Dominick offered her a twisted smile. “That father who you’re so concerned will dislike me for bringing you home.”
“Your father?” She looked like she had after he’d killed the snake—a bit green. “But Dominick, it must have been a—a—whip.”
“A carriage whip, to be precise. When I came home after the duel . . .”
It all flashed before him, his father’s face so full of loathing. The staring servants. The way the falling rain turned his blood pink on the cobblestones of the stable yard.
He made it two steps further and collapsed onto the bench. He wouldn’t be sick in front of Tabitha, but it took willpower.
Tabitha sat beside him and took one of his hands in hers. She said nothing. She simply caressed his fingers one by one and in between.
He started to relax. “He’d already found out. He met me in the stable yard. He already had the whip in his hand.” Dominick shivered despite the warmth of the sunshine. “It was January and raining, but he ordered me to strip to the waist, right there in front of the grooms and coachman and I don’t know who else. When I refused, he ordered two of the grooms to do it for me.” His body burned with remembered shame, and he stared at the brilliant red of a strawberry bush a dozen yards away. Red like blood. “My eldest brother made him stop, or he might have killed me. I’d made him angry before, but that was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Always before, he just shouted and let my schoolmasters do the caning. And in front of the servants . . .” He shook his head. His hair cascaded out of its queue and over his face.
Tabitha brushed it back, her fingers as light as petals. “Why was he so angry?”
“I’d shamed the family.” He conjured up a grin. “You know how it is with us English—family, country, God, in that order. I thought I was putting God first, and in doing so, I shamed the family. So I had to be eliminated.”
“What did he do after beating you?” Her fingers rested on the pulse beneath his ear. He felt it leap to her gentle caress and wanted nothing more than to bury his face in her hair and hold her close.
“He ordered me thrown off his land as I was.” Dominick tilted his head to press her hand between his cheek and shoulder. “I remember landing on the road outside the gate, but nothing more until I woke up at the home of a physician in Lyme Regis. My brothers had carried me there. I stayed for a month until I had enough strength to travel. I got as far as Plymouth with the little money I had, and had some vague notion of heading to the West Indies. I’d forgotten my uncle was attached to the vice admiralty office there. He and my father heartily dislike one another, so he was happy to help me. And here I am.” He straightened and looked her in the eye. “But why are you here?”
“To offer you my help.”
“Tabitha.” The pain of memory, of shame, slipped away. “Why? Because of Parks?” That idea dampened his joy a bit. He wanted her to have come because of him.
“No.” She rose and paced to the strawberry bushes and back again, a ripe berry between her fingers. “I was on my way here when I heard the news. I had to pay a visit to Mrs. Parks first. Duty.” She offered him the berry.
He took it, bit off half, then returned it to her.
She held the leaves then sank to her knees before him. “I never should have walked away from you. But I’ve done that all my life. I didn’t do what was right, and then those I love left me. If I’d done the right things, I don’t know that the same bad things wouldn’t have happened, but sometimes I think it’s likely they wouldn’t have. And now God has noticed me and given me this chance. If I love you, then I know no other way to show it than to help you gain your freedom, even if that means losing you in the end.”
Her voice shook. Tears clouded her eyes, and the blazing sunlight showed the bruises of fatigue beneath her eyes and the faint lines at the corners of her mouth and lids. In that moment, she looked drawn and older than her four and twenty years.
Dominick thought her the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He wanted to pull her close and kiss her senseless. Then he would sweep her away to a parson who would marry them despite his redemptioner state, so she wouldn’t even leave him to walk to her home on the outskirts of the village.
“And I didn’t go after you yesterday,” he murmured. “What a fool. Or a coward.”
“You were being the gentleman you are. I told you to leave.” She tasted the strawberry, then popped it into her mouth. “If someone doesn’t pick these today, they’ll be ruined.”
“My practical beloved.” Dominick laughed and rose. He leaned down to take her hands and lift her to her feet. “I seem to do this a great deal. And if Letty weren’t glaring at me . . . Time for that later. For now, my dearest lady, I want to make you promises. But I won’t, if there’s even the slightest hint I might break them. I’ve brought enough dishonor on those I wish to honor most.”
“You need to honor your father first. I understand.” Her lower lip quivered and a tear glistened golden like a topaz on her cheek. “I understand even more now that I know about what happened. So where do we start?”
“Right here.” He gathered the tear on his finger and wished it were a topaz he could keep forever. “If you distract the ladies, I can search Kendall’s study.”
“Is that all?”
Dominick laughed. “I suspect it’ll be more than enough.”
Side by side, they strolled toward the house. Letty and the twins greeted them in the kitchen, with curious looks from the former and snickers behind their hands from the latter.
“Your strawberries are nearly too ripe.” Tabitha spoke a little too quickly. “If you like, I’ll help pick them and prepare them for jelly.”
“No, child, it’ll take all afternoon.”
Tabitha shrugged. “I told Patience and the Parkses I was coming here. Someone will find me if I’m needed.”
“If we’re boiling fruit and sugar,” Letty said, her hands on her hips, “we don’t need you distracted by this male here.”
“I disappear when real work needs to be done.” Dominick kissed Tabitha full on the lips, to give the girls something to giggle and tease about and give Letty cause for a lecture, and beat a hasty retreat from the kitchen.
Outside the door, he leaned his ear against the panel to listen. He was right. Dinah and Deborah were giggling and sighing, and Letty was lecturing.
“He won’t marry you, child. One morning I’ll unlock his door and find he’s discovered a way to escape. And he won’t take the likes of you back to England with him. He’ll break your heart, I can assure you of that.”
“That presumes,” Tabitha drawled, “that I have a heart.”
The women laughed.
Dominick slipped into Kendall’s study. Shelves of books and a massive desk greeted him. With no idea for what he sought, he didn’t know where to start.
The desk made the most sense. But it yielded nothing of importance, with one exception. Ledgers filled two drawers. A swift glance through showed neat rows of numbers, some of them in Dominick’s own handwriting—household accounts and accounts from the plantation further inland. He’d seen these ledgers and knew they weren’t out of order.
Neither was the desk. He found nothing taped to the underside of drawers or the top, and the measurements omitted the possibility of a secret compartment.
Two other drawers yielded quills, pens, ink, wax, and paper. A fifth drawer held labeled keys. Keys to the carriage house. Keys to the front and back doors of the house. Keys to the cellar, Kendall’s study . . .
And the attic, where Dominick slept.
He slipped the key into his pocket and turned his attention to the bookcase. Again, not knowing what he sought, he simply began a methodical search through every volume, pulling them out, flipping the pages open, groping behind.
He found it on the next to last shelf, as the aroma of boiling fruit crept into the room. It was nothing more than a folded sheet of foolscap tucked behind two fat volumes of sermons. On it was a list of dates.
Nothing special about that. They listed the days on which men from the eastern shore had disappeared.
But Kendall had departed the previous morning, and the last date was June 15, the night before last.
28
______
Within twenty minutes, if she hadn’t shared a strawberry with Dominick, Tabitha believed she would never want to eat another seedy red fruit. Her hands were stained. Her borrowed apron was stained. She thought maybe her eyes were stained. But without every last ripe berry picked and prepared for preserving in the form of jam or jelly, she didn’t know how she would keep Letty and the twins occupied and away from the front of the house.
“I’m likely to die of picking these horrid things,” Dinah complained. “Whoever planted so many bushes anyway?”
“The gardener, I expect.” Tabitha would have rubbed her aching lower back if she didn’t fear staining her gown. “And they all come ripe at once. It’s just like tomatoes.”
“I won’t touch a tomato. Momma always said they was poisonous.” Deborah dropped a handful of berries into her bucket and headed for the house.
“Where you going?” Dinah called after her. “You can’t leave with the work half done.”
Deborah tossed her head. “I just have. I’m going to make these into a poultice with some oatmeal and slap it on my face. It’s good for the complexion.”
“Your complexion is already beautiful.” Tabitha eyed the younger woman with her porcelain skin and not a hint of a wrinkle. Tabitha’s own mirror told her the wrinkles had begun. They were faint. One needed bright light to see them, but she knew they were there. Most considered her an old maid already, beyond marriageable age. It didn’t matter now. She wanted no one after knowing Dominick.
Thoughts of Dominick made her worry Deborah would go off to her chamber to apply the mask.
“Maybe I should try your poultice. Will you show me how to make it?”
“I’ll even apply it for you,” Deborah said, then she and Dinah giggled. “I wonder if Mr. Cherrett will want to kiss you with slime all over your face.”
Tabitha’s face heated from more than the sunshine. “Girls, don’t talk about that. Mr. Cherrett was being . . . a wee bit forward in his behavior, and I’ve put a stop to it.”
“I wouldn’t have.” Dinah sighed.
“Nor I.” Deborah closed her eyes. “Don’t you like him?”
“I like him fine.” Tabitha ducked her head in the pretense of searching for more ripe berries. “That doesn’t mean he should behave improperly.”
“What’s improper about kissing?” Deborah asked.
“Nothing unless it leads to . . . more.” Tabitha straightened and frowned at the girls. “Do not even insult either Mr. Cherrett or me by asking. Some things are meant for marriage and marriage alone, and don’t either of you forget it. I don’t want to have to see you begging me to deliver a baby and stop your pain if you won’t tell me who the father is.”
The girls’ eyes widened until they looked like they would pop out of their pretty faces.
“You do that?” Dinah breathed.
“Yes, I do that. I am required to.”
The last time gave one man in the village cause to fear her or despise her, which sometimes was one and the same. He could have planted the snake. He might want to be rid of her and her knowledge that badly.
“Who did you do that to?” Deborah asked.
“That I can’t tell you.” Tabitha rose. “I think that’s all the berries, girls. Let’s get these inside and cleaned.”
“That’s worse than picking them,” Dinah cried.
“I suppose you could go do something else . . . if you don’t want any jam on your bread for the next year.” Letty stood in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her hips. “You girls clean them. Tabitha and I will slice them and crush them for cooking.”
After another twenty minutes of slicing and crushing strawberries, then sliding the mass into one pot for jelly and another for jam, Tabitha thought the smell of strawberries would forever make her ill. The company was lively, though. Deborah and Dinah could talk of little other than their new gowns for the Midsummer Festival. Letty reminded them of all the work they still needed to do to have them ready in time, and urged them to clean more quickly. The girls complied. Not wanting the work in the kitchen to stop until Dominick appeared to tell her his search was complete, Tabitha slowed on her slicing.
“Getting tired?” Letty asked. “We should get Dominick in here to help you.”
“Where is he?” Dinah asked. “When food’s involved, he’s usually around.”
Tabitha laughed at that, then told what she could only justify as a stretching of the truth. “Not today.”
“Maybe it was having to kill a snake,” Dinah suggested. “It would put me off my feed.”
“He wasn’t off his feed earlier.” Letty gave Tabitha a quizzical glance. “Is he really off sulking somewhere?”
“I don’t know where he is.” That, at least, was the truth—more or less. She smashed a batch of strawberries so hard, juice sprayed over the sides of the bowl.
“They did have a lover’s quarrel,” Deborah crowed. “Look how she attacked those poor berries.”
“You were telling me about the embroidery on your gowns?” Tabitha made the change of subject deliberately obvious.
The girls giggled.
Letty frowned, her hands still. “What is he up to?” she murmured. “He looked like you’d handed him the gold at the end of the rainbow when you two came inside. It wasn’t a quarrel you were having.”
“No, but I expressed my interest in helping you all with the strawberries, and he wanted nothing to do with it.” Tabitha smiled. “He doesn’t seem to like domestic work.”
“No, but he’s good about telling us when we boil his egg too long,” Dinah called across the kitchen.
“He likes it runny.” Deborah made a gagging noise.
Letty scolded her, though she laughed while she did so.
“Three minutes, Dinah,” that young lady mimicked Dominick’s accent, “or it’s completely inedible.”
Tabitha laughed and wished she could hug him at that moment, then fix him three-minute eggs for the rest of his life.
“And the toast,” Deborah exclaimed. “He calls them fingers and—”
The back gate slammed and footfalls raced up the path. All the ladies in the kitchen swung to face the opening.
“Tabbie.” Fanny Trower flung herself into Tabitha’s arms. “Tabbie, Raleigh’s missing.”
“Missing? Where?” Tabitha took a deep breath to calm the sickening thrum of her heart. “No, don’t answer that. It’s a stupid question. I mean, when was the last time anyone saw him?”
“He went to bed like the rest of us.” Fanny’s words emerged between sobs. “Early. He and Father were going to go out fishing at dawn if the weather broke. But when Father went into Raleigh’s room, he wasn’t there. His bed hadn’t been slept in, and his window was open.”
“They stole him out of his room?” Dinah shrieked. “What kind of monster—”
“Dinah, hush.” Letty’s command was a whiplash. “Keep to your work,” she added more gently.
Afraid she might be sick, Tabitha took Fanny’s hand and led her outside. “Tell me everything you know about Raleigh last night.”
“There’s nothing more to tell.” Fanny’s pretty face was red and swollen from crying. “We hoped you might know something. But no one’s seen you for hours.”
“I’ve been here for quite a while.” Tabitha began the mundane task of scrubbing her hands in the basin beside the kitchen door, seeking calm with a routine exercise. “The Parkses knew.”
“No one there remembered. They’re upset too.”
“Yes, I know.” Tabitha continued to scrub her hands. “You say Raleigh’s window was open?”
“Ye-es.”
“Was the floor wet?”
Fanny stared at her. “My brother is missing and you’re worrie
d about the floor being wet?”
Tabitha applied another glob of soap to her already spotless hands. “It helps us know if he left before or after the rain stopped last night.”
Fanny was now open-mouthed. “How can you think of all that at a time like this? We just know Raleigh hasn’t been seen since we went to bed last night.”
“I’m trained to think like this.”
“But you’re not trained to rub the skin off your hands.” Dominick appeared, set the bowl of soap out of Tabitha’s reach, and lifted the pitcher of clear water. “Hold your hands out.”
“You’re just as bad as she is,” Fanny wailed. “Who cares about soap? My brother is missing.”
“Yes, Miss Trower, I heard.” Dominick’s mouth set in a thin line. His jaw looked hard. He didn’t give Fanny a sympathetic comment such as expressing sorrow or regret.
Not like her Dominick at all.
Uneasiness added its weight to Tabitha’s fear. If he didn’t react with horror to Raleigh’s disappearance, perhaps he knew something already. Or had learned something.
“Dominick?” she started to ask.
“Did you look for footprints outside the house?” Dominick asked.
“You don’t care, do you?” Fanny glared at him. “You’re one of those—those—Englishmen we all hate for good reason.”
“And you think you won’t be welcome in England,” Dominick murmured to Tabitha. “She couldn’t flirt with me enough a few days ago.”
“Fanny,” Tabitha said in as calm a tone as she could manage, “that was uncalled-for and unkind. Dominick had nothing to do with Raleigh’s disappearance.”
“How do you know?” Fanny, tears still streaming down her face, clenched her fists at her sides. “He’s the enemy, isn’t he? But you prefer him to my brother. If you hadn’t, if you’d married Raleigh, he’d still be here.”
“Only if he’d stayed to marry her,” Dominick shot back. “Now, do please apologize to Miss Eckles and let us see what we can do to help find your brother.”
Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01] Page 26