Lady in the Mist (24 page)

“Four years is a rather long while,” she said dryly. “Four years of enforced servitude. Was that what your uncle had planned for you on Barbados too?”

“No, I’d have been free there, but I couldn’t have made amends. Here . . . if I can find out certain information, my uncle will buy my indenture. I could be gone in weeks.”

“Gone.” She tugged her hand free and tucked it beneath a fold of her skirt. “And you want me to help you so you’ll go away from me all that much sooner?”

“For the good of both our countries, yes. That is—Tabitha, I want to stay, but I’ve no work here and you Americans are a bit hostile to me.”

“And your father won’t want me showing up on his doorstep alongside his precious son.”

“I’m not a precious son to him.” He shifted his shoulders, feeling the stiffness settle in. “Perhaps I can make him accept me back into the fold and restore my allowance if I succeed here, but unless I do what he wants, he will never care what I do.”

“And what is it he wants you to do?” She tilted her head. In a flash, the sun shone beneath the wide brim of her hat and showed the bright sparkle of her eyes. “Let me guess. You’ll need a wife with money and position.”

“I want a wife with character and beauty.”

“Dominick, I can never go to England. You English wouldn’t accept me. I’m barely tolerated in regular social circles here, let alone the sort you enjoyed.”

He jumped. “What sort do you think I enjoyed?”

“The sort that would think Wilkins and Kendall unacceptable despite their money.”

He couldn’t deny it without lying, so he said nothing.

“Is your family wealthy or highborn?” she persisted.

He sighed, picked up part of a broken crab shell, and began to draw the Cherrett family crest in the sand. “You may as well know. My father is the fifth Marquess of Bruton.”

“Worse than I thought.” Her voice sounded strangled. “But you’re a younger son. You really are just plain Mr. Cherrett, aren’t you?”

“No.” He couldn’t look at her. “I’m Lord Dominick. In England, my wife will be known as Lady Dominick.”

“And even for a younger son, Lady Dominick must come from a good family, have been presented to the queen, and know how to use a fan, not how to tie off an umbilical cord.” Her tone held no emotion at all. “I’ve never even owned a fan.”

“I never fell in love with one of those ladies.” He erased the leopard rampant and reached out to her. “Believe me, Tabitha—”

“I believe you.” Her face was set, white beneath the brim of her hat. “But how long does love last when the bride you met on a misty beach, instead of a smoky drawing room, is an embarrassment to you in front of your peers?”

“You couldn’t be—”

“I couldn’t not be.” She ducked her head, hiding her expression from him. “I suspect you’ve merely been toying with me to convince me to help you end your indenture.”

“I have—”

“No, no excuses.” She held up a hand. “I’m still your friend, and I’ll hear you out.”

“I don’t deserve your friendship, but I thank you for it.” He took her hand in his, gripped her fingers as though they were his only lifeline, and stared at the water. The tide was ebbing now, yet heavy breakers told of a storm out to sea. His insides felt as though some of those breakers slammed against his ribs. “My father wanted me to be a vicar. It’s tradition in my family for the third son, if there is one, to go into the church. I objected. I have no vocation for serving God as someone under my father’s direction must serve Him.”

“How could even a marquess direct a man of the cloth?” She looked bewildered.

“In England, a landowner holds the living.” He grimaced. “Men flatter him to get placed there, if it’s a good one.”

“And you didn’t want to flatter your own father?”

“I didn’t have to. It was expected of me.” The sun felt like a burden cloaking his shoulders, and he shifted them as though he could shrug off the weight. “My father would have told me what to preach on Sundays and whom to invite to dinner or whom to visit in the parish. I watched this all my life. He uses the vicar for his personal advancement, not for the advancement of the kingdom of God. As a good son, I should have obeyed him, but I couldn’t let God be used that way.”

“I can’t even imagine thinking of God that way.” She sounded wistful.

“I felt very much as though God were a part of my life. I threw it away with everything else in my life.” His throat felt thick. “You see, the man I wounded in the duel was a vicar’s son, defending what his father did against my accusations of corruption.” Dominick laid one hand over his eyes. “He’ll always walk with a limp because of me. I’ll never forget his face . . .” He shook himself like a wet dog and tried to smile. “So when my uncle offered me a way to find redemption, I took it.”

“I thought redemption comes only through God.” Tabitha laughed without humor. “Here I am talking to you about God.”

“Talking wisely about Him. Redemption does come from Him, but I—” No, he couldn’t tell her more, not everything, from the beginning of his crimes against God’s people to the humiliating end. Shame burned through him, and he released her hand to clasp his knee. “Barbados would have been too easy for me. I’d have been the owner’s emissary and treated like someone special. I couldn’t let myself be pampered and petted and left to live in luxury, and only be out of England with little consequences other than hot weather. So I took my uncle’s second choice—a maximum of four years of bondage if I failed.”

“And redemption if you succeed at what, Dominick?” Her voice held an edge. “Selling the young men of my country to your Navy for this endless war with France?”

“Quite the opposite, my dear.” He breathed a bit easier for the moment. “I’m here to work
against
whoever is selling men to my country’s Navy. If I can prove who it is, my uncle will buy out my indenture. I’ll be a free man, and I can return to England with my honor restored for catching men who are surely going to drive our countries to war within the next year, as things stand now.”

She looked ghostly in the gloom that was growing from the clouds rushing toward shore. “Aren’t you . . . aren’t you working against your own country?”

“Only if the man perpetrating the abductions is part of the British government’s own plan for war.” He could smile fully now. “Which he isn’t.”

“How can you be sure of that?” She hugged her arms across her middle, as though she were cold or her belly hurt. Her hat brim masked her eyes again. “Do you . . . know who it is?”

“No, not for certain. But my uncle would know if England wanted war with America.” He tamped down his eagerness to explain more and enlist her aid. “But someone in the Navy is working with him, and who that is, my uncle doesn’t know.”

“And you’re supposed to find out everything.”

Dominick nodded. “But I’ve discovered I can’t do this on my own.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “I expect you’ve always known you can’t do this on your own, and the spinster midwife was an excellent ally.”

“No, Tabitha—”

“Never mind protests.” She gave him a half smile. “Why do you think I can possibly help?”

“Because I suspect I know who the perpetrator is, and with your assistance, I can find proof.”

25

______

Tabitha stared at Dominick, taking in every feature, memorizing each detail, from his long-lashed dark eyes to the strong cheekbones and jaw, to the hint of russet in the swath of satiny brown hair falling over his shoulders. This mental portrait was likely all she would have of him—whatever pretty speeches he made about loving her—if she helped him.

If she helped him, he would leave like all the rest.

Her heart an aching mass in her chest, she rose without speaking and began to clean up the remnants of their meal. Her eyes burned. The clouds sweeping over the sea blurred around the edges, and the lowering sun blazed with a halo around the center gold.

She felt sick. From the corner of her eye, she saw Dominick watching her, and wanted to throw the basket at him, pelt him with strawberries and gull-picked crab shells. She wanted to shout at him, “I am not going to help you leave me alone and be bride of nothing but the mist.”

Instead, she gathered up the basket and started for the house without a word, without a backward glance. “How could You be so cruel to me again, God?” She sobbed the words aloud, thinking maybe the Supreme Being would hear her. She was too far away for Dominick to catch her quiet wail above the surf and wind.

She thought.

His hand closed over hers on the basket handle. “Tabitha, look at me.”

“Why should I?” She blinked against the mist in her eyes. “I’ll never forget your face.”

“All right, then answer me this question of logic.” His voice held a note of humor, as though he were about to laugh, and she wanted to shove her fingers into her ears. “You are a logical woman, practical and even scientific.”

She shrugged.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He removed the basket from her hand, switched it to his other side, and clasped her fingers. “If God doesn’t care about you, how can you blame Him for everyone leaving you?”

“If God is all love and forgiveness, how can you think you have to earn your redemption?” She glared at him. “Dominick, this is going to get you killed.” She saw the dark, triangular head, the catlike eyes, and pressed her hand to her stomach. “It almost did. That snake was meant for you, and the person didn’t care if he got me instead this time. That means someone knows and—Dominick, you’ve got to run away. I’ll help.”

Maybe they could go together.

“There’s land and freedom beyond the mountains.” A plan began to form in her head. “No one will find you, not this person wanting to start a war, not Mayor Kendall, not—”

“Shh.” He slipped his arm around her waist and held her against his side. “I can’t run away. I have a mission to fulfill. I need to show my family, my country, and God that I can do something important, something right.”

“And you will.” She pulled away from him. “You’ll succeed, if you’re not dead, and then you’ll go back to England to receive your honors and the embrace of your family. And I’ll . . . be here . . .” She gave her head a vigorous shake. “How can you even ask me to help you leave me one way or the other?”

“Don’t you want to help find out who is causing these disappearances?” They had reached her garden, and he turned to face her, his back to the gate. “The village, the entire eastern shore, would be grateful to you. Mayor Kendall would shower you with so many honors Wilkins wouldn’t be able to touch you—if he isn’t the man we’re seeking.”

“Dominick, no. He wants to be a senator.”

“Which takes a great deal of money. Or do you think this person is doing it out of the goodness of his heart toward England’s struggle with France?”

“No, but—” She felt out of breath, as though she’d been running.

The sky was darkening, from the setting sun in the west and cloud cover in the east.

“You need to go,” she said with a heart full of regret.

“I know.” His lashes dropped over his eyes. “Will you help me if I promise I won’t leave you behind?”

“You expect me to believe Lord Dominick Cherrett would take Midwife Tabitha Eckles back to his august family?” She snorted. “Don’t make promises like that. It only makes it hurt worse when they’re broken.”

A glint of anger flashed through his ridiculously long lashes. “Then you’d rather see me in bondage for years and no future beyond just to keep me near you? Is that any way to show your love?”

If you can’t trust God, you can’t trust anyone, and if you can’t trust anyone, you can’t enjoy their love.
The pastor’s words rang in her head as though the man stood beside her.

Tabitha shook her head. “Maybe I love you too much to expect you to stay here after you’re free, or to be saddled with a bride who would shame you to your family.”

“You wouldn’t shame me with anyone, Tabitha.” He cupped her chin in his hand and leaned toward her.

She turned her face away so his lips merely brushed her cheek. “Don’t use embraces to persuade me. I can’t think when you touch me. I want to agree . . .” She backed away from him, her hand to her middle. “But you know that, don’t you? Kiss me into senselessness, and I’ll do anything?”

“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me that, Lord Dominick.”

“Of course I kissed you to win you to my side before asking for your help.” He looked her in the eye, and the impact of his chocolate brown irises melting into hers was nearly as compelling as his touch. “I decided immediately to use all my charm on you—the spinster, too-often abandoned midwife—to get your help. Who better? You can go wherever you like whenever you like without anyone gainsaying you. But it all changed. Oh, Tabitha, how I got caught in my own web, hoist by my own petard.”

How she wanted to believe him. Only the stiffness of her spine stopped her from leaning toward him, resting her head on his shoulder, promising him anything.

“So if God is involved in our lives, why does He make us suffer?” she cried.

“We make ourselves suffer, Tabitha.” He stroked her cheek—her wet cheek. “I railed against His church. You rejected Him. He didn’t make us do those things.”

“And now we have to pay for our actions?” She shook her head. “I don’t see that as God loving me like a parent.”

“Parents—” He stopped, and a look of pure pain contorted his features. “I hope God loves us more than parents do. If He doesn’t, I’m doomed.”

“Your father wasn’t loving?” she asked tentatively.

He emitted a bark of humorless mirth. “Quite the opposite. But if I succeed here, he might . . . not be ashamed of me.”

“Then you can’t take me back to England with you for sure.” She thought her own pain would crush her chest. “He would never respect you for—for caring about me.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again and shifted his shoulders as though they ached from carrying a heavy burden. “If I succeed, if I bring honor back to the family, he might allow anything.”

“But I can’t place you in a position to have to choose between me and your father.” She took a step backward. “You’d better go. The sun is about to set.”

“I don’t want to go. I can talk Letty around if I’m late. Kendall’s gone.”

“But I don’t want you to stay.” She picked up the basket, turned her back on him, and walked away. If Dominick wouldn’t move from her gate, she could enter from the front. She hoped for his sake he would leave. He might think he could talk females around to his side with a smile and flicker of his eyelashes, but Tabitha wasn’t so certain Letty would divide her loyalty between master and fellow servant. Asking her wasn’t fair.

At the corner of the wall, Tabitha glanced back. Dominick was gone. Disappointment stabbed her, foolish female that she was. Of course he wouldn’t come after her. He’d courted her, with one goal in mind—to get her help. Once he had it, once they succeeded, he would leave. Nothing in Seabourne, in Virginia, in America, could hold back a man who wanted to redeem himself to either his earthly father in England or his heavenly Father.

She didn’t blame him. She had let him court her so she could learn if he was up to something. She had succeeded. The knowledge did her no good. He wasn’t trying to harm the local inhabitants; he was trying to help them, if he was telling the truth.

She believed him. He wouldn’t ask her to work against her countrymen. That was too risky. He knew asking for her help at all jeopardized his relationship with her, if he cared for her as anything beyond the flirt of the moment and as someone he could make an ally. In telling her, he compromised his safety. He trusted her enough not to betray him.

He trusted her, but she didn’t believe a word he said about his feelings for her. She could talk about how he wouldn’t take her to his family because his father would despise her, and when he denied it, she as good as called him a liar. Oh, he cared for her, but not enough to stand against his need to redeem himself with his family.

Just as Raleigh hadn’t cared enough to suppress his desire to roam the world. As her father hadn’t cared enough not to go out in the cold after birds’ eggs and tax his weak lungs.

“God, if You’re there, tell me what is wrong with me that no one will stay,” she cried out to the pounding surf and howling wind. She dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands. “I just want to be loved by someone who won’t leave me.”

Pastor Downing had said God would never leave, that His love was perfect. Yet Tabitha didn’t sense it. She’d only seen Him take from her. With every death, with every disappearance, her heart broke a little more. She held herself from people more and more. She’d gotten close to Dominick for a reason, and fallen for him in the process. She loved him more than she’d ever loved Raleigh or any of the others who had courted her in her youth.

Then why did you send him away?

The question slammed into her head like a chunk of wind-borne driftwood. She gasped and covered her ears. The howl of the wind diminished, but the question ricocheted around her brainbox like a trumpet blast echoing off the mountain.

Why . . . Why . . . Why . . .

She wanted everything given to her—love, family, permanence. She hadn’t gone out to fetch the egret egg for her father. She hadn’t gone to the birthing in her mother’s place. She hadn’t loved any of the young men who had tried to court her. Now that she loved Dominick, she wasn’t even sure she had loved Raleigh. She was paid for the kindness and care she bestowed on her patients. She’d even considered running away with Dominick, which would have left Patience and Japheth behind with no one to support them.

No wonder God didn’t want her. She gave absolutely nothing.

Kneeling on the dune outside her garden wall, she understood why Dominick felt the need to redeem himself. What he’d done was regrettable, but not horrendous. And he’d been honest about his goal, about his desire to make himself unwelcome in the church as one of its servants. If someone challenged him to a duel, that man shared Dominick’s guilt.

Tabitha’s was all her own. No one had brought grief upon her except herself, not those who had gone away, not God. Her. She was the one who needed to seek redemption.

And she knew just where to start.