Lady in the Mist (32 page)

“Can’t.” His eyes closed. “Sleep.”

“All right. All right.” She resisted the urge to shake him awake. “I’ll have my manservant carry you inside and get you out of those wet clothes. But first, tell me . . .” She had to clear her throat. “Raleigh? Is he all right? Do you know?”

“Yes, I do.” Donald caught his breath. “I’m sorry, Miss Tabitha.” His face worked. “He’s dead.”

34

______

“I simply wish to see if she arrived home safely.” Dominick explained himself to Letty for the second time. “She was attacked last night. She’s injured. But she came into town to help me, and I have to assure myself she’s safe.”

“You’d have heard if she isn’t.” Letty sprinkled salt into a cooking pot, from which the aroma of stewing venison, onions, and garlic rose on fragrant steam. “Unless she was foolish enough to walk along the beach.”

“Which she just might do.” Dominick paced the length of the kitchen. “I can’t live with this confinement if it means I can’t ensure the safety of my lady.”

“Is she your lady?” Letty faced him, her hands on her hips. “Seems to me she’s not a lady, as you English know it, and you won’t be taking her back to your fancy family in four years, or whenever they forgive you enough to pay off your indenture papers.”

“They won’t.” Which was something he needed to consider. “They’re happy to be rid of me.”

So would they be happy to see him back even if he did work out who was trying to foment war? Something else to ponder.

“And would they welcome you with a village midwife on your arm?” Letty persisted.

Dominick toed a place in the brick floor, where the mortar was chipping away. “I don’t think so.”

“Then why are you toying with her affections?”

“I’m not toying with them. That is . . .” He slumped onto a chair and forked his fingers through his hair. “Letty, I don’t know what to do. I should have stayed away from her, but I didn’t and now the damage is done. With Trower gone, I can’t repair it.”

“You could stay here.” Letty seated herself across from him. “Four years goes by quick. Or maybe Kendall would give you permission to marry.”

“And have me live a separate life from my bride, locked up at night like the horses?” Dominick gripped the edge of the worktable. “Letty, I can’t wed her until I’m free, and I can’t take her home with me and expect to repair matters with my family. We have no future. And—” Suddenly he couldn’t speak.

“Seems to me that a family who throws you out, then won’t welcome you back because you married a lovely girl like Miss Tabitha, isn’t one who shows loving-kindness.”

Dominick shook his head. “I don’t want to have to choose.” At that moment, looking into a future without Tabitha, he didn’t want to complete his mission if it meant going back to a family that had thrown him out on the road like a stray dog. “Yet how can I make my peace with God otherwise?” he thought aloud.

“You make your peace with God by asking for it, not by doing something.” Letty rose and gave the pot a stir. “But you know that. You hear the parson.”

“The parson doesn’t know how many people I’ve hurt. I need to make up for it.”

“You can’t.” Letty slammed the lid onto the kettle. “There’s nothing you can do to make up for any sin you commit. Making yourself suffer won’t take away anyone else’s suffering.”

“But it reminds me not to do it again.”

Yet there he was, knowing he was going to hurt Tabitha if he left for England once he obtained his freedom. England and the family that hadn’t contacted him once in six months. England and the family that didn’t understand that his faith in God had prevented him from serving in the kind of vicar’s position his father wanted—one who would preach according to what the marquess wanted the people to believe, not what the Bible said to believe. England and a family that could give him entrée into a world he knew, a world in which he felt comfortable and welcome.

Welcome once. Yet who had contacted him other than his one Oxford tutor? Dominick had accomplished what few gentlemen had—taken the tests to obtain his degree—and only his tutors had congratulated him.

“I’m English, Letty,” he said at last. “There’s no place for me here.”

“And what place is there for you there?” Letty asked.

“I . . . don’t know.” Dominick slid from his chair and began to pace again. “Gentlemen’s work. A steward. A secretary. Perhaps a position in the government, if my family will sponsor me.”

“Lots of maybes and ifs.” Letty took flour and lard from the pantry. “Here, at least, you have people who love you for certain.”

“Then that’s the easy road and I can’t take it. It costs me too little.”

“Oh, lad . . .” Letty sighed. “Go on with you. As long as you’re back in time to serve supper, there’s no sense in your fretting over the lady.”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be back.” He reached behind him to tighten the ribbon holding his hair in place, then darted out the door before Letty changed her mind.

Odd he’d told her staying would be no sacrifice. Surely it was. He would have Tabitha, yes, but he had nothing else, no prospects but more servitude, no standing in society, no name that would open doors once he was vindicated. In truth, he would have no security to offer a wife.

Or was it security he sought for himself?

Dominick slid to a halt beside the church. The doors stood open, and the hard-edged notes of a harpsichord being hammered with more exuberance than skill drifted into the square. He climbed the steps and slipped into one of the pews, closing the door with a click so the musician couldn’t hear. In the cool dimness, he slipped to his knees and leaned his brow on the immovable back of the pew in front of him.

The position felt strange, uncomfortable despite the padded bench beneath his knees. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d knelt in a church. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed. He had so much to say, he didn’t know where to start.

The music banged off of his ears. His conscience created havoc in his chest. Words crowded into his throat, tasted bitter on his lips.

“I do remember, God. The last time I prayed was the night before I wrote my first letter. I asked for success in convincing my father I shouldn’t go into the church.”

He hadn’t waited for God’s help. He’d begun his campaign of destruction. Perhaps he’d meant it only for himself, but he’d learned that he was hurting others soon enough to stop.

“But I didn’t stop. I went my own way. I was so determined to reject serving the church, I didn’t think that—that . . .”

That God might want him serving his Lord and Savior?

The thought slammed into his head on a discordant collection of notes from the harpsichord, and he caught his breath. Surely God didn’t want him in the ministry. The idea was too horrendous, standing in the pulpit on Sundays while spending weekdays listening to instructions from one of Bruton’s minions or Bruton himself. That wasn’t serving God. And the church wouldn’t have him now.

Unless he accomplished his mission and his father took him back. And if he succeeded, then he would have to leave Tabitha, or his father wouldn’t help restore his son’s good name.

“Lord, this choice hurts too much.”

The temptation to run surged through him. He could ask Kendall to send him to the interior or sell his indenture to someone far away. He wouldn’t have to risk accomplishing his mission and could avoid the choice between Tabitha and his father—marriage to Tabitha or service to God.

Honor demanded he remain, discover who wanted to start a war, and choose. To accomplish that, he needed to talk to Tabitha about how she could help him.

She would help him leave her in order to restore his honor.

The thought of that much love turned him into a creature the consistency of a jellyfish. With effort, he forced himself to his feet and out of the pew. As he exited the church, he thought someone called his name. He didn’t look back. Staying in the quiet safety of the sanctuary felt like too much of a temptation. He had to reach Tabitha’s house and return to Kendall’s before dark.

He hastened on his way, raising a hand or giving a nod to people he passed. Other than a few who had blamed him after Parks’s and Trower’s disappearances, he seemed welcome in the town, even liked. It was a pretty place there by the sea, a much warmer and kinder sea than the English Channel near his home. His former home. He didn’t even mind the heat that much, except at night in his stifling attic. It was better than the freezing garret he’d stayed in for the week before a ship left for the other side of the Atlantic, before his uncle had found him.

Most of all, he liked the little cottage on the outskirts of town, where a wall protected the garden from the wind off the sea. The garden where roses vied with herbs for the lady’s favor. She healed with the herbs. She ate the roses.

The notion made him smile. He was still smiling as he let himself inside the gate and trotted up the path to the kitchen door.

“Mr. Cherrett.” Patience swung around to greet him, spraying a stream of steaming water from a kettle. “We wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know.” He stepped over the threshold and reached for a towel to mop up the water before the woman slipped. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I had to ensure that Miss Tabitha arrived home safely and is resting.”

“She’s safe enough, sir, but she’s not resting.” Patience began to pour the kettle’s contents into a washbasin. “Mr. Parks came crawling in about an hour ago.”

“Parks?” Stooping, Dominick lost his balance and sat in the water. “How? I thought he’d been taken.”

“And so he had.” Tabitha’s low voice drifted from the doorway. “He got away, thanks to Raleigh.” She stepped gingerly over the spilled water and offered Dominick her hand. “He probably died so Donald could get away.” Her voice was flat, her eyes red-rimmed.

“Oh, my dear.” Dominick scrambled to his feet and drew her to him.

A sob shuddered through her. He stroked the tail of hair tumbling down her back and murmured nonsense sounds while she wept.

Patience slipped out of the room, balancing the washbasin of hot water.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Dominick asked at last.

Tabitha nodded and pulled away. “They got picked up the other night and were rowed out to a frigate about a mile offshore. Donald was semiconscious and Raleigh completely gone. They were locked in a storage room, and the guards kept telling them Raleigh would be hanged for desertion.”

Dominick winced. “They didn’t?”

“No.” Tabitha smoothed his hopelessly wrinkled cravat. “The captain said he needed men so he would only flog Raleigh instead.”

“God have mercy on him.” Dominick’s back muscles tightened, and nausea filled his belly. “Was it . . . harsh?”

“It never got past the second blow.” Tabitha told Dominick what she knew of the events that followed. “Donald glanced back long enough to see someone go over the rail.”

Dominick heaved a sigh of relief. “So Trower could still be alive.”

“It doesn’t seem likely if—if he was shot.”

“But if he was running, he might have jumped into the sea and not fallen. It’s difficult to strike a moving target with a musket.”

“You think it’s possible?” Tabitha’s eyes lit her face like moonbeams on a dark night, then clouded again. “But they’d probably hang him now that they’ve likely worked out that he helped Donald escape.”

“Not yet. That takes a court martial, even for an impressed man.”

“So if he wasn’t killed in the escape, he’d still be—” Tabitha closed her eyes. “Why would I even hope he’d be alive? He’ll never get off that man-of-war now that they’ve gotten him back.”

“Would you want him here?” Dominick posed the question, though he didn’t want the answer. “Do you love him still, my dear? Could you . . . could you build a future with him?”

“Love him still?” Tabitha wiped her eyes on a corner of her apron. “I’m not sure I ever loved him as more than a dear friend of my youth. But we were so comfortable together before he left, we could have had a comfortable future.” She ducked her head, her lashes hiding her eyes. “If I didn’t have you, if circumstances were different when he returned, I could still have a future with him. But circumstances are as they are.”

“And can change.” Dominick cupped her face in his hands and kissed her long and hard, then released her and strode to the door into the rest of the house. “I need to talk to Parks, if he’s at all well enough and his wife’s not with him.”

“She’s not. He wants to be well enough to walk in his door, the silly man. So he’s sleeping, but you can wake him if it’s important.” The intensity of her gaze suggested she knew it was.

“It is.” Dominick set his jaw. “I need to know where that frigate is anchored. That captain is the key to all of this, if he’s receiving abducted men, and it’s time he was paid a visit from Lord Dominick Cherrett.”

“Dominick, you can’t. You won’t be home by sundown.” She grasped his arm. “Wait.”

“And have them sail, if they haven’t already?” He shook his head. “I have to take the risk, for Trower’s sake, for yours, and for mine.”

“But Kendall will punish you.”

“I’ll risk it.” Dominick shuddered at the thought of pain ripping across his back. “It’s worth the risk to end this warmongering once and for all.”

“But Dominick, I’ll—” She snapped her mouth shut so hard he heard her teeth snap together. “Please, don’t do it. I—I’ll go.”

“Do you think a British naval captain will talk to me or you?”

The question was cruel, condescending. He knew it before he saw the pain twist her features. It couldn’t be helped. She’d be a fool to take the kind of risk he intended. If this captain was involved with the abductions, he was dangerous. He would do away with a village midwife. But Dominick doubted the man would risk harming the son of a peer of the realm—however disgraced that son—or the nephew of a Vice Admiral of the Red.

“If I don’t return,” he added more gently, “you’ll know where to send someone to rescue me or to go after the frigate. Try to get a message to my uncle. A boat will put in at the inlet north of here on June 21.”

“You could be halfway to Barbados by then.” Tabitha twisted her hands in her apron. “You can’t risk it.”

“I can’t avoid risking it. If I don’t, I’ll suffer four more years of servitude and have accomplished nothing. Young men will continue to disappear from these shores, and we’ll have war inside a year.”

“Then let me go with you. If Raleigh is merely injured, he’ll need medical assistance. And—and you—” She gazed at him with wide, blue-gray eyes. “Please.”