Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01] Read online

  He gripped the door frame with one hand and the handle with the other. “Yes, the last time I looked in a mirror, I was me. Is there a difficulty with that, madam?”

  “Only if Mayor Kendall approves of his manservant prowling about the beach in the middle of the night. His English manservant.”

  She pronounced his nationality as though it was a felony offense. Then again, to her, it probably was.

  The skin along his back crawled, feeling the bite of the lash. “Not prowling. Merely a lark.” He gazed down at her through his lashes. “Mermaid hunting.”

  A hint of pink tingeing her pale skin assured him she was not immune to his wiles.

  He smiled. “Surely you won’t tattle on a lad who needed some sea air.”

  She set one hand on a hip. “Considering I’m here to inform him of Englishmen wandering about at night, yes, I will.”

  “Please don’t.” Abandoning flirtation, he stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind him. “It could cause unnecessary trouble.”

  “And I think it already has caused unnecessary trouble for me.” She tilted back her head and raised one hand to where a thin red scratch ran above the collar of her pelisse, marring the creamy perfection of her throat. “Tell me, Mr. Englishman, do you own a knife?”

  3

  ______

  Tabitha had never seen a man with such beautiful eyes. The rich, deep brown of coffee, they sparkled with pinpoints of gold light behind a fringe of lashes that would have made them feminine if not for his strong cheekbones and firm jaw. The powdered hair, ridiculous as it was in Seabourne, created a striking contrast to the dark eyes and sun-bronzed complexion.

  As she looked into those extraordinary eyes, she found herself going soft like butter left too close to a fire. Soft in the head anyway, for asking him if he had a knife. Even if he had a motive for holding her at knifepoint and commanding her to say nothing of the night’s activities, before pushing her forward hard enough to make her fall to her knees—as the man had in her garden—he wasn’t about to admit he had a knife.

  “Never you mind me asking that.” She gave him the gentle smile she bestowed on frightened young mothers. “I don’t want you to feel you need to commit the sin of lying to avoid trouble.”

  He laughed. “Oh, my dear Madam Mermaid, my sins are so numerous, lying is the least of them. But thank you for the reprieve, as I wouldn’t wish to give you cause to accuse me of doing this.” He traced his forefinger along the scratch.

  Tabitha’s knees turned to oatmeal porridge. Nonetheless, she made herself meet his gaze. “You recognize it for what it is, the work of a knife, and you have reason to want me to keep my mouth shut.”

  “I expect a number of persons have cause to wish you to keep your mouth shut.” He smiled, with his lips, with his eyes. “You know the secrets of this town, don’t you, Madam Midwife?”

  “I am often a confidante,” she answered with care. “But I’ve never been threatened before.”

  “Before you ran into me.” He propped his shoulders against the polished oak of the front door and crossed his arms over his broad chest, as though preparing for a long chat. “Then I am in a pickle.”

  “You’ll be in more of one if you keep denying me access to the mayor.”

  “All too true.” He didn’t move. He said nothing else. In the village square beyond the fence surrounding the front garden, wheels rumbled on the bricks of the street and two men exchanged greetings. Inside the gates, birds set up a choral symphony in ode to the bright warmth of the morning.

  Tabitha’s and the Englishman’s gazes clashed. Tabitha set her hands on her hips and compressed her lips. It was the look and stance she applied to husbands who thought she was too young to know what she was doing. Most of them backed down, crept meekly away to pace the floor, or left to cause trouble for someone other than her.

  The Englishman laughed. “You’re rather beautiful like that.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere with me.”

  “I’m rather impervious to that glare of yours too. But I do concede I can’t keep you standing on the front steps all day.” He straightened and half turned to the door. “I’ll show you in. He should be finished with breakfast by now. You may tell him what you like, but I doubt he’ll thank you for informing him that his perfect English butler has been a naughty lad. He’ll have to punish me for form, if nothing else. Then I wouldn’t be able to wear my livery, and he has important guests coming in a fortnight.”

  Speech delivered, he opened the door and stood back with a gesture for her to precede him.

  She glided over the threshold and he closed the door behind her. After the sunshine, the entryway seemed as dim, chilly, and quiet as the spring nights—or a tomb. The soles of the Englishman’s shoes resounded like bass drum beats on the marquetry floor as he strode toward a door at the far end of the hallway.

  Tabitha shivered. When she left home and set out for the sheriff’s to report the assault on her person, doing so seemed like a sound idea. No one should dare threaten the midwife. Gathering information came with her work, and if men threatened her for coming across something they didn’t want her to know, she couldn’t serve the community. And the community needed her. She was the only person with medical knowledge of any kind within twenty miles.

  But after meeting Mayor Kendall’s new manservant face-to-face, she couldn’t outright accuse him in the event he was innocent, as he claimed. The townspeople said Kendall was proud of having a proper butler. Tabitha had thought nothing of the talk when she met him that morning. Indentured servants tended to come from the lower ranks of society. They spoke with bad grammar and nearly incomprehensible accents. They did not affect a manner of speaking she’d heard only from educated persons. The men she’d met who talked like that tended to come from England—scholars traveling to observe the peculiar Americans or military officers. If this man was an indentured servant and an aristocrat or gentleman, he’d fallen on terrible times and didn’t need worse to befall him.

  Ahead of her, the man paused and glanced over his shoulder. “Please, Miss—” His color heightened. “I forgot to ask your name.”

  “Tabitha Eckles.”

  “Ah, then, Miss Tabitha Eckles, please say nothing.”

  “I’ll take it under consideration.”

  With a sigh, he turned his back on her and knocked. “Miss Tabitha Eckles, sir.”

  “Well, send the girl in. Bring her some coffee.” Mayor Kendall’s voice boomed into the entryway.

  Tabitha started forward. Her feet dragged, her shoes leaden. And at the end of the hall, the Englishman held the door open for her, holding her gaze with his beautiful eyes. If she could have done so without making a fool of herself, she would have turned back and not spoken with the mayor then and there. But she was committed now, so she entered the dining room and slid onto the chair the Englishman pulled out for her. She started to speak.

  Mayor Kendall waved her to silence. “Fetch a fresh cup and pot of coffee.”

  “Yes, sir.” The butler trotted from the room. A door opened, sending the aromas of bacon, bread, burned toast, and coffee wafting into the dining room. Then the door closed.

  “This is a pleasant surprise, Tabitha.” The mayor smiled at her. “How may I help you?”

  “It’s not for me.” She took a deep breath while the Englishman was gone and she could breathe properly. “Well, I suppose it is. I went to the sheriff first, but he was gone already.”

  “That concerns me.” Kendall pushed his plate and newspaper aside and gripped the edge of the table. “I hope nothing too awful has occurred to take him out so early.”

  “Maybe he’s fishing?” Tabitha smiled. “He does like his boat.”

  Kendall chuckled. “Yes, indeed. He missed his calling, staying on land. But what was so urgent it took you to the sheriff this early, then back here to me?”

  To give herself more time to decide on her course, she began, “You may wish to know, before I menti
on the other matter, that Mrs. Wilkins went to the Lord early this morning. She fell down the steps, and I was called—” Her throat closed and a tear formed in the corner of one eye. “Forgive me.” She drew a handkerchief from her reticule and dabbed at her face.

  “Of course, my dear.” Kendall went white around the lips. “You’re too young to have to manage this sort of thing on your own. I don’t approve of an unmarried midwife, you know, but you’re all we have, and I know you did your best.”

  “I hope so.” Tabitha swallowed. “Sir, I wouldn’t think anything of this if too many of our young men weren’t disappearing from the coastal villages.” Once started, she couldn’t stop, not even when she heard the kitchen door creak open. “There were strangers about last night. English strangers.”

  China rattled behind her.

  In front of her, the mayor’s eyes widened. “Where?”

  “The tide was out, so I walked along the beach when I . . . er . . . ran into them.”

  “How many?” The words emerged like two hammer blows.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  She sensed the stillness of the Englishman behind her. Her hand went to the scratch on her throat.

  “It was dark,” she plunged on, “and I was understandably distracted.”

  “Of course.” The mayor frowned. “And it was misty.”

  “Yes. And, sir—”

  Kendall raised one hand. “Why are you just standing there, Cherrett? Come serve Miss Eckles some coffee.”

  “Yes, sir. I beg your pardon, sir.” He sounded subdued as he approached Tabitha and set the tray on the table. “Cream, Madam M—Miss Eckles?”

  “No, thank you.” She didn’t look at him as she continued to address the mayor. “Whoever it was let me go on my way, but when I reached my garden”—a shudder ran through her—“someone threatened me at knifepoint.”

  “Threatened you?” Kendall half rose from his chair. “What are you saying?”

  Tabitha accepted the cup the Englishman—Mr. Cherrett—shoved in front of her and wrapped her hands around the smooth china. Despite the warmth of the day, her hands felt like ice.

  “He held a knife to my throat and told me to keep my mouth shut about the night,” she blurted out on a single breath.

  “It was this same Englishman?” Kendall nearly shouted.

  The silver serving tray struck the floor with a resonant clang. Tabitha jumped, slopping hot coffee over her fingers. She gasped.

  Mr. Cherrett groaned. “I am so sorry, miss. I’ll fetch you a cold wet cloth.” The kitchen door creaked.

  Tabitha stared at her reddened fingers. She’d questioned the man’s guilt when looking into his eyes. But now, with Cherrett’s noisy reaction to the mayor’s raised voice, she wondered if she’d allowed herself to succumb to a pretty face and charming manner while the threat had indeed come from the Englishman.

  Raleigh Trower feasted his eyes on the whitewashed cottage before him. From the neat hedge of flowers keeping the beach away from the front garden to the green door and window frames, from the smoke curling out of the chimney into the clear blue sky to the scent of baking bread, from the roar of the ocean across the dunes to the sundry birds chorusing in the trees, nothing about the Eckles home had changed in the two and a half years since he’d last laid eyes on it or its youngest lady inhabitant.

  “Tabitha.” Her name burned on his lips. Her face swam before his eyes.

  Swaying, he grasped the top rail of the gate. He probably should have stayed home long enough for a good night’s sleep. But the promise of seeing Tabitha again kept him going through the hardships of the past nine and twenty months, kept him alive, when dying would have been easier. Now, on sufferance from a British captain, he was nearly free to return to his life, his fishing boat, his family, his Tabitha.

  “If you’ll be my Tabitha again.”

  One bit of news he’d gleaned, while Momma had stuffed him with food and his sisters fluttered around him like finches in a field of grain, was that Tabitha was still unmarried and the town’s only midwife.

  “The only thing we have for a healer,” Momma had added. “Her mother died right after you disappeared, and now it’s just her.”

  “Is she courting anyone?” Raleigh asked.

  She should have been married. She would have been married if he hadn’t betrayed her out of selfishness, out of fear.

  “The men are all scared of her.” Fanny, his younger sister, giggled. “I mean, she knows everything that happens around here. Last year, when Rachel Goodwin got herself into trouble, Tabitha made her tell her who the father was before she’d deliver the baby.”

  “That’s the law.” Felicity still affected the haughty tones of a plantation mistress rather than the daughter of a mildly prosperous fisherman. “She’s required to ask that when the woman is in—”

  “Girls,” Momma snapped, “this isn’t proper conversation.” She turned to Raleigh. “She knows too much about what the young men get up to, now that her mother isn’t here to protect her from some of the . . . er . . . more unpleasant parts of her work, so they’re afraid she’s heard tales.”

  “They wouldn’t need to fear her if they were acting as they should.” Raleigh realized he sounded smug, hypocritical. His conscience might be clear where behavior toward females went, if he discounted jilting Tabitha. Yet he lived a lie that should keep him away from any decent female.

  Now he opened the gate and strode up the flagstone path to the front steps, to the door, to the knocker in the shape of a dove. The golden metal bird gleamed in the morning sunshine, and its flesh-and-blood counterpart cooed from a pine tree at the corner of the yard, as though encouraging him to seek entrance.

  He let the knocker fall once, twice, three times, then a fourth for good measure. He kept his hand on it, the other one on the door frame for support, and waited. He heard nothing from inside the house.

  “Bobwhite. Bobwhite,” a bird of that name chided from a cedar around the side of the house. “Bobwhite. Bobwhite.”

  Quick, light footfalls sounded on the other side of the door. Raleigh straightened, lips curved into a smile, heart racing.

  The door opened. A woman twice Tabitha’s age, a full head shorter and half again as wide, stood in the opening. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t recall her name. “May I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m—” He swallowed. “I’m here to see Tabitha. Miss Eckles, I mean.”

  She narrowed her eyes as though she too recognized him. “Is this an emergency?”

  Oh, yes, he needed to know right away if Tabitha had forgiven him. Or at the least, if she could.

  “Not an emergency.” He had to be honest about some things after all. “I—I’m an old friend. Raleigh Trower.”

  “Are you?” The woman’s round face tightened, her green eyes grew cold. “I can’t be sure she’ll be wanting to see you.”

  Raleigh looked down his nose at the woman. “That’s for her to decide, isn’t it?”

  “It is, and she isn’t here.” The woman started to close the door. “You’ll have to come back later.”

  “Please.” Raleigh stuck his foot over the threshold and smiled. Suddenly the woman’s name came to him and he added, “It’s Patience, isn’t it? Patience Neff?”

  “Well, fancy that.” Patience stuck her own nose in the air. “You couldn’t recall you was engaged to Miss Tabitha, but you remember my name.”

  “Oh, I remembered.” Raleigh closed his eyes, recalling every detail of Tabitha’s lovely face. “I made a mistake.”

  “And now you come back to pick up where you left off?” Patience set work-reddened hands on her hips. “Well, young man, she’s had her heart broke once too often and I don’t want to see it happen again.”

  “I know about her family.”

  The mother and grandmother who had never been quite as welcoming of the engagement as he would have wished, for Tabitha’s sake.

  “That’s why I thought she might be kind
enough to see me,” he continued. “She might like to know I’m not dead.”

  “And I can tell her, or she’ll learn in the village.” Patience sighed and pulled the door wide. “All right, come in and wait. The parlor’s clean and I was just making some coffee.” She waved him forward.

  He entered the tidy parlor, with its open windows allowing the sea air and sunshine inside, and a braided woolen rug on the floor. He wanted to pace while waiting for Tabitha. He wanted to stride in circles around the house, waiting for her to arrive across the beach or from town, as he had waited many times in the past. With Patience’s bright eyes on him, he chose a chair facing the parlor door, perching on its edge so he could spring to his feet the instant the front door opened or she came down the hall from the back of the house.

  He expected Patience to leave him alone to stew in private. A maidservant would have. But Patience was much more to the Eckles family and had been since the grandmother, Mrs. Nottingham, had bought the woman’s indenture mere months before Raleigh left. Now that Tabitha was alone in the world, Raleigh expected Patience had taken on an even more protective role.

  “Is she truly well?” he decided to ask.

  “As well as a woman of four and twenty and still unwed can be.” Patience pierced him with her eyes the green of the sea before a storm. “You’re talking like an Englishman. Did you go back to your sainted mother’s people?”

  “Not by choice.” He made himself focus on the old lady. “I was on a merchantman bound for China. A British frigate hauled me aboard and asked me a lot of questions.”

  Lantern light had hung in his face so he couldn’t see the officers except for the occasional glint of a blade. They’d struck his head when hauling him out of his boat and onto their deck. He’d been dizzy, cloudy of brain, sick in body.

  “I made the mistake of telling them my mother is from Halifax. That made me English enough in their eyes to justify tossing me into the stinking coffin they call a man-of-war, and made me—” His fists clenched on his thighs. “I’ve tried everything to get away, to get back to Tabitha.”

  “Before or after you were pressed?”