Lady in the Mist (27 page)

“Nothing more than a list of dates and a name.”

“Was last night one of those dates?” She posed the question but knew the answer.

Dominick gave a brief nod.

“And Ral—” She choked on the name. “Raleigh’s name was listed?”

Dominick didn’t answer. He didn’t nod or shake his head. He turned along the landward side of the dunes and picked his way with care, yet quickly, through the rank grasses.

“Dominick, should we go to the Trowers if they’re going to be hostile to you?” Tabitha asked at last.

“I don’t particularly care if they are.” He sounded cold.

He sounded like she thought an aristocratic Englishman would—frosty and indifferent to lesser beings. Lesser beings like her, a schoolmaster’s daughter. A midwife’s daughter. A spinster midwife.

Though he held her hand close to his side, she felt like a chasm was opening between them.

“Are you looking for footprints?”

“Yes.”

They reached a rise of land behind the Trower homestead. The house lay nestled amidst a sea of carefully tended greenery and neat outbuildings. Chickens clucked in a fenced yard, and a cow lowed from a small pasture.

“Things would have been muddy last night,” she pointed out.

“And as long as they weren’t too trampled today, we might learn something.” Dominick released her hand. “Do you know which room is Raleigh’s?”

“Only because I know which windows belong to the other rooms.” Tabitha gave the house a wide berth in the hope that no one inside would recognize her and Dominick. “What can footprints tell you?” she asked, then answered it herself. “If he was taken.”

“Precisely.”

“How did you know that?”

He gave her his swift and brilliant grin. “As a recalcitrant schoolboy, I had to learn how to cover up my . . . er . . . escapades.”

“Did you learn the hard way? I mean, were you caught?”

“Yes, ma’am. My footprints gave me away to my elder brother, who took my nursery pudding for a month to keep his silence.”

“I think you’ll have to translate
nursery pudding
for me.” She held up her hand. “Later. Raleigh’s room is above the porch. Should I distract the others again?”

“A wise idea.” Dominick looked preoccupied as he headed for the side of the house.

Tabitha approached the kitchen door. She’d never in her life seen anyone enter the Trowers’ house from the front. They rarely used their parlor. But when she walked through the open door in the back, she found a nearly dead fire and no signs of cooking. Only the smell of fish hung in the air, and voices rose and fell from the direction of the parlor.

She let herself through the door. Talk ceased at her appearance. Fanny scowled at her but bit her lip, as though keeping herself from saying something rude.

“I came as soon as I learned,” Tabitha said, going to Mrs. Trower. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you for coming, child.” Mrs. Trower clasped Tabitha’s hand. “This must distress you greatly.”

“It does.”

Tabitha studied the woman’s face. Although her swollen eyelids bore the evidence of previous tears, the rest of her face was calm, peaceful.

Her smile was genuine and warm as she drew Tabitha down beside her. “We’ve been praying for him, and I know the Lord is taking care of him.”

“I admire your faith.”

Tabitha wanted the Lord to take care of her and know it as certainly as Mrs. Trower did. But Raleigh’s mother was a good woman, a woman who could pray, a woman without a conscience burdened by the guilt of knowing she had given too little to others. Even now, Tabitha sat with the family and a few neighbors only because Dominick was searching for clues to what had happened to Raleigh and needed to go unnoticed as easily as possible. Clues that could lead to his freedom. Freedom to return to England and away from her.

“Let us hope God chooses to listen to your prayers,” Tabitha said.

“It’s the English.” Fanny curled her upper lip. “And Tabitha there is courting the one who’s probably guilty.”

“Mr. Cherrett is a gentleman, for all he’s a redemptioner,” Mrs. Downing interjected before Tabitha could respond. “And he couldn’t have taken Raleigh because he is a bondsman.”

“Never you mind her, Tabbie,” Felicity soothed. “She’s just jealous because he never looked at her.”

“That’s not true,” Fanny cried. “Momma, how could she say such a thing?”

“Girls.” Mrs. Trower sighed. “Fanny, go fetch a cup of coffee for Tabitha. She looks tired.”

“No, thank you.” Tabitha rose, afraid Fanny would see Dominick if she went into the kitchen. “I should go look in on Mrs. Parks. With the upset, she could go off her milk.” She pressed her cheek to Mrs. Trower’s, nodded to the other ladies, and beat a hasty retreat.

She didn’t see Dominick outside. Thinking he might have returned to the village on his own, she started in that direction. Movement behind an outbuilding caught her attention. She turned. Dominick leaned against the shed where Raleigh had been knocked down. He stared inland, his face an expressionless mask.

Tabitha joined him out of sight of the house. “You found something.”

“I did.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the rough wood of the shed wall. “My dearest, please hear me out before you take a scalpel to my gullet.”

“Hear you out about . . . Raleigh?” She shivered despite the day’s heat. “Is it . . . bad?”

“I think so.” Dominick faced her and took her hands in his. “Tabitha, if you’re an impressed man, you have a limited number of ways to get out of the Navy. You get out by dying, because your ship is paid off—taken out of commission or destroyed—or by desertion. Yet Raleigh, who is questionably a subject—I mean, a citizen of the United States of America, at least as far as the British Navy is concerned—came home claiming they let him go. I’ve always had my suspicions about him, but I couldn’t prove anything, and who would believe my word of concern over his?”

“A bondsman to a freeman.” Tabitha nodded. Her head swam, and the hair on the back of her neck rose. “What were your suspicions? That he deserted?”

“Yes. Most men only get flogged for it, but they can be hanged under the Articles of War.”

“Why didn’t you think his ship was paid off?” She wanted the question to be a challenge; it sounded like a fragment of a straw to grasp.

“It occurred to me. So I asked that sloop commander about it.” Dominick’s fingers tightened on hers. “It wasn’t. He has orders to search for deserters on these shores, but you saved Raleigh that day by being aboard. He wasn’t about to leave you alone on a fishing boat.”

“How kind.” Tabitha’s tone dripped sarcasm.

“It was. He could have been accused of shirking his duty. But that’s beside the point.” Dominick held her gaze. “Tabitha, my love, Raleigh either deserted or was sent here, perhaps bribed with a promise of freedom.”

“Just like you.”

“Yes, except I am here to catch the man trying to foment war, and Raleigh’s working with him.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Tabitha pulled her hands free and crossed her arms over her middle. “Maybe he’s trying to catch the same person.”

“Tabitha, Raleigh left on his own last night. I found footprints in the mud leading away from the house. A single pair of footprints coming this way.”

“And?” Tabitha pressed her forearms hard against her belly to keep it from jumping.

“And I found this in Kendall’s study.” Dominick drew a folded sheet of paper from his coat pocket.

In a glance, she saw it was a diary of sorts with a list of dates and a few names. One name appeared three times—the night before she met Dominick on the beach and Raleigh came home, the night Raleigh was attacked, and the previous night.

Thomas Kendall.

“So your suspicions are right.” Tabitha’s fingers flexed, crushing the edge of the paper. Her eyes blurred. “Mayor Kendall and Raleigh are guilty of betraying their country.”

29

______

Raleigh opened his eyes. The first thing he thought was that the second blow to his head had blinded him, so dark were his surroundings. The second thing he thought was that the foul odor around him was going to make him ill. The third thing he thought was that, within the day, he was going to be a dead man.

He might not be able to see in the blackness, but he heard the creaks and groans of timber, along with the splash of water and distant shouts of men. Coupled with the stench, he knew he had been taken aboard a man-of-war, a British ship. He was indeed a dead man. He had failed in his mission. He would be considered a deserter now, his punishment hanging.

He doubled over. A moan rose to his lips, burst forth. He clasped his knees and buried his aching head in his arms.

“You’re awake.” A disembodied voice rose from the blackness. “I was afraid they’d killed you.”

“Who is it?” Raleigh guessed the answer before he received it.

“Donald Parks. I was on my way home to my wife and child.” His voice broke. “Children. When we dropped anchor in Hampton Roads, I had word that my wife had another boy. My b-boy.” He fell silent. Several long, deep breaths told of a man trying to get control. “I was nine months away. It’s too long. But I thought I’d made it safe home.”

“I’m sorry.” Raleigh’s eyes burned. “I never meant—”

He couldn’t confess what he’d done, what a fool he was. If Parks ever got free or was able to write home, he would tell everyone about Raleigh’s treachery. Tabitha would count herself fortunate to have fallen in love with a redemptioner instead of a man without honor. He’d thought he could win her back, show her he wasn’t the coward who had deserted her before making her his wife. Now she would learn the truth and think of him with contempt, loathing, scorn.

And as a traitor.

“Oh, Tabbie,” he murmured past the feeling of a band compressing his ribs to squeeze every drop of life from his heart. “My dear, dear girl.”

“Did you leave a lady behind too?” Parks asked.

“I did.” Raleigh shook his head, fought back a cry of pain, and blinked against an explosion of fireworks before his eyes. “At least I had hope of her being my lady.”

Except that wasn’t really the truth either. He’d had hope until he saw a redemptioner kissing her, and her not raising a hue and cry over the man’s insolence. He’d tried to win her back, but Dominick Cherrett had taken hold of her heart.

“She’s in love with someone else.” Oddly, the admission spoken aloud released some of the tension in his chest. “I just wish she’d remember me well.”

“Remember you?” Parks sounded confused. “She’ll see you when you get home, won’t she?”

“Parks, we aren’t going to get home. This is a British man-of-war. Once you’re aboard, it’s nearly impossible to get off again.”

“But we’re Americans. They can’t keep us. They can’t. They can’t.” His voice rose with each repetition, and he began to bang against the bulkhead. “Do you all hear me? You can’t keep me! I’m an American.”

“Shut up in there.” Someone pounded back. “We’re trying to sleep.”

“But it’s a mistake,” Parks bellowed. “I’m an American.”

“That’s what they all say.” Wood rasped against wood.

Light flooded into the chamber, and Raleigh moaned against the pain of the brilliance and the man behind the flame.

“This one ain’t a Yankee.” A booted foot slammed into Raleigh’s ribs. “He’s a subject of the king, and he’s a deserter.”

“Trower?” Donald Parks questioned. “Are you Raleigh Trower?”

“Yes.” Raleigh bowed his head. “And yes, I’m a deserter too.”

“But you’re an American,” Parks protested.

“He were born in Canada,” the British seaman said. “And we’ll put down on the muster book that you’re from Bermuda or someplace, so’s we can claim you ain’t no Yankee.”

“You can’t.” Parks lunged.

Raleigh tripped him, sending him sprawling on the deck before he could attack the seaman.

“He’s a bosun’s mate,” Raleigh said with a sigh. “If you strike him, they’ll flog you.”

“He can watch,” the bosun’s mate said. “’Cause they gonna flog you, or maybe hang you. Depends on the behavior of your friend here. If he’s good, you get flogged. If he don’t cooperate, you get hanged. You got till the captain’s dinner is over to think about what you want to do.”

He returned to the doorway, stepped over the coaming, and closed the hatch. Blackness fell around them like a blanket, like a shroud.

“Thank you for stopping me.” Parks shifted. “Can you tell me what’s afoot here, Trower?”

“I can tell you a tale that will make you mind your p’s and q’s.”

“I want a tale that will get me free.”

“That’s what I mean.” Raleigh leaned his head back and realized they’d been locked in the bread room, probably until the ship weighed anchor and neither of them could swim to shore or bribe a provisioning boat to take them home. “I deserted once. They caught me and gave me the option between hanging and going ashore to help sell Americans to the British. One captain in particular. Roscoe.” He pronounced the name like an epithet.

“You were involved in . . .” Raleigh sensed Parks moving away from him. “How could you?”

“I thought I could discover the man’s identity.” Raleigh sighed. “I couldn’t. He was too careful. And when I tried to stop you from being taken, he put me here too. Now I’ll be lucky if they only flog me half to death instead of hanging me outright for desertion.”

“Just for trying to stop them from taking me away?” Parks sounded appalled, bewildered.

“For deserting in the first place. I’m listed in the book as a Canadian. That makes me a British subject. And that means they’ll likely hang me for desertion.”

“Then we have to escape.”

“I can’t.” Raleigh held his aching head. “I can’t go back. I’ve been a traitor to my own country, to America. They’ll hang me too. Here I’ll have the chance to beg them just to flog me and somehow make up for everything I’ve done. Maybe . . .” He let his voice trail off while his thoughts raced ahead.

If he went back to Virginia without knowing who had been the ringleader of the abductions, he would not only die the death of a traitor, a shame to his family, but he would leave Tabitha thinking the worst of him. She might never love him, but he didn’t want her to despise him, to think his faith in God was false.

“She’ll never forgive me this time,” he said to the darkness, and Parks if he was listening. “That’s the biggest burden to bear, knowing I’ve played a role in Tabbie’s damaged relationship with God, because mine’s been so bad, so unforgivable.”

“No relationship with God is unforgivable,” Parks said. “He forgives us if we ask for it.”

“That’s what the chaplain aboard ship said. But I didn’t trust God to get me home and ended up betraying my country.”

“God still loves you.”

Somewhere above them, a bell clanged eight times. Feet pounded on the deck and men shouted and grumbled. Midnight? Dawn? Noon? They would haul him up for punishment at one of those hours.

“Can God forgive me for making someone else fall away from her faith?” Raleigh asked.

“You didn’t make her fall away,” Parks said. “She made that decision on her own.”

“But my behavior won’t convince her to return to the Lord.”

Parks said nothing for so long, Raleigh feared the man knew of no answer to this. The ship rocked. Raleigh’s head spun. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to keep talking to the older man, whose faith seemed unshaken despite his circumstances.

“Trower,” Parks said at last, “we are accountable for our behavior, but God promises that, as long as we repent and ask for it, He will forgive us.”

“But I feel I have to do something to make up for my mistakes.”

“There’s nothing we can do to make up for the past.” Parks sighed. “We’d all be doomed if we had to earn our forgiveness. Believe me, my life hasn’t been a good example of a man of God. But I have freedom in my heart knowing God has forgiven me anyway.” He chuckled. “Now if only I could have freedom in my body.”

“If only . . .” Despite the darkness, Raleigh closed his eyes.

He knew Donald’s wife. She was sweet and pretty, and her family was generous and loving. She had the new baby. Her husband shouldn’t be where he was. None of them should be. Yet if Raleigh’s contact wasn’t stopped, he would steal more and more men until President Madison declared war. Some men prospered from war. Try as he might, Raleigh could think of no one in the Seabourne area who would profit from a war. But the frigate’s captain knew, since he was working with him.

“I might not need to do anything to earn God’s forgiveness,” Raleigh said, “but what if I want to?”

“Then I suggest you pray hard.” Parks took a long, unsteady breath. “We both need to pray for our release.”

“We will.” Raleigh gripped the edge of a barrel filled with ship’s biscuit and maneuvered to his knees. “I have an idea.”

Tabitha paused beside a birch tree and wrapped her arm around the slender trunk. Her legs felt as though they had lost their ability to hold her upright, yet she couldn’t hold on to Dominick for support. What she knew she must do led to a future where he wouldn’t be around for her to hold on to, as no one else had been.

“God is always with me,” Marjorie Parks had said regarding living without her husband for months on end. “And he’s given me my family.”

Tabitha’s family was gone, but she had a community. Her work might send Dominick home to England, but it would also garner her accolades in the village.

And God already cared. She was supposed to believe that.

“Yet where were You when I prayed for my family’s healing or for Raleigh to come back?” she cried aloud. “Even Raleigh returning is a joke. A sad, sick joke, if he’s involved.” She turned to bury her face against the tree trunk and found Dominick’s shoulder instead. She pushed against it. “No, I can’t depend on you. You’ll go too. Soon, if we’re right at all.”

“I’m here now, dear lady.” He stroked her hair, and she realized it had tumbled down her back sometime in her rushing about. “And I’ll come back for you.” He kissed her temple. “No, I’ll take you with me.”

“Don’t make empty promises. I don’t need them.” She placed her hands against his chest to push him away, but she clung instead. “Your conscience is bearing enough without feeling guilty over me.”

“Then that gives me motivation to stay.” He curved his hand around her chin and tilted her face up. “I presume you were yelling at God earlier, though, not me.”

“Yes. He’s supposed to be listening.” She blinked against the impact of his deep brown eyes on her heart. “Part of me wants to pray you’ll stay, but I’m afraid to. Whether or not I have faith in God can’t depend on whether or not—” She stopped, hearing her own words.

Dominick smiled. “Whether or not God answers your prayers the way you want Him to?”

She nodded.

“If He doesn’t, it’s because He has other plans. Better plans.”

“My family dying when I still need them is a better plan?” Tabitha pulled away.

“We can’t always know why God arranges things as He does. That’s faith.”

“How can you have faith and think you need to atone for your past?”

“I . . . can’t.” Sadness clouded Dominick’s face. “I know God can forgive me. But I don’t know how. What I’ve done . . .” He looked away. “And now I’ve just told you two people you care about aren’t who you think they are.”

“You think they’re involved.” Tabitha stiffened her spine. “We can’t convict them on a single sheet of paper you found and Raleigh disappearing. Donald Parks disappeared too. And Mayor Kendall is in Norfolk.”

“Is he?” Dominick tilted his head as though listening. “He only said he was going there. He rode, so there’s no servant to verify the truth of it. And Raleigh? For all we know, he’s gone because he’s taken Parks to his British contact.”

“Dominick, you can’t mean—”

But of course he did. He made a great deal of sense. Too much sense. And she could help make sense of things too.

“Whether or not Mayor Kendall is in Norfolk can be proven.” Tabitha smoothed down the front of her dress, seeking strawberry stains. “I can go under the guise of visiting the new mother there, and find out.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“If you’re caught, you’ll be flogged.”

Dominick winced but shrugged. “I’ll risk it.”

“No—” Tabitha broke off. She would ensure that he didn’t go, but not by trying to talk him out of it. “It’s too late to leave today. We’d be benighted on the road.”

“But you can’t travel on Sunday.”

“It’s the best day to travel. The roads will be quiet and I can be assured Kendall won’t leave Norfolk—if he’s there.”

“If you go, I’ll follow you.”

“You can’t. I took your key.”

“I’d like it back so I can look out for you.”

“No.”

“Do you know what it’s like to be treated like a prisoner? I had more freedom as a vagabond in England than I have here.”

“If God cares about you, He’ll see to your welfare.” She crossed her arms over her middle, daring him with her eyes.

“Oh, He cares. I have no doubt about that. He cares about what I’ve done . . .” He turned away. “Very well, go to Norfolk. You know where to find me if you need me.”