Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01]

by Lady in the Mist

  “Yes, sir.” Raleigh stared at the black-and-white squares painted on a length of canvas to form a carpet. “I failed. Now I’m a traitor to America.”

  “Be thankful for that.” Roscoe turned jovial. “We’d hang you otherwise. As it is, you’ll just get a flogging. Forty lashings at noon tomorrow.”

  Forty. Raleigh sank to his knees under the weight of the number. “It’ll kill me.”

  “Not likely. Just lay you up for a week or two. Now get back below. You’ll be kept locked up until after you receive punishment.”

  “Yes, sir.” Raleigh turned and fell into the companionway.

  A marine hauled him up by the back of his coat and half dragged, half carried him back to the bread room.

  When the hatch closed and the marine’s footfalls died away, Parks asked, “What happened?”

  “Noon tomorrow,” was all Raleigh could say.

  Dominick began to pound on his door the instant the first rooster crowed. He needed to go to Tabitha, discover if she’d arrived home yet, and go after her if she hadn’t. If he remained confined any longer like a prisoner who’d broken parole, he thought he might tear the door off its hinges with his bare hands.

  A shouted protest rose from the floor below. The words were indistinct, the tone unmistakable.

  “Let me out and you can go back to bed,” Dominick responded, emphasizing each word with a rap. “Please, Letty.”

  Below stairs, a door slammed. Footsteps thudded on the steps. Then the blessed grate of a key turning in the lock sang in his ears.

  Letty shoved open the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “I have to get out.” He waved his arm around the tiny chamber. “It’s stifling in here.”

  “So it is.” Letty clutched her dressing gown to her throat. “How do you manage to look so cool when you come out?”

  “Breeding.” He grinned. “Or lots of canings to get the manner correct.”

  “Humph.” Letty’s face twisted. “You’d think they could have gotten you some courtesy while they were at it. Don’t ever wake me up again, do you hear me? If you do, I’ll use a whip on you myself.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.” Dominick kissed her soft, wrinkled cheek. “You love me too much.”

  “Humph,” she repeated to empty air.

  Dominick was already slipping past her and racing down the steps. He slammed up the bar across the kitchen door with one hand and tugged on the handle with the other. Sweet, cool morning air blew into his face. He paused to take in a healthy gulp, then sprinted across the garden and out of the gate.

  On his way out of the village, he chose to walk. Seeing him out early wouldn’t surprise anyone. He had been before, fetching eggs and fish and milk for Letty. But if he ran, they might think he was getting away while Kendall remained in Norfolk.

  If Kendall was in Norfolk.

  His leg muscles quivered with the need to bolt past the trees and onto the dunes. If she wasn’t home yet, he would sit in her garden and wait. He needed to know what she had discovered in Norfolk. Time was running out for meeting his uncle.

  Once past the trees, he began to run again. The sand might as well have been snow. His feet sank and slowed him. Then he reached the hard-packed sand near the water’s edge and the going grew easier, his speed faster. He leaped over bits of driftwood and other debris the tide churned up. Pale streaks of sunlight reached across the sky, shimmering off the water—

  And the face of the woman crumpled at the water’s edge.

  Dominick dropped to his knees. His heart lodged in his throat, strangling his cry of dismay. Above him the gulls spun and shrieked. For several moments he couldn’t move. His outstretched hand hovered an inch from her throat, where he didn’t know if he would find a pulse at all.

  “I’m not dead.” Her voice was rough and quiet, but not breathy.

  “Thank God.” Dominick doubled over and pressed his cheek to hers. “I thought . . . But what’s wrong? Did you fall? Where are your servants?”

  “Not . . . expecting me.”

  “They should know. They should be going with you. They—oh, Tabitha, what hurts? Should I carry you?”

  “No. No. I just fainted when I tried to get up. And my shoulder.” She shifted a bit and moaned. “It starts bleeding again if I move.”

  “Bleeding? What’s wrong with your shoulder?” Dominick made himself straighten and slipped one hand beneath her head. The sand was damp, but he didn’t know if water or blood accounted for the moisture. “What should I do?”

  Never had he felt more useless than he did at that moment. If his education and rank hadn’t prepared him to carve roasts and polish silver, it most certainly hadn’t prepared him to manage a wounded female. The thought flashed through his mind that this was why he wouldn’t survive in America as a free man. If he didn’t have money, he needed practical skills like knowing what to do in an emergency. And he didn’t have a bit of a notion on how to proceed.

  From the sand, Tabitha chuckled, albeit hoarsely. “Dominick, you look like you’re going to swoon. Sit back and put your head between your knees.”

  “It’s the blood.” He rose, walked to the water, and splashed cold Atlantic water on his face, then returned to kneel beside her. “I’m all right now. Tell me what to do.”

  “If you can lift me, I think I can manage from there. It’s just . . . a scratch. And my head . . .”

  “Just a scratch.” Dominick’s voice took on a brisk tone. “And a blow. How did you acquire these wounds?”

  “The little matter of a knife and . . . I don’t know what. But later, please. I’m freezing.”

  That was something he could manage. He pulled off his coat and tucked it around her. When he reached her left shoulder, he found the scratch, the stickiness of drying blood. Sliding his fingers into her hair, he discovered a swelling lump over her right ear.

  “Better?” He gathered her, coat and all, into his arms and rose to his feet. “Mermaids don’t weigh much, I see.” He smiled down at her lovely face, so close to his, nestled against his shoulder.

  She smiled back. “You Englishmen are stronger than you look.” Her eyes gazed into his, dull with pain despite the generous curve of her lips. “Will you take me home?”

  “I’m not strong enough to stand here holding you all day.” He brushed his lips across hers. “And I want you in a condition to tell me what happened. You left for Norfolk yesterday morning and now I find you lying on the beach in Seabourne.” He started walking as he babbled. “If the sun hadn’t shone off your face, I’d have thought you were more flotsam.”

  “I nearly was.” She closed her eyes. “Dominick—” A shudder raced through her and up his arms. “Do you have your knife with you?”

  “Ye-es.” He drew her closer and wished her house weren’t another half mile away. “Why?”

  “Someone tried to kill me.” She wrapped her uninjured arm around his neck. “No, not some—”

  He tripped over driftwood, jarring them both.

  “I’m so sorry.” The scarred skin on his back pulled taut. “I won’t do it again. I promise. I won’t—”

  “Shh.” She pressed her fingers to his lips. “It just . . . hurts a bit. But I don’t think it’s deep. It doesn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.”

  “No, it’s just sticky.” He tried not to gag. “Is Patience there to help you clean it? I don’t think I should.”

  “No, you shouldn’t. Patience will do well, though. You can guard us.” She grasped a handful of his hair as though it were a lifeline. “Dominick, it’s not Mayor Kendall. It’s Harlan Wilkins.”

  Her head ached. Her shoulder stung. But she was free of sand and dried salt water. Dominick sat beside her on the garden bench, and she felt safe, warm, cherished.

  He looked grim as he took his knife from its sheath and laid it on the bench close at hand. “Now that you look more like a lady than a drowned mermaid, perhaps you can tell me how you’ve reached your conclusion despite evidence to the contrary.
”

  “The man who did this to me”—she touched her now-bandaged shoulder, lumpy beneath her gown—“was the same one who held a knife to me the night I met you.”

  “It makes sense in that the method is the same, but how do you know?”

  “I caught his scent. It’s tobacco and whiskey and”—she gave him a sidelong glance—“sandalwood.”

  “Don’t look at me that way. I am not guilty.” He rubbed his thumb along her chin. “And that’s pretty slim proof.”

  “I smelled it in Sally Belote’s room too.”

  Dominick straightened, alert. “Who would have been—Wilkins.”

  “Yes. She practically admitted to having seen him and how he told her to lie to me about it, to say the mayor is the baby’s father.”

  “Kendall? Never.”

  “Really?” Tabitha arched her brows. “You were quick to believe him guilty of treachery.”

  “That’s different from debauching a young woman.”

  “True, but if Wilkins was ready to implicate Mayor Kendall . . .” She trailed off, waiting for him to reach the conclusion she had.

  “He could have placed that paper in Kendall’s study hoping someone would find it.” Dominick nodded.

  “Someone like you.”

  “Who might conceivably look for that paper or, if nothing else, a book.” Dominick pursed his lips. “But where do you come into this? Why is he harming you? Other than this young woman in Norfolk and what you know about that.”

  “That would be enough, I think, but I was assaulted before then.”

  “Yes.” Dominick nudged her with his elbow. “You accused me.”

  “I still could.” She resisted the urge to rest her head against his shoulder and simply let him hold her, forget knives and betrayal, dangers and futures of love she couldn’t have. “But maybe I know more than just about Sally. Or he thinks I do.”

  Dominick gave her a quizzical look.

  “His wife,” she said. “I was there when she died. The servants said she fell down the steps pacing about the house waiting for him to come home, but what if she fell down the steps before he left home? What if she was pushed? Or even was trying to stop him from doing something?”

  “Like go out hunting victims for the British Navy?” Dominick shook his head. “That’s a strong accusation without more than speculation. Unless she did say something?”

  “Nothing that made sense without context.” Tabitha rubbed her gritty eyes. “I don’t even recall what exactly she said. Not a great deal. I thought she spoke against the pain. She suffered . . . I could do too little for her . . .” She covered her face with her hands, remembering the woman’s face, her fruitless early labor, her dying words. “‘Don’t go,’ she’d said. But he abandoned her when she needed him most. And where was God?”

  “He was there, Tabitha.” Dominick pulled her hands down and held them between his. “He was waiting to be invited to join you.”

  “I was too busy trying to stop the hemorrhage and raging against her husband. He should have been there uninvited. God should have been there uninvited.”

  “He was. You just didn’t acknowledge Him.”

  “Would He have saved her life?” Tabitha challenged.

  “I don’t know. Man interferes with God’s plans.” He grimaced. “Believe me, I know that more than anyone. But Wilkins. Do you think she knew something and he pushed her down the steps?”

  “It’s possible. It’s as likely as him being our traitor.”

  “But why?” Dominick rose and began to pace between rows of verdant herbs—chamomile and mint, rosemary and thyme, parsley, garlic, and comfrey. His voice drifted back to her. “Why would Wilkins or Kendall risk their lives for a few hundred pounds they’re making from the sale of seamen to the British Navy?” He turned down the row of lavender, paused, and plucked a sprig. “What can either of them gain?”

  “Men prosper from war.” Tabitha smiled at the sight of him surrounded by delicate plants and wished for the strength to join him. “I kept thinking about this last night, when I was conscious enough to think. Mayor Kendall’s father and uncle made a fortune during the revolution as privateers. Others might want war for that reason.”

  Dominick’s head went up, his expression turned haughty. “We’ll destroy you in a month.”

  The demeanor, the tone, and the words shouted of his birthright—British aristocracy, pride in his family, in his country. He believed, without equivocation, that England would trounce the United States in armed combat.

  She wished he wasn’t right.

  “You have no Navy to speak of, and a handful of privateers can’t take down the strongest Navy in the world,” Dominick said, pressing home his point.

  “But even men on the losing side make money in war.” Tabitha reached down and plucked a sprig of mint from its shady corner beneath the cedar tree. “And both men have ambitions that cost a great deal of money.”

  “How do they make money in war other than privateering?” Dominick asked as he rejoined her on the bench.

  Tabitha stared at him. “Building ships. Making weapons, making clothing. Providing preserved meats and ship’s bread. I expect there are others. Ship chandlers too.”

  “Ah, trade. Not something I was taught.”

  “What were you taught?”

  “Latin and Greek, history and philosophy, mathematics and reading . . .” He shrugged, then smiled, tucked the sprig of lavender into the neckline of her gown, and let his fingertips rest on the faint scar on her throat. “Wooing lovely young ladies.”

  “A pity you aren’t a better spy.” She removed his hand and raised it to her cheek. “You could be using those skills in a land where they’re appreciated, instead of here, where having land or being a shopkeeper means more.”

  “Ah, you wound me.” He smiled, but the fact that it didn’t reach his eyes suggested he spoke the truth despite his light tone.

  “I’m not a very good spy either.” She kissed his palm, the healed gash where the knife had pierced him between thumb and forefinger, evidence of him being a poor butler. “We have no more than suspicions against two upstanding citizens of Seabourne and a stronger suspicion against a man whose family is loved here, even if he himself isn’t since abandoning me at the altar.”

  “Do you want him back?” Dominick asked. “I mean, if we knew where to find him and I wasn’t here, would you accept his suit?”

  “If he’s involved, then he’s a traitor too, and the answer is—”

  “Mr. Cherrett?” The cry came from the garden gate. “Dominick Cherrett.” Breathless, Dinah raced toward them. “Oh, sir, you’re here.” She tripped and landed on her knees on the path.

  “What is it, child?” Dominick hastened to raise her to her feet again. “What’s happened?”

  “Kendall.” Dinah’s chest rose and fell like bellows in the hands of a nervous blacksmith. “Mayor Kendall’s home and furious about you being gone since dawn.”

  “Then I’d best be on my way.” He looked at Tabitha. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”

  Tabitha glanced from Dinah’s anxious countenance to Dominick’s too-expressionless face, and stood. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You can’t,” Dominick protested. “You’re injured.”

  “I’m coming to explain your absence.” Tabitha took his arm, leaning on it more heavily than she wanted to. “So he understands you weren’t up to mischief.”

  “It’s not him being here that’s the difficulty,” Dinah gasped out. “It’s Mayor Kendall’s study. He says someone’s been searching it and a key is missing.”

  32

  ______

  The eight bells signaling the noon hour rang through the ship like the tolling of a church spire calling mourners to a funeral service. Despite the stifling heat of the bread room, Raleigh shivered like a man with ague. He knew what was coming. He’d witnessed the ceremony often enough, the ritual so rigidly adhered to in the British Navy that it held an aura
of religious fervor.

  Raleigh wished for religious fervor. He settled for knowing nothing he had done was beyond God’s forgiveness, if not man’s. Or, in his situation, woman’s.

  “Don’t forget to tell her,” he told Parks, as he had so many times that he’d lost count. “If you reach Seabourne, tell Tabitha she must forgive me and not blame God for my abandoning her.”

  “I won’t forget.” Parks’s voice was tight. “And if you survive and I don’t, tell my family I love them. And there’s money in a bank in Norfolk. My last voyage . . . it was successful for all the crew.” He sighed. “It’ll be my last unless we go to war.”

  “If the English keep stealing our men, we will.”

  “Then I’ll tell everyone I can what I know in an attempt to stop some of the destruction.” Parks shifted, his body thumping against the deck. “It gives me a reason to live.”

  “We both need it.” Raleigh bowed his head. “And Jesus to accept us if we don’t survive.”

  “He’s already accepted us.” Parks shifted again. “If—”

  The drum began, the wordless order for all hands to assemble on deck. Bile rose in Raleigh’s throat. His skin crawled. Gooseflesh rose on his arms.

  Tramping feet accompanied the drum rolls. Then the hatch opened and a marine stood in the opening, two more behind him.

  “On your feet,” the first one commanded. “The both of you.”

  They rose. Parks laid a light hand on Raleigh’s shoulder, then allowed himself to be nudged forward through the gun deck to the main hatch. Raleigh followed. His boots felt as heavy as the cannonballs that filled those guns during battle. His head felt as though it had received a full broadside. Soon his back would feel worse. Fire. That’s how others had described it. After the blow of the lead-weighted leather straps—nine of them—the fire came, blazing through flesh, muscle, bone. Most men fainted after half a dozen. The bosun’s mate wielding the lash would have him cut down, and the ship’s surgeon would revive him for the rest of his punishment.