Lady in the Mist (7 page)

“I wouldn’t do that, Miss Tabitha.” Patience flipped over the ham slices. “It ain’t safe.”

“The press-gangs aren’t going to take up a female.” She touched her fingers to her throat. Though she might see an Englishman.

Patience and Japheth argued. Tabitha ate her breakfast in silence and thus quickly. She grabbed a shawl from a hook by the door, picked up the satchel she liked to keep with her at all times, and departed with a brisk, “I’ll meet you and the wagon in the square.”

Warm, damp air swirled around her as she left her garden. She crossed the dunes and headed along the tide line. The breeze picked up and turned cooler, lifting the spring mist from the water and creating odd shadows along the brightening horizon. Waves pounded against the land, suggesting a storm out to sea.

Watchful, Tabitha headed south to where one of the numerous small waterways cut into the land to form a haven for fishing boats and well-worn paths on which to lengthen her walk to town. Halfway there, she paused at the Trowers’ inlet. Their jetty stretched into the stream. Raleigh could be coming into it with his father and their boat at any time. She couldn’t avoid him forever in a village like Seabourne. But neither did she have to make their next encounter look deliberate. With a sigh, she turned away from the sea and toward the nearest path over the dunes, through the sea grasses to where the trees began and the village lay beyond, sheltered from ocean storms.

A creak and rumble drifted to her ears over the muted roar of the sea. She paused and turned back. Wind lifted the veil of mist to display a golden pink line between dark sky and darker sea.

And against that sliver of light, as sharp as silhouette cutouts, a three-masted vessel bore down on a fishing boat.

“No,” she shouted, as though she could stop the inevitable. She ran toward the sea.

“No,” her voice echoed.

No, not an echo—another protesting cry, lower pitched than her voice. Footfalls followed, pounding the hard-packed sand toward the edge of the water.

“Don’t!”

Light flared across the water, glittering in the waves. Arms wrapped around her and dragged her to the sand as the concussion of a cannon blast surged toward the land like a tidal wave.

8

______

Tabitha gasped for breath. She lay on her back on the sand packed as hard as rock, staring at stars fading into streaks of lavender, and wondered if the air driven from her lungs would ever return, or if the blast of gunfire had caused irreparable damage.

“Miss Eckles, are you all right?” Dominick Cherrett asked.

“You,” she gasped. “You . . . oaf. You . . .” She ceased speech in favor of a struggle to sit up.

“Let me help you.” He slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and raised her to a sitting position.

He didn’t remove his arm. He knelt beside her, his head bent over hers, his hair falling soft and free of ribbon and powder to caress her cheek.

Breathing continued to prove difficult, though the effects of her fall—the numbing jolt to her torso—had already faded. She lifted a hand to brush away his soft waves, and he clasped it.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you.” The pale blur of his face hovered near hers, his breath brushing across her lips. “I acted without thinking.”

“I doubt that’s the first time.” She tugged her hand free of his but made no move to elude his supporting arm. “The first time you’ve acted without thinking.”

“In truth, Madam Midwife, I rarely act without thinking. But I usually don’t have a ship of the line firing so close at hand.”

“The ship.” She jerked out of the circle of his arm and surged to her feet so she could look out to sea. “How could I forget it?”

Easily. She wasn’t thinking with Dominick Cherrett so close to her, smelling of sun-dried linen and heady sandalwood—an expensive fragrance for a bondsman, and hauntingly familiar.

She peered into the lightening sky. The ship appeared as nothing more than a curved dark hulk against the horizon, while the fishing boat swooped toward shore like a dolphin fleeing a net.

“They got away.” She spun toward Dominick, heart soaring. “They didn’t get captured.”

“It looks that way.” He caught hold of both of her hands. “For once.”

“Indeed.” She started to yank her hands free, felt the bandage wrapping his left palm, and hesitated. “Mr. Cherrett.” As much as she wished to be free of his hold, she didn’t want to hurt him. “Please let go of my hand,” she said.

“Which one?” Teeth flashed in a grin.

She ground her teeth. “Both of them.”

“Ah, if you insist.” He drew his fingers away, the tips grazing her palms, stopping. “What is this?” He traced the scabbed-over marks where the rosebush had punctured her palm.

“A disagreement with a rosebush.”

“I have been so distracted by your lovely face I didn’t notice before now. I am sorry. It must have been painful.” He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the palm. “Better?”

“No, worse.” She’d rather have a hundred thorns driven into her flesh than to feel the jolt of heat rushing through her, stealing her breath as though she’d been knocked to the ground once more. “You shouldn’t do that.” Her voice sounded breathless.

“Probably not.” He released her hand, remaining close to her. “But be assured I didn’t do it without thinking first.”

“Why would you—”

Tackle creaked above the hiss of the retreating tide. She glanced toward the sound and caught sight of the fishing boat heading toward shore, hull down with its night’s catch, and she understood.

Dominick Cherrett, the Englishman, wanted to distract her from the incident of the frigate firing upon that single-masted craft.

She faced him, eyes narrowed. “When threats don’t work you resort to—to—flirtation?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He sounded bored. “Does a man need a reason to kiss the hand of a lovely lady?”

“I am not lovely and I am not a lady,” she snapped. “And you, sir, are once again on the beach at an hour when you’re supposed to be in your master’s home. And, once again, we have a British vessel invading our territory at the same time you appear on the beach. Coincidence? I think not.”

“Neither do I.”

His calm reaction to her accusation left Tabitha speechless.

“I came out early in the hopes of seeing you. I hoped to waylay you to inspect my hand.”

“In the dark?” She snorted. “Unlikely.”

Up the beach, the fishing boat entered the inlet and lowered its sail in preparation for tying up to a jetty. Other men in proximity—American men—lent Tabitha a sense of security. Dominick Cherrett wouldn’t harm her with others so near.

Her hand still tingling from his kiss, she doubted he could harm her at all. When she encountered him under other circumstances, she believed him to be as innocent as he claimed. On the beach at dawn, with a British vessel vanishing over the horizon after firing on a fishing boat, she believed him capable of anything dastardly.

She touched the healing mark on her throat. “You don’t need to see me regarding your hand, Mr. Cherrett, unless it’s gone septic.”

“Alas, it is healing very well, thanks to that vile ointment you left behind. What’s in it? Kitchen waste?”

“Comfrey.” Her lips twisted into a reluctant smile. “Its foul odor is only outweighed by its healing properties. But if you don’t need me for your hand, why are you here?”

“For you.” He drew a knuckle along her cheekbone. “I said I would join you on your early morning walk one day.”

“I should report you for being here,” she thought aloud.

He took her arm and started walking toward the edge of the wave-flattened sand. “But you won’t. You enjoy my company, despite your suspicions.”

“I believe I have reason for my suspicions.” Though she hadn’t seen anything that could be construed as a signal. “I won’t tell about this night’s work either, since your mission has failed and the boat got away.”

That boat had reached the jetty, a quarter mile down the beach. Men’s voices shouting directions to one another drifted toward her. One sounded familiar, and her stomach contracted.

“But it’s for my own reasons and not for any of your enticing tricks,” she clipped out, then scrambled for an explanation to have ready when he asked the inevitable.

He picked up her bag from where she’d dropped it on the sand. “If I don’t charm you, and you don’t like Englishmen in general, even ones more charming than I—if that’s possible—I wonder why you’ll hold your peace this time, without the fear of a threat.”

Tabitha couldn’t help herself. She laughed at his outrageous speech. “You’re incorrigible.”

Dominick laughed in response. “That’s what my tutors at Ox—” He stopped, as though slamming a door on revealing something about his past. But Tabitha, daughter of a schoolmaster, knew about tutors and Oxford, and her skin tingled with curiosity—with more suspicions—regarding a well-spoken Englishman who’d attended Oxford University, living the life of a redemptioner. Intriguing. Disturbing. Definitely on the wrong side of usual.

“I suppose all English butlers attend Oxford?” she probed with a smile.

“Only those of us who excel at our studies.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the sea. “The rest become gentlemen.”

Tabitha laughed. “You don’t seem to think a great deal of your countrymen either.”

“I try not to think of my countrymen at all.” His voice dropped to a tone as warm as a caress. “Especially not when I’m with you. You make me forget that I miss home.”

“Mr. Cherrett—” She stopped, at a loss for words under his onslaught of teasing and flirtation.

Further along the beach, the fishermen’s voices ceased.

“They’ve noticed us.” She hastened her steps toward town.

“And they mustn’t recognize us.” Dominick matched her stride. “You’re protecting me again. Do tell me why so I may use it in my favor for future expeditions into fresh sea air.”

“I don’t approve of men being treated worse than animals, locked up or whipped if they stray.”

“You have a kind heart. I wish I’d known from the beginning. I wouldn’t have distressed myself fretting over you tattling on me.”

“Somehow, Mr. Cherrett, I don’t think you were fretting in the least.”

“I have been.” His voice sobered. “Your dislike of my countrymen is blatant. I wonder why.”

“You all stole my fiancé.” She spoke harshly, lashing out against his appeal to her senses, her female vanity. “His mother is Canadian and was staying with family when he was born, because his father was on a long voyage, so the Navy claimed he was a British subject.”

“I’m so sorry.” He took a few more steps and paused at the edge of the dune, where the grasses waved in the rising dawn breeze. “Did he die?”

“No, he’s returned after two years in your Navy, but—” She hesitated to admit it was too late. She wasn’t certain of that. Most of her hoped it wasn’t. If Raleigh settled there, fishing with his father, he would make a fine husband and wouldn’t interfere with her work. She could have her own children and companionship by the fire. They would lack for nothing.

“War changes men.” Dominick stepped back so she could precede him up the path toward town. “My father fought in a war, and my aunts say it changed him from a carefree youth to the despotic tyrant I knew.”

“What war was that?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

“The one that gives you more cause to dislike me.” Dominick let out a humorless laugh. “Your revolution.”

“Of course.” She studied the ground at her feet, careful not to entangle her ankle with a trailing length of sea grass. “Was he wounded?”

Should she be asking so many questions of this man?
Oh, yes, every bit of it and more. Be friendly. Gain his trust.

“Not a scratch. But he lost many friends.”

“Loss makes the soul sick.”

Her father, when she was only sixteen. Raleigh and her mother, when she was only two and twenty. Yes, her soul still felt sick, curled in on itself like a body with a wasting disease.

“Has Harlan Wilkins caused you any trouble?” Dominick asked abruptly. “There’s a man angered by loss.”

“He’s talking against me, yes.” Tabitha bit her lip, glad she was going to be gone for a week at the least, possibly two.

“He wants the mayor to have you arrested. I should have warned you sooner, but I am always a bit distracted in your presence.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s why you’re out this early? You suddenly remembered?”

“No, I won’t tell you such a fib.” He set down her bag and tucked one finger beneath her chin. “I have been concerned about you, though. Wilkins is a powerful man.”

“I’m not without influence.”

Or a secret or two of which she wouldn’t hesitate to remind more than one councilman if necessary. She wouldn’t let Harlan Wilkins ruin her livelihood, even if, at times, she would prefer to be a normal female, attending parties and receiving callers rather than delivering other women’s babies.

“Reverend Downing will vouch for me,” she added.

“Even though you’re a heathen?” Dominick smiled into her eyes.

She blinked against a warmth, a brightness in her eyes that owed little to the rising sun. “Why would you call me a heathen?”

“That’s what Wilkins called you. You never go to church.”

“I’m not a heathen.” She sighed with the old frustration of this conversation. “Neither am I a hypocrite. I don’t have any more time for God than He has for me.”

“Yet the reverend will vouch for you?”

“We have mutual respect for one another’s work.” She smiled ruefully. “And I may agree to go to church when I return, for the sake of appearances, of course.”

“Church isn’t about appearances. It’s about worshiping God—at least it should be.”

“I knew that . . . once.” She tried to look away and failed. “I must go, Mr. Cherrett, and you should too. Don’t risk coming out here again.”

“It’s worth the risk to see you again.”

“I wish I believed that.” The words emerged before she stopped herself from uttering something so foolish, so . . . inviting of further flirtation.

“May I see you when you return?” He glanced toward the fishing boat. “Perhaps where and when I won’t risk trouble?”

She wanted to say no. Voices from the fishing boat that came too close to getting stopped by a British frigate, and Dominick Cherrett just happening to be in the vicinity, compelled her to take the risk.

“If you like. I’m certain you’ll know when I return.”

“Thank you.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “My heart rejoices enough to make my burdens of labor light.”

“You’re absurd.” She smiled at him anyway and started walking toward the village.

“I’m not absurd.” His voice rang with sincerity. “I’m just beginning to understand a thing or two about my father.”

“Indeed?” She kept walking, guessing he would follow with her satchel.

He did, his long legs catching him up with her. “He made it through your war without so much as a cold in the head in the four years his regiment was stationed in the colonies. Spent most of his time in New York City in relative comfort and safety.”

“How fortunate for him.” Tabitha tried to sound disinterested, though she wasn’t.

“It wasn’t fortunate,” Dominick said in a voice so quiet he might have been talking to himself. “It gave him time to fall in love with an American girl.”

Tabitha snorted indelicately. “To believe you’ve fallen in love with me is more than I can swallow, Mr. Cherrett.”

“Of course it is, but I see how easily it can happen.”

“And having your loved one go away can happen just as easily.” She tasted the bitterness of her words and tried to soften them as she paused at the trees. “Did he have an unhappy experience?”

“She refused him because he was English.”

Tabitha faced him. “Then take heed of his heart wound and have a care you don’t lose your heart to an American lady.”

“Perhaps I already have.” His smile flashed, bright and warm in the rising sun. Gold lights gleamed in his velvety eyes, all the more intense for the veil of lashes.

An alarm clanged in her head and she stiffened. “Then I pity you, Mr. Cherrett. I have no balm to heal that kind of hurt.”

“We’ll see about that, Madam Mermaid,” he murmured.

Then he kissed her.