across her throat burned all of a sudden, and she recalled the knife, the sting of the blade, the warning not to speak of the night. Wilkins? Could it have been?

No, he knew as well as anyone else in town that she kept her mouth shut, as her mother and her grandmother had. If Mrs. Wilkins had said anything that made sense, which she had not, Tabitha would not have repeated it. No, Wilkins had begun his campaign against her in an official capacity, with the town council, soon after she’d received the summons to cross the peninsula, for that was information she might have to divulge, if Sally’s family wanted him to make reparation for his promise, his seduction, his abandonment. But a midwife discredited by a town council would not be called to testify in a lawsuit.

“It’s not over his wife at all.” Tabitha resumed work on Dominick’s hand. She snipped through the threads in their neat line across the flesh of the palm between thumb and forefinger.

“The men of the council are good men,” Dominick said.

“This is going to hurt.” She tugged out the first stitch to stop him from discussing her situation further.

His breath hissed through his teeth. “You’re a cruel—” She tugged out the second stitch. “Ah!”

“One more.” She gave him a cheerful smile.

“You’d better not break your word to go—” His teeth snapped together.

“Almost done.” Tabitha spread more foul-smelling comfrey ointment on his palm, then wrapped a strip of linen around his hand. “That should do. Keep it clean and come to me if the redness doesn’t go away or spreads. That is—” Her throat closed.

“Oh, my dear.” Dominick shoved back his chair and rose. “Don’t be so distressed over this.” He rested his hands on her shoulders.

He stood a full head taller than she, and the temptation to lean her head against his chest and let him hold her nearly knocked her off balance. Her body ached for affection, for comfort, for security, as she faced the possibility of having her freedom, her livelihood, taken from her.

Security she would never receive from Dominick Cherrett, bondsman, Englishman.

She stepped out of arm’s length, allowing his hands to fall to his sides. “I’ll stop being distressed if God remembers I exist and takes care of matters. Now you’d best be going. Your master wouldn’t like me being the cause of you getting in after sundown.”

He flinched as though she’d struck him. In a way, she had with her reminder of his servant status. She might often be treated as no better than a housemaid or perhaps respected housekeeper, but she was a free woman. Pointing out that he was not free to come and go as he pleased set a barrier between them.

“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was cool and so very English. “Shall I have Kendall send your fee? I do presume a bondsman doesn’t have to pay for his own care.”

“Mayor Kendall will pay me.” Though she knew doing so was unkind, she added, “He’s always done so with his redemptioners.”

“Then I bid you good evening.” He spun on his heel with military precision and stalked to the door. When he opened it, a blast of mist-laden air swirled into the room, cold and smelling of the sea and her garden. She expected him to simply walk out without another word, but just before he closed the portal behind him, he flashed his beguiling grin. “You’ve still promised to go to the fete with me . . . even if I am low company for you.”

The door closed. Tabitha remained where she was, her gaze fixed on the panel as though she could see through it, could see his retreating form tall and straight as his long legs ate up the distance to the gate.

The gate where someone had waylaid her with a knife.

She pressed her fingers to her throat. It should be him. She wanted it to be him. Anyone else who might fear some knowledge she could have unwittingly gleaned from being about that night was someone she’d known all her life—a neighbor, a friend, a patient.

But blaming Dominick without proof wasn’t fair. She was merely struggling against her attraction to him, warning herself to break off all contact. Yet how else could she work out what he was up to along the shore if she didn’t spend time in his company? If matters went badly for her with the council, she would need a way to restore her good name, her reputation, her position of respected woman in the community. If she could find out who lay behind the disappearances, if Dominick truly was a participant who could lead her to answers and a way to stop the abductions, no one would listen to Harlan Wilkins.

From the moment Tabitha walked into the town hall, her back straight, her head high, her knees wobbling, to present herself before the council, she knew the men had been listening to Harlan Wilkins a great deal. Only Mayor Kendall, residing at the head of the long table, did not look upon her with censure. He rose, drew out a chair, and set a glass of water before her, though a manservant—not Dominick—hovered nearby to perform these tasks for the council.

“We just need to ask you a few questions,” Kendall said in a gentle voice. “You do understand why we’ve called you here.”

“Yes, sir.” She refrained from glaring at Wilkins.

He sat at the opposite end of the table, his dark eyes narrowed, his jaw bunched. If he’d been closer, she feared she would have lost her temper and thrown her water in his face. He deserved worse, but that wasn’t her place.

“Mr. Wilkins has accused me of being unqualified to practice my profession,” she continued. And dared not take her to court for fear of what she might testify about his actions. “He wishes to have me censured from practicing.”

“What do you have to say for yourself regarding these charges, Miss Eckles?” Kendall asked.

“You’ve said it all right there.” Wilkins surged to his feet. “She is Miss Eckles, not Mrs. Eckles. She shouldn’t be allowed to deliver babies when she hasn’t borne one herself.”

“Many women who have never borne children are midwives.” Tabitha spoke those words calmly, out of practice. She’d been challenged on her status since taking over her mother’s work.

“We should have sought for another apothecary to come when Teagues died,” another council member declared. “A female this young? It’s bound to cause trouble.”

“Many women are not comfortable with a man attending—” A hubbub of voices interrupted Tabitha’s explanation. From the exclamations, most of these men didn’t care if their wives were uncomfortable or not.

“It’s the safety of the mother and the child that matters,” Mr. Lester, the postmaster, said in his soft voice. “I understand that doctors can use implements that help the birthing process and have saved many lives.”

Tabitha clenched her fists beneath the shelter of the table. The man was right. Doctors held the monopoly on the use of forceps. From what she’d read, many mothers and their babies had been saved by this instrument, as it was thinner than even slender hands like hers and could aid the baby’s entrance into the world.

“In Norfolk,” Wilkins declared, “women are happy to use a physician’s care.”

“Not all of them.” Tabitha caught and held his gaze and smiled.

His face reddened. But he held all the cards in this game, if he persuaded the others to go along with his scheme of discrediting her. If Sally sued for support of her child and called Tabitha to testify, Wilkins’s lawyers could bring her testimony into disrepute by claiming she merely wanted revenge.

Oh, you are a clever man.

All she could do was attempt to discredit him now.

“You’ve accused me of providing poor care to your wife on the night of her accident,” Tabitha said. “But you weren’t with her, so how would you know what sort of care I provided her?”

Most of the men frowned at her. None gave Wilkins the glances or murmurs of disapproval she would have expected at the least.

“What man wishes to be about when his wife is in travail?” Lester shuddered, and his spectacles slid down his nose.

Now the murmurs came—murmurs of assent to Lester’s assertion.

Tabitha glanced from one to another and was almost glad she wasn’t married. Almost. She knew these men, had known most of them all her life. She’d delivered a few of their children and had been present when her mother delivered still more. Most of them loved their wives, some even as devoted as bridegrooms. Their devotion led to a horror of hearing their wives suffering to bear the fruit of their union and affection. Most of them had stayed nearby, despite their terror of “women’s things.”

But Wilkins had left his young, new, and expectant wife alone even before her travail . . .

Which meant none of the men would blame him. He hadn’t known until his presence was no longer necessary.

Tabitha compressed her lips to stop from biting them. She tried to catch the eye of each man present. Only Mayor Kendall, the one unmarried and childless man in the group, would return her gaze. “What qualifies you, Miss Eckles?” he asked.

Tabitha took a long, deep breath to ensure the steadiness of her voice. “I apprenticed with my mother for six years before her death. The women of my family have always started working with their mothers at the age of sixteen, whether married or not. So when Momma died, I took on the practice. And when the apothecary died last year—”

“You thought you could act like a surgeon at the least.” Wilkins sneered. “Uppity for a female.”

“Mayor Kendall’s redemptioner owes a well-healed hand to my care,” Tabitha shot back. “If I hadn’t cleaned it and stitched it—”

“Was that what you were doing with him on the beach yesterday?” Wilkins overrode her explanation, his upper lip curling. “Cleaning and stitching his hand, with your hair hanging down like a wanton?”