“Maybe that’s what God wants of you.” Tabitha inhaled the magnolias and glanced at Dominick’s face to remind her of God’s beautiful creations. “If He is involved in our lives and we want Him to be, then it’s possible He has a reason to keep you here in bondage.”
“What, more punishment?” Dominick snorted. “I suppose it’s nothing less than what I deserve for what I did. If I could punish myself, I would. I’d go back and go into the church rather than hurt anyone as I did.”
“Would you really?” Tabitha felt a little ill. “Would you want that much to please your father? Would you serve the church now if your father still wanted that of you?”
She could scarcely breathe while she waited for his answer. If he said yes, then she knew he had made up his mind about their future. God, I sure hope You’re with me and I’m wrong about You not caring.
Dominick gazed into the cemetery for several moments. Somewhere a wagon rolled along the cobblestones. A woman called, and the children’s play ceased. For a full minute, the town lay in silence save for the humming of bees in the flowers.
His inhalation of breath sounded like a wave against the shore in the stillness. “If I could find my way back to a harmonious relationship with God, I would love to serve Him. If I could be forgiven, what better way to thank Him?”
“Then we must get this key back to Kendall.” She produced the object from her pocket. It shimmered before her misty eyes. “And I’ll do the spying for you.”
“You want to be rid of me so quickly?” He gave her a half smile.
“I want you to be at peace so soon.” Aching in every joint, she headed for Kendall’s house.
Dominick fell into step beside her. “You should stay here. Letty will take care of you. You’re too tired and injured to walk home.”
“I want to be alone.”
So that only God would witness her breaking heart.
“Take this to Kendall.” She handed Dominick the key. “I’m off.”
“No, wait.” He caught hold of her elbow. “Tabitha, at least let me walk you home.”
“You can’t. You have work.”
“Kendall will understand. He’s not an unreasonable man.”
“Any man who threatens to flog another is unreasonable. It’s barbaric to inflict pain like that.”
“Like my father?”
Tabitha didn’t answer. She feared if she opened her mouth, she would demand to know why he would prefer to please a man who had scarred him for life and left him to die, over a woman who wanted to bring him nothing but healing. Yet what were the commonplace words her mother always told patients in extremis? Only God is the true healer.
So that must mean she could only pray for Dominick, not heal him herself.
She needed to go home and think about that. Praying meant admitting God was there, that she’d been wrong. And if she was wrong, she needed to repent of the sin of denying God’s presence. The idea made her quiver inside.
She rested her hand on a fence rail for balance. “I need to rest, Dominick, but we can talk when Mayor Kendall will let you get away. If we’re to get you free, we need to plan how I can help you . . .” She glanced at the nearby house, too close with its open windows for mentioning names.
“I shouldn’t let you. It’s too risky.” He touched her cheek. “Perhaps there’s another way, something that won’t involve you. Doing so seems wrong.”
“It’s my choice.” She touched his cheek and turned away.
“This evening before sundown, if I can persuade Kendall to let me go,” Dominick said behind her.
“Your hour is almost up. Take care of that key.” Tabitha made herself walk briskly away. When she rounded the corner, she slowed according to her strength. Getting home would take a while.
She pictured her future without Dominick. She had an apprentice. She could take on more. Her life wouldn’t be empty. She would have a great purpose. The country was growing all the time. It needed women healers. And if war came, the women would need to take over for the men.
She wanted to accept the notion wholeheartedly. But an emptiness remained, a gap like a hole in a window, where wind and rain and cold could seep in.
“If You’re there, God,” she murmured as she traversed the square, empty in the heat of midafternoon, “then I need You to fill that hole. I’ve been seeking for others to do this, a man to give me children, and that’s all fallen through. You’re my last hope of anything permanent, forever, secure.”
Tabitha leaned against a tree to catch her breath. She needed sleep. She needed time to let her shoulder heal, but Dominick didn’t have time. She would have to start spying on Wilkins that night.
She headed for home again. Twice more she paused to rest. Her shoulder ached. Her head ached. If she slept until dark, maybe she would feel refreshed enough to carry out her plan, flimsy as it was.
She was a hundred feet from her garden when she saw a man lying on the ground outside the gate.
Raleigh. Raleigh. Raleigh. His name rang through her head with each thud of her heart, each slam of her foot on the ground.
He’d escaped. He’d returned to her. Unlike Dominick, he had nowhere else to go, and this experience would teach him not to wander. She might not love him as she loved Dominick, but he was good and kind, and they’d been friends forever.
She charged forward and dropped to her knees beside the man.
It wasn’t Raleigh.
“Donald,” she said in a quiet voice, “can you hear me?”
Donald Parks opened his eyes. “I . . . can hear . . . you. Just . . . tired. Swam . . . forever.”
“You can sleep later.” Tabitha began to examine his head and neck for signs of injury. “You need to tell me now what happened.”
“Can’t.” His eyes closed. “Sleep.”
“All right. All right.” She resisted the urge to shake him awake. “I’ll have my manservant carry you inside and get you out of those wet clothes. But first, tell me . . .” She had to clear her throat. “Raleigh? Is he all right? Do you know?”
“Yes, I do.” Donald caught his breath. “I’m sorry, Miss Tabitha.” His face worked. “He’s dead.”
34
______
“I simply wish to see if she arrived home safely.” Dominick explained himself to Letty for the second time. “She was attacked last night. She’s injured. But she came into town to help me, and I have to assure myself she’s safe.”
“You’d have heard if she isn’t.” Letty sprinkled salt into a cooking pot, from which the aroma of stewing venison, onions, and garlic rose on fragrant steam. “Unless she was foolish enough to walk along the beach.”
“Which she just might do.” Dominick paced the length of the kitchen. “I can’t live with this confinement if it means I can’t ensure the safety of my lady.”
“Is she your lady?” Letty faced him, her hands on her hips. “Seems to me she’s not a lady, as you English know it, and you won’t be taking her back to your fancy family in four years, or whenever they forgive you enough to pay off your indenture papers.”
“They won’t.” Which was something he needed to consider. “They’re happy to be rid of me.”
So would they be happy to see him back even if he did work out who was trying to foment war? Something else to ponder.
“And would they welcome you with a village midwife on your arm?” Letty persisted.
Dominick toed a place in the brick floor, where the mortar was chipping away. “I don’t think so.”
“Then why are you toying with her affections?”
“I’m not toying with them. That is . . .” He slumped onto a chair and forked his fingers through his hair. “Letty, I don’t know what to do. I should have stayed away from her, but I didn’t and now the damage is done. With Trower gone, I can’t repair it.”
“You could stay here.” Letty seated herself across from him. “Four years goes by quick. Or maybe Kendall would give you permission to marry.”
/> “And have me live a separate life from my bride, locked up at night like the horses?” Dominick gripped the edge of the worktable. “Letty, I can’t wed her until I’m free, and I can’t take her home with me and expect to repair matters with my family. We have no future. And—” Suddenly he couldn’t speak.
“Seems to me that a family who throws you out, then won’t welcome you back because you married a lovely girl like Miss Tabitha, isn’t one who shows loving-kindness.”
Dominick shook his head. “I don’t want to have to choose.” At that moment, looking into a future without Tabitha, he didn’t want to complete his mission if it meant going back to a family that had thrown him out on the road like a stray dog. “Yet how can I make my peace with God otherwise?” he thought aloud.
“You make your peace with God by asking for it, not by doing something.” Letty rose and gave the pot a stir. “But you know that. You hear the parson.”
“The parson doesn’t know how many people I’ve hurt. I need to make up for it.”
“You can’t.” Letty slammed the lid onto the kettle. “There’s nothing you can do to make up for any sin you commit. Making yourself suffer won’t take away anyone else’s suffering.”
“But it reminds me not to do it again.”
Yet there he was, knowing he was going to hurt Tabitha if he left for England once he obtained his freedom. England and the family that hadn’t contacted him once in six months. England and the family that didn’t understand that his faith in God had prevented him from serving in the kind of vicar’s position his father wanted—one who would preach according to what the marquess wanted the people to believe, not what the Bible said to believe. England and a family that could give him entrée into a world he knew, a world in which he felt comfortable and welcome.
Welcome once. Yet who had contacted him other than his one Oxford tutor? Dominick had accomplished what few gentlemen had—taken the tests to obtain his degree—and only his tutors had congratulated him.
“I’m English, Letty,” he said at last. “There’s no place for me here.”
“And what place is there for you there?” Letty asked.
“I . . . don’t know.” Dominick slid from his chair and began to pace again. “Gentlemen’s work. A steward. A secretary. Perhaps a position in the government, if my family will sponsor me.”
“Lots of maybes and ifs.” Letty took flour and lard from the pantry. “Here, at least, you have people who love you for certain.”
“Then that’s the easy road and I can’t take it. It costs me too little.”
“Oh, lad . . .” Letty sighed. “Go on with you. As long as you’re back in time to serve supper, there’s no sense in your fretting over the lady.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll be back.” He reached behind him to tighten the ribbon holding his hair in place, then darted out the door before Letty changed her mind.
Odd he’d told her staying would be no sacrifice. Surely it was. He would have Tabitha, yes, but he had nothing else, no prospects but more servitude, no standing in society, no name that would open doors once he was vindicated. In truth, he would have no security to offer a wife.
Or was it security he sought for himself?
Dominick slid to a halt beside the church. The doors stood open, and the hard-edged notes of a harpsichord being hammered with more exuberance than skill drifted into the square. He climbed the steps and slipped into one of the pews, closing the door with a click so the musician couldn’t hear. In the cool dimness, he slipped to his knees and leaned his brow on the immovable back of the pew in front of him.
The position felt strange, uncomfortable despite the padded bench beneath his knees. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d knelt in a church. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed. He had so much to say, he didn’t know where to start.
The music banged off of his ears. His conscience created havoc in his chest. Words crowded into his throat, tasted bitter on his lips.
“I do remember, God. The last time I prayed was the night before I wrote my first letter. I asked for success in convincing my father I shouldn’t go into the church.”
He hadn’t waited for God’s help. He’d begun his campaign of destruction. Perhaps he’d meant it only for himself, but he’d learned that he was hurting others soon enough to stop.
“But I didn’t stop. I went my own way. I was so determined to reject serving the church, I didn’t think that—that . . .”
That God might want him serving his Lord and Savior?
The thought slammed into his head on a discordant collection of notes from the harpsichord, and he caught his breath. Surely God didn’t want him in the ministry. The idea was too horrendous, standing in the pulpit on Sundays while spending weekdays listening to instructions from one of Bruton’s minions or Bruton himself. That wasn’t serving God. And the church wouldn’t have him now.
Unless he accomplished his mission and his father took him back. And if he succeeded, then he would have to leave Tabitha, or his father wouldn’t help restore his son’s good name.
“Lord, this choice hurts too much.”
The temptation to run surged through him. He could ask Kendall to send him to the interior or sell his indenture to someone far away. He wouldn’t have to risk accomplishing his mission and could avoid the choice between Tabitha and his father—marriage to Tabitha or service to God.
Honor demanded he remain, discover who wanted to start a war, and choose. To accomplish that, he needed to talk to Tabitha about how she could help him.
She would help him leave her in order to restore his honor.
The thought of that much love turned him into a creature the consistency of a jellyfish. With effort, he forced himself to his feet and out of the pew. As he exited the church, he thought someone called his name. He didn’t look back. Staying in the quiet safety of the sanctuary felt like too much of a temptation. He had to reach Tabitha’s house and return to Kendall’s before dark.
He hastened on his way, raising a hand or giving a nod to people he passed. Other than a few who had blamed him after Parks’s and Trower’s disappearances, he seemed welcome in the town, even liked. It was a pretty place there by the sea, a much warmer and kinder sea than the English Channel near his home. His former home. He didn’t even mind the heat that much, except at night in his stifling attic. It was better than the freezing garret he’d stayed in for the week before a ship left for the other side of the Atlantic, before his uncle had found him.
Most of all, he liked the little cottage on the outskirts of town, where a wall protected the garden from the wind off the sea. The garden where roses vied with herbs for the lady’s favor. She healed with the herbs. She ate the roses.
The notion made him smile. He was still smiling as he let himself inside the gate and trotted up the path to the kitchen door.
“Mr. Cherrett.” Patience swung around to greet him, spraying a stream of steaming water from a kettle. “We wasn’t expecting you.”
“I know.” He stepped over the threshold and reached for a towel to mop up the water before the woman slipped. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but I had to ensure that Miss Tabitha arrived home safely and is resting.”
“She’s safe enough, sir, but she’s not resting.” Patience began to pour the kettle’s contents into a washbasin. “Mr. Parks came crawling in about an hour ago.”
“Parks?” Stooping, Dominick lost his balance and sat in the water. “How? I thought he’d been taken.”
“And so he had.” Tabitha’s low voice drifted from the doorway. “He got away, thanks to Raleigh.” She stepped gingerly over the spilled water and offered Dominick her hand. “He probably died so Donald could get away.” Her voice was flat, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Oh, my dear.” Dominick scrambled to his feet and drew her to him.
A sob shuddered through her. He stroked the tail of hair tumbling down her back and murmured nonsense sounds while she wept.
Pati
ence slipped out of the room, balancing the washbasin of hot water.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Dominick asked at last.
Tabitha nodded and pulled away. “They got picked up the other night and were rowed out to a frigate about a mile offshore. Donald was semiconscious and Raleigh completely gone. They were locked in a storage room, and the guards kept telling them Raleigh would be hanged for desertion.”
Dominick winced. “They didn’t?”
“No.” Tabitha smoothed his hopelessly wrinkled cravat. “The captain said he needed men so he would only flog Raleigh instead.”
“God have mercy on him.” Dominick’s back muscles tightened, and nausea filled his belly. “Was it . . . harsh?”
“It never got past the second blow.” Tabitha told Dominick what she knew of the events that followed. “Donald glanced back long enough to see someone go over the rail.”
Dominick heaved a sigh of relief. “So Trower could still be alive.”
“It doesn’t seem likely if—if he was shot.”
“But if he was running, he might have jumped into the sea and not fallen. It’s difficult to strike a moving target with a musket.”
“You think it’s possible?” Tabitha’s eyes lit her face like moonbeams on a dark night, then clouded again. “But they’d probably hang him now that they’ve likely worked out that he helped Donald escape.”
“Not yet. That takes a court martial, even for an impressed man.”
“So if he wasn’t killed in the escape, he’d still be—” Tabitha closed her eyes. “Why would I even hope he’d be alive? He’ll never get off that man-of-war now that they’ve gotten him back.”
Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01] Page 32