Lady in the Mist (8 page)

9

______

Raleigh Trower tugged so hard on his end of the net, the ropes parted and silvery fish slid onto the deck of the boat.

“Trower, you oaf,” Rhys Evans bellowed. “There’s half the catch to collect again and time’s wasting.”

“You can’t rush fishing.” Rhys’s younger brother Lisle spoke in a gentler voice.

“This morning proves it.” Rhys grabbed a bucket and began to scoop the catch into it. “If we’d stayed out an hour later like I wanted to, we wouldn’t have encountered that British frigate at all.”

“It all came out well in the end.” Lisle joined his brother in gathering the fish. “Raleigh has a silver tongue in that head of his.”

“Telling a pack of lies,” Rhys grumbled.

“It wasn’t lies.” Raleigh began to gather up the edges of the seine, knotting ropes to repair the portion he’d broken.

“Right you are.” Rhys guffawed. “Maybe we are a lot of half-wits, risking our skins against the English scum to get a night’s catch.”

“I never said we were half-wits.” Raleigh frowned over the lines he knotted.

He wouldn’t have lied. He was a sinner, breaking too many of God’s commandments to feel truly forgiven and redeemed—despite what the ship’s chaplain told him—but lying wasn’t one of them. Or at least nothing as barefaced as that of which Rhys accused him.

“I just kept saying we’re Americans,” Raleigh reminded his companions.

“Like you didn’t understand what he was yelling at us.” Rhys wiped silvery scales onto his canvas breeches. “Which made you sound like a half-wit.”

“And we just kept pretending like we was mute,” Lisle added.

Raleigh grinned in spite of himself. “That poor lieutenant was getting frustrated, wasn’t he?”

“Especially when the first lieutenant came along and told him to let us go,” Rhys said.

Raleigh’s grin faded at the knowledge that the officer had said to let them go because he knew Raleigh, knew he was free to be home.

For now.

“The other lieutenant sounded like some lordling,” Raleigh explained. “There’s a lot of them who don’t approve of impressing Americans, just like they wouldn’t fight against us in the last war.”

“This isn’t war,” Lisle said. “Not if President Madison can stop them from taking our men.”

“We can’t fight the greatest Navy in the world.” Raleigh looked out to sea to where he thought he caught the merest hint of the frigate’s topsails against the bright horizon. “Or the most powerful country.”

“Then let’s stay out until after daybreak next time,” Rhys admonished. “They seem more inclined to steal us in the dark, like the criminals they are.”

“All right,” Raleigh agreed. He had accomplished what he needed to and had seen Tabitha. He’d seen too much.

Raleigh dropped into the hold and began to work the net free of the hatch hinge it had caught on. He let the brothers talk, Rhys venting his spleen on Raleigh to ease the tension of those moments beneath the prow of a man-of-war, Lisle soothing like one of Tabitha’s healing balms.

Except what he’d glimpsed from the boat felt more like she’d rubbed salt or lye on an open wound. He saw his lady, his love, talking to another man.

He was a stranger. Or at least a stranger to Raleigh. A big man with hair longer than most men wore theirs nowadays and a confident way of holding his head. Raleigh heard laughter floating on the sea air, the man’s deep and husky, Tabitha’s light and young.

As she had laughed with him so many times before the lure of the sea tugged him away like the undercurrent of an ebbing tide during the full moon. Now she laughed with another man.

She had more than laughed with him. Though the distance was great enough that they had become little more than doll-sized at the edge of the village, Raleigh saw the man’s head dip toward Tabitha’s. Quickly. Briefly. Not so briefly he couldn’t have kissed her in that time. And Tabitha made no move to shove the rogue away from her.

You pushed me away the first time I kissed you.
Which made him think this wasn’t the first time for these two.
No wonder she’s been avoiding me.
Raleigh jerked the entangled ropes so fast, he slid on fish scales and landed hard enough on the deck to see stars—red, shooting stars from the burning heat of anger.

“Easy there,” Lisle called down. “You’re making a mess of things.”

“What’s got your back up?” Rhys kicked at the tangled net. “You’re the one who wanted us to come in now so’s we met up with that ship.”

Raleigh sighed. “Never you mind me.” As fast as a comet streaking across the heavens, the outrage passed. He couldn’t blame Tabitha for seeking someone else. He’d left her without an explanation. She was so lovely, of course another man would court her.

Yet his mother said Tabitha remained unattached. Tabitha confirmed it. And the predawn rendezvous on the beach held a clandestine appearance that set the hairs rising along the back of Raleigh’s neck.

The man must be unsuitable for Tabitha. Who in a village like Seabourne would be unacceptable to her?

Bracing himself on the bulkhead for support as he clambered to his feet, Raleigh determined to find out who the man was. Somehow he must keep him from Tabitha, or tear him from her if necessary. If she wouldn’t fall in love with Raleigh again, nothing he had done, none of the steps he risked, would be worth the danger into which he’d placed himself to win his freedom from the British Navy.

He finished untangling the lines and gathered the edges of the net together for hauling on deck. It was a good catch. They would divide it into three equal parts and take some to the market and the rest home for preserving in brine. Once he would have taken a basket to the Eckleses. Now he wasn’t welcome, maybe less welcome than he first thought.

His body tensed at the memory of that scene with Tabitha and another man, the man’s head bent so low over Tabitha’s his hair formed a curtain around their faces. Raleigh’s stomach knotted like the hauling seine.

“Lord, this can’t all be for nothing,” he cried aloud once Rhys and Lisle went to their own cottage further up the shore. “I can’t be risking all this for nothing.”

Somehow he must succeed so he would be in a position to make up to Tabitha the hurt he had caused her. Somehow he must make himself worthy of God’s love and forgiveness by undoing the damage to Tabitha’s faith to which he had contributed. Somehow—

If she’d found interest in another man, Raleigh was too late.

He hauled home his catch in a two-wheeled handcart. Father greeted him at the cottage door, dressed and ready to take the bulk of the fish into town.

“Looks like a good night’s work, son.” Father smiled, deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth. “Good to have you home. I got some sleep for once.”

“I’m glad I can do that for you, sir.” Raleigh released the cart. “It was a good night’s work.”

“But a risky one.” His father glanced at the swells of the sea sparkling in the sun. “We heard gunfire.”

“Yes.” Raleigh’s mouth tightened. “The British were out, but they left us alone.”

“Maybe that’s a good sign. If they don’t stop taking our men off our boats, there’ll be war.”

“That’s what the Evans brothers were saying. President Madison would be a fool to get us into that. We couldn’t possibly win.”

“We’ll see about that.” A muscle in Father’s jaw bulged. “I’d better get going. We’ll go crabbing later today.”

“I’d like that.”

So many boyhood memories lay in crabbing with his father, learning about the different sorts of sea creatures and birds. More memories of Tabitha filled his head. He’d shown her how to fish, to crab, to handle a sail and tiller. He’d shown her living sea creatures, for her own father—a schoolmaster with weak lungs—possessed little energy to teach his daughter about the true sea, the one outside of books and a few withered specimens he’d collected in his younger days.

Raleigh’s heart squeezed with sorrow for the girl of ten or so years he’d met as she wandered alone on the beach, while her father drowsed in the garden between lessons most of the time, and her mother and grandmother tended patients. She thought they’d notice how useful she could be too, if she brought home a basket of clams, but she was trying to dig at high tide and came close to drowning in waves taller than she.

Raleigh smiled. “I’ll take a couple of baskets of these fish to Momma and the girls to preserve.”

“You do that.” Father nodded. “Never too early to start preparing for winter.”

He departed for town with the cart, and Raleigh, a basket of shad in each hand, rounded the house to the kitchen garden.

The sight of his mother and sisters ready for him with knives and a barrel of salt gave him an idea he realized he should have thought of at once. Momma and the girls knew everything that went on in Seabourne.

“You had faith in my ability to still seine,” he greeted the three ladies awaiting him on the back porch. “And rightly so.”

“What is it?” Fanny asked.

“Shad.”

She wrinkled her pert nose. “Ew. All those tiny bones.”

“It’s good eating.” Momma grabbed the back fin of a fish. “Let’s get to work, girls. What was that gunfire we heard, Raleigh?”

“A quarrelsome British frigate.” Raleigh made his tone light. “But we pretended not to understand their accents, and they let us go.”

“I’d say it was my prayers.” Momma began to scale. “Can’t have you getting taken up again when you’re finally home, just because we were born in Acadia. Now go change out of those clothes in the barn. I’ve left fresh ones and water in there for you. And get yourself some breakfast. It’s waiting on the hearth. Then get some sleep.”

“I’d rather stay and help you all.” Raleigh began to clean another shad. “I’ve missed you all so much, and sleeping just takes me away.”

“But you look tired,” Felicity pointed out. “I don’t think you sleep more than four hours in a day.”

“The training of the British Navy.” Raleigh grimaced. “And it’s a bit too quiet here after two years on a ship.”

“I couldn’t do it.” Slowly, with obvious reluctance, Fanny began to strip heads, tails, and fins from the fish. “The noise. The smell. Nothing but water around you.” She shuddered.

“But all those men.” Felicity chopped off a fish head with unnecessary force. “There aren’t any for us females here on land with the British Navy stealing them from us.”

“We don’t know the British are responsible,” Raleigh pointed out.

“No, there’s just a British ship around every time someone vanishes.” Felicity smacked the shad into a barrel. “I’m two and twenty and don’t even have an escort for the Midsummer Festival.”

“The Midsummer Festival?” Raleigh’s head shot up. “It’s still going forward?”

“Of course it is,” Fanny and Felicity chorused.

“Many a young couple gets themselves—” Momma stopped, her face stricken.

“Engaged there,” Raleigh finished.

He and Tabitha had three years ago. He’d departed six months later.

“You should take Tabitha this year.” Felicity spoke Raleigh’s thoughts aloud. “Surely she’ll have forgiven you by then.”

“I hope so.” Raleigh bent low over his work, suddenly nauseated from the odor of fish. “I understand she rarely goes to church nowadays.”

“She prayed you’d come home,” Momma confirmed. “We all did.”

“But we didn’t lose faith,” Fanny added.

“Her mother died at the same time.” Raleigh felt the need to defend Tabitha’s absence from Christian fellowship. “But maybe my return will help bring her back.”

“It’s all in God’s perfect plan,” Fanny agreed. She gave her sister a pointed look. “Including finding us husbands. Either the men will get brought home, or new ones will come.”

Raleigh set down his scaling knife. “That reminds me. Are you certain there are no new men in town? I thought I saw—” He hesitated. He didn’t want to admit he’d seen Tabitha with a man on the beach. It could ruin her reputation, which would make her an ineligible wife for him, if he wanted to rise to more than just another fisherman in the community, someone worthy of Tabitha. “Someone,” he finished lamely. “We don’t get many strangers about.”

The girls exchanged glances.

“I can’t think of anyone,” Momma said. “No one except for farmers and fishermen who find themselves here for market or even Tabitha’s care.”

“Except for Mr. Cherrett,” Felicity murmured, her eyes half closed, her knife poised in midair.

A glance at Fanny told Raleigh she too was poised as though caught in a dream. Hairs along his arms rose as they had when he saw the man kiss Tabitha.

Raleigh jabbed his knife through the next shad. “Who is Mr. Cherrett?”

“No one appropriate,” Momma snapped. “You girls shouldn’t think about him.”

“But he’s so handsome,” Felicity crooned.

“Those eyes,” Fanny added in a similar tone of adulation.

“Handsome is as handsome does,” Momma clipped out. “Only a terrible deed like gaming debts or worse would get an Englishman with his breeding trapped as a bondsman.”

“A bondsman?” Raleigh set down his knife and put his hands on his hips. “An English bondsman of good breeding? You’re certain?”

“I met a few English aristocrats in Halifax,” Momma pointed out. “I know the accent when I hear it.”

“He has a beautiful way of talking,” Felicity fairly hummed. “So clear. So crisp.”

“It’s possible it’s not his fault he’s a redemptioner.” Fanny gazed into the sun still hovering over the ocean. “Maybe his father lost the family money.”

“And maybe you girls had best get back to work,” Momma admonished. “We’ve bread to bake once this is done. You get to work too, Raleigh, if you aren’t going to sleep. Why the interest in strangers?”

Raleigh shrugged and set to work again. “As I said, I thought I saw one. What does this Cherrett fellow look like?”

The twins sighed.

“You shouldn’t have asked.” Momma cast her daughters a half-annoyed, half-amused glance. “He’s too good-looking for the peace of mind of any mother in Seabourne or mistress of a female servant. A few inches taller than you, but not as broad in the shoulders, and he wears his hair long. He’s serving mainly as Mayor Kendall’s butler, so he wears his hair powdered.”