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Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01]

Page 34

by Lady in the Mist


  Donald had heard a shot.

  On her hands and knees, Tabitha darted along the trail, dodging seamen and skirting ropes, keeping the marks in her sight.

  They disappeared in the darkness of a hatchway. Tabitha scrambled down the ladder. Not enough light remained to guide her if more blood splotches led the way, but a glow further down the passageway and raised voices guided her forward. Guided her into a cabin with canvas walls, a hanging cot surrounded by naval officers, marines, and Dominick, and another man lying in the midst.

  “Raleigh,” Tabitha cried out and shoved her way to his side. “You’re injured.” She dropped to her knees beside the cot and glared up at the men. “Where’s your surgeon?”

  “Here, ma’am.” A stooped gentleman with flowing white hair stepped forward. “You’d best go now. This is no sight for a lady.”

  “I’m a healer, a midwife.” She took Raleigh’s hand in hers. It was cold, the nails turning blue. A glance at his face showed blue lips with a trace of bubbling blood at the corners. She didn’t need her medical knowledge or a surgeon to tell her that her lifelong friend was dying.

  She stared up at the officers and Dominick through tear-misted eyes. “How did this happen?”

  “He was shot in the back,” Dominick said in a voice cold enough to turn June into January.

  “He was eluding punishment,” the captain interjected, “aiding and abetting the escape of a crewman, and attempting to escape himself. It’s just—”

  “Nothing of what you do is just.” Dominick turned on the man and grabbed his lapels. “You are aiding and abetting the abduction of American seamen, and only your cooperation will save you from—”

  “Dominick, careful,” Tabitha cried.

  Two marines grabbed Dominick and flung him away from the captain.

  He struck the bulkhead, grunted, then shot upright again. “Anyone who lays a hand on me will answer to Vice Admiral Landry. Do you understand?”

  The cabin settled into a tableau of frozen faces and silence. Above, feet pounded and men called. Raleigh’s breath rattled in his throat, and brighter red blood trickled from his mouth.

  Tabitha dropped her head onto his chest, heard the death rattle emphasized, and didn’t attempt to stifle her sob.

  “As far as I’m concerned, Captain Roscoe,” Dominick enunciated in that deadly chill of a voice, “you have murdered this lady’s fiancé.”

  “He is not an American.” Roscoe sounded defensive, tense. “My lord, I swear to you—”

  “Never mind what he says, Captain,” another man called from the passageway. “He’s not a lord. He’s a runaway redemptioner.”

  Tabitha choked on a sob. Her head shot up in time to see Harlan Wilkins stroll to the doorway of the cabin. “Don’t think you can get away with this, Cherrett. Kendall knows and has given me permission to take you ashore for punishment.”

  “No.” Tabitha tried to rise. “You can’t—”

  Dominick gave his head a barely perceptible shake and raised a finger to his lips.

  Roscoe glared at him. “Did you lie to me, man?”

  “No.” Dominick smiled. “And neither did—what’s your friend’s name?”

  “Wilk—how am I supposed to know the name of a Yankee?” Roscoe snapped.

  “A thought.” Dominick stepped toward Wilkins. “I suppose you have reinforcements, so trying to escape is pointless, unless Roscoe thinks it’s better to protect the son of a peer of the realm than help him save his own neck.”

  “A disgraced son.” Wilkins snorted. “Or did you think none of us knows?” He turned to Roscoe. “He can’t do anything to harm you, Captain Roscoe. He can’t deny that he’s a redemptioner, and after his master is done with him for attempting to run away, you’ll be long gone from these shores.”

  With Tabitha aboard.

  She bit her lip and hunched beside the cot. She could choose between helping to ease Raleigh’s last minutes or hours on earth, ensuring he reached the shore of the land he considered home rather than being dumped into the sea, or stay with Dominick and prevent him from receiving another flogging he did not deserve. She couldn’t leave her old friend alone. She couldn’t see Dominick hurt again, scarred worse than he already was.

  She couldn’t bear the idea of Wilkins getting away with his crime.

  She lowered her head to Raleigh’s chest again. The rattling grew fainter under her ear.

  Above her, Captain Roscoe cleared his throat. “I didn’t realize he was a redemptioner, marquess’s son or not. I think you need to remove him from my ship, Wilkins. We need to sail.”

  “So you do know his name,” Dominick said. “Do you think my knowledge can’t harm you?”

  “Who listens to a redemptioner against an upright gentleman like Mr. Wilkins here?” Roscoe’s tone was dry, his face sneering.

  “Kendall might have, but not any longer.” Wilkins’s voice held a note of joviality. “And I need to get this servant back to his master. A whipping should teach him he’s not a lord’s son anymore, ha-ha.”

  Tabitha’s fingers convulsed around Raleigh’s. She sucked in her breath. She couldn’t stay. She had to go after Dominick, save him, and expose Wilkins for what he was—a traitor to his country, a debaucher of women, indirectly a murderer who completely ignored his victim lying on the cot, his lifeblood dripping out of him.

  And Dominick was leaving peacefully, without a fight. A quick glance up told her he submitted to the two men who grabbed his arms and twisted them behind him before they marched him toward the companionway ladder. In fact, he smiled as though he held a delicious secret.

  Except pain tightened the corners of his eyes and darkened the irises.

  Tabitha touched her lips to Raleigh’s cheek. “I love you, my friend. Go to God in peace. I’ll tell everyone you’re a hero. You helped—” Her throat closed. She started to rise.

  His fingers tightened on hers and his lips parted. “Tabbie, don’t go.”

  She looked at his once dear and healthy face, now gray and somehow distant. She heard Wilkins and his men departing with Dominick. Her heart felt ripped in two. She might be able to help Dominick. If she stayed, she could give Raleigh comfort in his last minutes.

  “Please.” He gasped for breath. “So I know . . . forgiven.”

  “You are.” She bent, kissed his brow, then raced up the companionway after Dominick. No one tried to stop her as she raced for the Marianne. She needed to sail it alone for only a mile. Surely she could manage that.

  36

  ______

  Dominick gritted his teeth against the pain of two burly strangers twisting his arms behind him. He knew it was nothing compared to the pain to come, flesh bared to the night, bared to the bite of the whip.

  His stomach rolled. He swallowed and smiled over his clenched teeth. He had Wilkins. He had Roscoe. Wilkins could claim Dominick was running away, but he knew Wilkins was a traitor. Roscoe could sail away, but Dominick knew when he would make contact with his uncle, Admiral Landry, who possessed the power to stop the man. With Tabitha’s help—

  Dominick jerked against his restraints as though someone had punched him in the middle. Tabitha was still aboard the Nemesis. If Roscoe sailed, she would be captive, unable to return, unable to stop Wilkins.

  He’d wanted her to remain quiet until Wilkins condemned himself in front of her too, but not to stay. Not to remain with Raleigh.

  How could he ever have thought of leaving her to another man? It was a mistake, just one more in too many. No matter what happened in the next few hours, weeks, years, he wanted Tabitha at his side, his friend and his wife, his lover and the mother to his children. He couldn’t give her up for a renewal of prestige and the possibility of a good position received from his family’s largess. They would survive in this strange new land with God’s guidance and help, with the wits and talents God had given to them, with the community around them.

  If Tabitha survived the night.

  If he survived the night.<
br />
  Dominick bowed his head and prayed for Tabitha’s safe return to Seabourne. He thought about praying for release from punishment for a crime he hadn’t committed, but he had disobeyed. He wasn’t back on Kendall’s property by sundown. He deserved the lashing, however ill the prospect made him feel.

  “Don’t go puking on the deck,” one of his captors commanded. “We’ll make you clean it up.”

  “After you get your whipping.” The other guffawed.

  Dominick kept his head bowed, his body relaxed. Talking to these men would get him nowhere. Talking to Wilkins was likely to get him dumped overboard. Dominick would appeal to Kendall. He was a good man, a fair man. He said he would mete out punishment for disobedience and could never garner respect if he didn’t carry through.

  But the lash!

  Dominick swallowed against the burning at the back of his throat. He had eaten nothing since sometime the day before, or he feared he would have fouled the wooden planks at his feet. His head spun and his heart ached.

  “Please bring her back to me,” he murmured to the wind. “I’ll find a way—”

  Or perhaps he should let God find a way for them to be together. When Dominick chose to find a way to direct his future, he made amok of it.

  “All right then, Lord, I give this up to You.” He spoke a bit louder than he’d intended.

  His jailers laughed. “Look, he’s saying his prayers.”

  Dominick smiled. He wished for peace. He felt a tension like the inner workings of a clock. He tried to twist around to see if another boat followed, if anyone was bringing Tabitha ashore. His captors held him fast. All he could do was look ahead to the pale line of sand and the glimmer of light from the village a quarter mile beyond.

  The fishing boat cruised up the Trowers’ inlet and tied up at their jetty. Wilkins leaped to the dock and strode off toward Seabourne. The rest of the men tied a rope to the one binding Dominick’s wrists behind him, and led him onto the sand and over the dunes. They walked swiftly, too quickly for a man off balance on sand. Twice he landed on his knees. Both times the men laughed and dragged him to his feet again. His shoulders burned by the time they reached the square. A well-lit square filled with people, including Kendall, Letty, Dinah, and Deborah.

  He was going to be punished in front of anyone who wanted to watch.

  He raised his head and stared Kendall in the eyes. What he read there took his breath away. It wasn’t anger or contempt or, worse, anticipation. It was pain, raw and open.

  “I trusted you,” Kendall said. “I gave you freedom I’ve never given a servant after years, let alone months.”

  “I wasn’t running away. I’m trying to stop these men from stealing American seamen and selling them—”

  “I found him aboard a British frigate,” Wilkins interrupted. “He’d convinced the captain he was the son of a lord and should be helped.”

  “A captain you knew by name,” Dominick shot back. “A captain who knew you by name. A captain who had an American aboard.” He returned his attention to Kendall. “Have you talked to Donald Parks?”

  “He was abducted.” Kendall looked bewildered, taken aback.

  The crowd around them had fallen quiet, watching, listening.

  “He got away,” Dominick said. “He—”

  “Isn’t with his family.” Wilkins sneered at Dominick. “If the man got free, why isn’t he with his family?”

  “So men like you can’t silence him.” Dominick glanced around for the Trower family. Not seeing them, he added, “Like they silenced Raleigh Trower.”

  “What happened to Raleigh?” Kendall asked.

  A murmuring rose like the wind.

  “He’s—”

  “Lying.” Wilkins raised his voice. “Trower took his boat out fishing, is all. You can go see for yourselves the Marianne is gone. And this redemptioner here”—he flicked a finger against Dominick’s nose—“was trying to run off with Tabitha Eckles. You can testify yourself, Letty Robins, that he and the midwife have been carrying on like the morally corrupt aristocracy this man comes from. Tell them, Letty.”

  “It’s true.” Letty’s eyes blazed and a white line shone around her lips. “I told him to steer clear of her, but he insisted he had to see her. He promised me he’d return, but he lied to me. I trusted him, and he lied to me.”

  Dominick stared at her. “Letty, I fully intended—”

  “Then you expect me to believe that she led you astray?” Letty cried.

  “No, no.” Dominick closed his eyes.

  “Where is Tabitha?” Kendall asked.

  Dominick shook his head. “I don’t know. That is, the last time I saw her, she was kneeling beside Raleigh’s cot.”

  And he’d never seen anyone grieve as she had. She might claim she didn’t love Raleigh as a wife loved a husband, but she loved him as a friend.

  “I’m afraid they’ll keep her so she can’t verify what I say,” he added.

  “Or to ensure your English friends rescue you?” Wilkins jeered. “Mayor Kendall, you can’t believe this man any more than you can believe that incompetent midwife.”

  The last two words struck Dominick with understanding. Of course. Wilkins was discrediting Dominick’s character as he had nearly succeeded in discrediting Tabitha’s, to protect himself from Sally Belote’s claim of paternity, from what Tabitha might have worked out from a dying woman’s ramblings. When he failed with Tabitha, Wilkins tried to kill her.

  He wouldn’t fail with Dominick—he read it on Kendall’s unhappy face. Everyone knew through Letty and the girls that Kendall had declared he would whip Dominick then send him to the interior part of the state if he disobeyed the curfew again. Without Kendall accepting Dominick’s excuse for why he hadn’t been home by sunset, the punishment would be carried out, or Kendall would be shamed as a man who could be a leader, a mayor, a senator.

  “I am telling the truth.” Dominick made one more effort to convince Kendall as he looked the man in the eye.

  Kendall turned away and gestured to his groom. The man held a carriage whip. A whip much like the one Dominick’s father had used.

  For a moment, the square turned black. He heard nothing. The warm summer wind felt more like a January frost. And the smells were the same—horse manure, damp wool, his own perspiration. Only a lifetime of training kept his back straight, his head high.

  “Take him to the fence in front of my house,” Kendall said. “And bind his hands to it.”

  “I’m innocent,” Dominick said in as clipped a tone as he could manage. “I do not deserve this punishment.”

  He leaned against the gate as the same two men cut the ropes around his wrists and retied him to the top bar of the gate. What he was about to endure was nothing to fear. Like the beating his father had given him, it was only man’s punishment and didn’t matter in the end. Jesus had taken the true punishment for Dominick’s wrongdoing. Man’s punishment meant nothing but temporary pain. Because of Jesus’s pain, Dominick could be free in his heart, whatever his body suffered.

  “Remove his coat and shirt,” Wilkins commanded.

  Dominick didn’t need to ask how they would manage that with his hands tied. A tug on the back of his neck and sting against his skin, followed by ripping, told of a knife blade parting the fabric. Night air touched his skin.

  The crowd gasped. His scars tightened.

  “Proof he’s a reprobate,” Wilkins all but crowed. “He’s been whipped before.”

  “I am forgiven and innocent in Your eyes, O God,” Dominick whispered to the brick front of Kendall’s house. “I can do nothing, but in You I can do all things.”

  “That’s right,” one of his captors from the frigate said with a chuckle, “say your prayers.”

  “Fifteen lashes,” Kendall pronounced, then sighed.

  Twenty-five fewer than his father had given him.

  He tensed, awaiting the first blow. He didn’t look to see who would wield the lash. He didn’t want to, he didn
’t need to know.

  “One,” someone shouted.

  The crowd fell still enough for Dominick to hear the whistle of the whip sailing through the air.

  And footfalls clattering across the cobbles.

  “No, stop!” Her beloved voice rang across the square.

  The crack of the whip rang in his ears. His body jerked. He tasted blood from where he’d bitten down on his lip to keep from crying out.

  “Two.” The shout soared through the night.

  The whip whooshed.

  “Stop!”

  Something hurtled against his back. Something—someone—soft and warm and smelling of the sea and roses.

  The whip cracked. She cried out and jerked against him.

  “Stop!” he shouted.

  Others took up the call. But the whip fell again. Tabitha screamed and slid along his body to the ground.

  With a roar, Dominick wrenched the bar from the gate and swung around. Wilkins raised his arm. The lash hurtled to its full length.

  Hands still bound to the rail, Dominick lunged. The bar and his head struck Wilkins in the middle. Merchant and whip, bondsman and bonds, landed on the cobbles in a tangled heap.

  37

  ______

  The gate latch clanged. On her knees before the roses, Tabitha glanced up, heart leaping with hope.

  Red hair shimmering despite the overcast day, Letty strode up the flagstone path and waved a folded sheet of vellum under Tabitha’s nose. “I expect you’ve been waiting for this.”

  Even over the fragrance of the roses, Tabitha caught a whiff of sandalwood and snatched the letter from Letty’s fingers. It was merely folded with the edges tucked in, not sealed. She yanked it open and read:

  My dear, now that my right arm has healed enough to write and my uncle has dropped anchor in Hampton Roads, Kendall is allowing me to see you. His coachman will bring you to Norfolk, and Letty will be your chaperone. Please do not delay.

  Your, Dominick

  Tabitha stared at the penultimate word. An error or a deliberate statement? No matter. He had written.

 

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