Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01]

by Lady in the Mist

  “I don’t want your help.” Fanny spun on her heel and raced to the gate.

  “Then why did she go running about looking for you?” Deborah asked as she emerged from the house.

  “She’s overwrought.” Dominick shoved his hands into his coat pockets. Paper crackled, and his mouth and jaw took on their earlier grimness. “Letty, can you do without Tabitha from now on today?”

  “And you too, I presume?” Letty called from the hearth. “If the girls get back in here and help stir instead of gawking like a couple of mooncalves.”

  “Go,” Dominick ordered.

  “Humph.” Dinah tossed her head. “You’re not our master.”

  “Do you want me to tell him you’re shirking your duties and making Letty work harder?”

  “You wouldn’t,” Deborah protested.

  “We’d tell him you’ve been kissing Miss Tabitha.” Dinah gave him a sly look.

  Dominick tugged the bow securing her mobcap to her head. “Go right ahead. I dare you.”

  “You—you oaf.” Hands clutching her slipping cap, Dinah raced into the kitchen.

  “Your admirers disappear with the speed of our male citizens,” Tabitha said.

  “You don’t look amused.” Dominick took her hand, then released it. “Get rid of that apron, do please.”

  “Oh, the apron.” Tabitha yanked it over her head and tossed it toward the washstand. “And I’m not amused. The hostility of too many people around here toward your being English is . . . frightening. During the revolution, people did things to loyalists. I’m afraid for your safety.”

  “I’m not precisely coolheaded about it myself.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Earlier, if Letty hadn’t pointed out that I was locked up in my bedchamber all night, I think they would have hanged me from the nearest tree several times over.”

  “Then maybe you should stay here and let me help search.”

  “I can’t.” His free hand slipped into his pocket again. “I can’t sit about like womenfolk and wait for something to happen to anyone else.”

  “Is it going to?”

  “I have reason to believe so.”

  She caught her breath. “You found something.”

  He nodded, and his face worked. “Not here.” He opened the gate and ushered her through.

  They couldn’t talk in the alley or the street or the square. Too many people milled about or rushed with apparent purpose in different directions, some across the neck to Norfolk, others toward the sea, still others to Hampton Roads. They’d gone to fetch Mayor Kendall, to look for British ships at anchor where the James and Elizabeth rivers met the Chesapeake.

  “Let them get a taste of their own search and seizure,” someone shouted to anyone who would listen.

  “The village has gotten bolder,” Dominick observed.

  “No one’s disappeared from right inside the village before.” She tightened her hold on his arm. “And no one’s ever been hostile to you before.”

  “Except for you.” He gave her a smile that turned her knees to the consistency of the boiling strawberries.

  “You frightened me.”

  “Nothing frightens you, my brave girl.”

  “There you’re wrong.”

  Losing him frightened her. A loveless, childless future frightened her.

  “Has someone set people against you? Since yesterday?” she asked.

  “Either that, or the fact that I live in the village and the disappearances took place in the village, makes me someone easy to blame. But I was locked into my room, and until today, I didn’t have a key to get out.”

  “Dominick, you didn’t.” She stopped to stare at him. “You took a key from Mayor Kendall?”

  “I did. He had so many jumbled together in a drawer, he’ll simply think he gave it to Letty and mislaid it.”

  “But he might work out why, and if something happens to someone else, you won’t have that protection.” Tabitha held out her hand. “Give it to me. I can say I took it from you for your own good, if necessary.”

  “If you insist.” He removed the key from his pocket and slipped it into her hand. “There may be need for it.”

  “I would never come to your room.” She glanced about, hoping no one had seen him giving her the key. They stood between the church and the parsonage. Everyone’s attention seemed to be on the square.

  “Even to help me?” he asked.

  “I’d be ruined.”

  But he could be dead.

  She inhaled with a sharp realization. “If there was no alternative, yes.”

  “Oh, Tabitha.” He slipped his arm around her waist for a brief embrace. “Shall we go to the Trowers’ house and see what we can find out?”

  “Yes.” Tabitha matched her footfalls to Dominick’s long stride. “I think he must have been taken from his room, though it’s at the top of the house. After all, why would he go out at midnight?”

  “Why indeed?” Dominick’s jaw looked like marble—hard and pale.

  Tabitha’s stomach felt like a whirlpool—swirling and sinking. “What did you find?” she asked.

  “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 sh
e?”

  “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.”