Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01] Page 5

  She read the hope in his face, in the way he leaned toward her with his hands clenched at his sides.

  “Will you forgive me for leaving?”

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  It was the only thing she possessed to offer him—the truth. She didn’t know, not this soon, not this easily. “You have had weeks, maybe months, to think about your return. This is a shock to me. Maybe you should leave now and give me some time to accustom myself to the new circumstances.”

  “All right, but I’ll not give up on you.” Raleigh departed with a last, longing glance back.

  She fled into the garden, with the sunshine, the scent of roses, mint, chamomile . . .

  And the lingering memory of another, elusive scent that had warned her of someone’s presence in her garden.

  She touched a forefinger to her throat, where her fichu hid the scratch. She knew two men who had reason to threaten her into silence regarding knowledge of the night. If Wilkins had something to do with his wife’s injuries, he might fear what she had said in her delirium. But surely he understood Tabitha couldn’t divulge what she heard during a lying-in, except for the identity of the father in the event of illegitimacy.

  As for the Englishman . . . At the least, a bondservant shouldn’t have been out and about after curfew. The greatest of his crimes could be that he, an Englishman, had been directly involved with the three men’s disappearance the same night.

  Yet the Englishman had been miles from the abduction scene when Tabitha met him, possibly too far away to have gotten there without a fast horse. Tabitha had noticed no horse on the beach.

  She had noticed only the man, noticed so much she recognized him in an instant when she came face-to-face with him at Mayor Kendall’s house. She knew enough to have told Kendall that his manservant, the only stranger in the village, had been prowling the beach at dawn.

  And she would have seen that manservant whipped.

  She shuddered. Even if he had threatened her, she couldn’t be the one who reported him. If he continued his nocturnal wanderings, he would bring punishment on himself. Yet if he were the culprit who had taken the young men away, he would strike again. More families would live without sons and brothers and husbands to support them. More young women would live without prospective husbands because the population of males had dropped below that of females.

  And perhaps she should make certain of his guilt before she spread damaging tales about him. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d kept her mouth shut about words she’d overheard or been told directly while tending a patient, or even traveling home. She could do so for the Englishman—for a while—rather than see him hurt. Like a doctor, she was compelled to do no harm to a living creature.

  Surely that reasoning—not a pair of long-lashed brown eyes that sparkled with gold lights in the sun—stopped her from confiding in the mayor. She would never be that foolish.

  She would never be foolish over a man again, as much as she yearned for a family of her own. Once upon a time, she’d fallen for a man with beautiful eyes. Blue eyes. Deep blue eyes she thought she could drown in.

  They seemed bluer now in his bronzed face. Yet any depth they held didn’t hold a reflection of her soul, of her heart. He claimed he’d come back to her, but she wouldn’t believe him any more than she’d believe the Englishman had been on the beach for nothing more than an early morning stroll.

  The Englishman. So attractive. So flirtatious. So nervous in her presence, stealing her attention from the man she should forgive and let herself love again.

  Raleigh should consume her thoughts. Or perhaps Mrs. Wilkins and whatever had gone wrong with the lying-in, or the condemnatory rumors Mr. Wilkins might spread about her. Not an Englishman, who looked at her as though—

  “Ah!” She jerked her hand away from the roses. Blood speckled her palm where she’d gripped the stem of a bush hard enough to drive the thorns into her skin.

  “Stupid, stupid.” She wrapped her hand in her handkerchief and scrambled to her feet. She needed to get a comfrey poultice on the punctures immediately. She couldn’t afford to injure one of her hands. Her hands were her livelihood.

  “Patience,” she called to the maid in the kitchen, “get some water boiling.”

  “Oh, Miss Tabbie, you’ve never gone and hurt yourself.” Patience poked her head around the frame of the open door. “What if someone’s about to deliver and you can’t use your hand?”

  “No one’s about to deliver.” Tabitha slipped into the kitchen and plucked a bunch of comfrey leaves from a jar.

  “That’s what you was thinkin’ last night.” Patience swung the water kettle over the hearth and built up the fire. “You thought you’d have a peaceful night of it, and look what happened.”

  “It’s not likely to happen again,” Tabitha said, spooning leaves into a teapot and bracing herself for the rotting garbage odor of the healing herbs.

  At least she hoped it wouldn’t. She wished to avoid nights where patients died and strangers wandered her beach.

  A shudder ran through her, the chill of a cool breeze on a hot, sunny day. Her hand shook, and she spilled the leaves across the table and onto the floor. First the thorn punctures, now a mess to clean up. If she wasn’t careful, the man would have her walking into the ocean instead of along the tide line.

  If she saw him again, which was unlikely. As small a village as Seabourne was, she rarely dealt with the mayor and consequently not his servants. She and Letty met while marketing. They exchanged friendly greetings, but Tabitha wasn’t a servant, even with her position as a hireling. She was a professional for all she was a woman, and Letty, with her Old World ways, disapproved of hobnobbing between classes.

  And Mrs. Kendall, were there to be a Mrs. Kendall, would never have passed the time of day with Tabitha unless she needed her medical care. Tabitha often felt caught in the middle, neither fish nor fowl, but far too much alone. If she had a husband, women would know where to place her, how to fit her into their gatherings and entertainments.

  After cleaning up the spill, she snatched up a cup and dipped water from the simmering kettle to pour in the pot on the table. The rank stench of the comfrey rose on the steam, smelling of anything but an herb possessing its soothing and healing powers.

  “I’ll return to the garden until that steeps,” she said.

  “Are you avoiding me?” Patience fixed her with an unwavering stare.

  Tabitha arched her brows. “Why would I do that?”

  “Huh.” Patience plucked onions from a basket and snatched up a knife. “You don’t want to talk about Mr. Trower coming back.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Tabitha traced the punctures on her palm with a forefinger, then gave Patience a sidelong glance. “But I’m sure you do.”

  “I do.” Patience sliced through an onion as though she needed to kill it. “I know you want a family, a real family, not just me and Japheth, but I’d make sure that man intends to stay for real before I tumbled head over heels for him again.”

  “Never fear that.” Tabitha laughed. “I’m happy he’s still alive and well, but I’m not ready to repeat the kind of mistake I did with him.”

  Like trust him to be faithful more than she did anyone, including God.

  Patience set down the knife with a clatter. “You got to trust someone if you want a family, child.”

  “It won’t be Raleigh, not for a long time.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  Tabitha nodded. “I’m sure.”

  Because, as she returned her attention to the punctures on her palm, she couldn’t hold Raleigh’s face in her mind’s eye, though he had left her house less than an hour earlier. She saw dark eyes surrounded by powdered waves and a cocky grin.

  And that frightened her more than the idea of giving her heart back to Raleigh Trower.

  5

  ______

  “I tell you, the woman should be jailed for murder.” Harlan Wilkins’s voice rose throug
h the study door and slammed against Dominick’s ears.

  Dominick paused on his way to perform the ignominious task of emptying the mayor’s chamber pot and waited to hear more.

  “I told you that two days ago and you’ve done nothing,” Wilkins continued to rave.

  Told Kendall what? Dominick frowned. He should have listened in on that dinner between the mayor and the merchant.

  “And I told you two days ago, Harlan,” Kendall responded in a calm voice, “that neither the sheriff nor I have any evidence of murder, certainly not caused by Miss Eckles.”

  Dominick’s fingers closed over the newel post. He scarcely dared breathe for fear of missing a single word.

  “According to my servants,” Wilkins ground out, “my wife took a little tumble. Even if the babe came too early, my wife shouldn’t have died.”

  “Now, Harlan, Miss Eckles said Mrs. Wilkins was out of her head and—”

  “Of course she’d say that.” Something crashed inside the book-lined room.

  Dominick drew his brows together. Anger over a wife’s death was surely understandable, but to blame the poor midwife seemed wide of the mark.

  “She should be removed from her occupation before anyone else dies,” Wilkins commanded. “She’s a heathen anyway.”

  A heathen? Dominick cocked his head, making certain he’d heard correctly. He didn’t think anyone in the civilized parts of America was a heathen.

  “That’s a grave accusation, Harlan,” Kendall said. “And even if it were true, it wouldn’t support accusations of incompetence at her profession.”

  “She hasn’t gone to church in a year,” Wilkins pointed out. “And we shouldn’t have someone without a Christian faith delivering our young into the world. Maybe if she’d prayed, my wife would still be alive.”

  “And maybe,” Kendall said with a tone of steel, “if you’d been home praying instead of at the Fisherman’s Tavern, your wife would be home and well right now.”

  “Why you—you—” Wilkins spluttered to a halt.

  Dominick sprinted into the parlor across the hall just in time to avoid being caught eavesdropping, as the study door burst open and Harlan Wilkins surged into the entryway.

  “You’ll regret taking her side,” he tossed over his shoulder, then slammed out of the front door.

  “Some men must blame others for their misfortunes,” Kendall said from the library doorway. “Have you found it so, Cherrett?”

  “Sir?” Dominick emerged from the parlor.

  Kendall chuckled. “Next time you choose to eavesdrop on one of my conversations, don’t stand on the bottom step. It squeaks.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir.” Dominick grimaced. “I didn’t notice.” He’d skipped over it the night he sneaked out of the house.

  “I did. But no harm done. If you happen to encounter Miss Eckles while on your errands, do warn her that Wilkins is speaking against her.”

  “Yes, sir. I will consider it my duty to do so, sir.”

  He saw the midwife Thursday morning as he followed Letty around the vendors who gathered in the square most mornings, selling fish and early produce, butter and cream. Carrying a basket like a common footman, he espied Tabitha Eckles choosing her own wares. Once, he caught her eye and coaxed a smile from her. Another time, he saw her lingering over a stall of used goods, fingering the spine of a worn volume. Such a look of longing etched her delicate features, he had to stop and speak to her.

  “My mother loved that book.”

  She jerked her hand away as though the leather had turned to hot coals, but she smiled at him. “My mother brought it home to me from a patient once, but my father said it was silly and wouldn’t let me read it. He made me read things other than novels.”

  “I haven’t read it either.” He picked up the book, casting the seller a frown to keep him from protesting. “Evangeline sounded like something a female would read. But I miss—”

  “Dominick, where are you?” Letty called.

  He sighed and returned the book to the shelf. “I hope to see you again soon. I have something I have to tell you, but not here in public. If we could meet—”

  “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  “But—”

  “Dominick?” Letty sounded impatient.

  “I’ll make a way to talk to you,” Dominick promised.

  Tabitha didn’t respond, but a glance back told him she watched him stride away.

  He smiled. The midwife liked to read. If only he could purchase the book, he could take it to her, lend it to her. But he had no money and thus no excuse to seek her out.

  He didn’t see her for what remained of that week. But snippets of overheard talk told him Wilkins was speaking against her. No one seemed to hold much credence in the censure of her skill. Still, she needed to know, for her own sake.

  For his own sake, Dominick feared that, if he didn’t find her soon, Kendall’s guests would arrive, and Dominick would have no free moments to slip away until they departed. By that time, he feared she would have forgotten him. Of course, if she did, he would have no reason to pursue her, to persuade her he was the kindest, most gentlemanly of men . . .

  He didn’t like the notion of having no reason to seek her out, but only because he thought a flirtation with the midwife would ease the tedium of his work, the frustration of being away from the home in Dorset he had rejected and now missed enough to dream about, as though his school holidays had been an endless succession of joyful activity.

  School was where he’d found joy, the books he’d read in secret so his classmates wouldn’t harass him, the schoolmasters who’d encouraged him while keeping his secret. If he had showed academic prowess, his father would have believed himself correct in sending his youngest son into the church.

  Of course, if Dominick had known of another vocation acceptable for a man of his station in life, he might have been able to persuade Bruton, his father, to allow him to head in that direction. Unfortunately, Dominick hadn’t known anything other than getting himself out of a life as a vicar.

  Now that he knew what he wanted, however temporary, it eluded him. She eluded him. Seabourne lay in peaceful mourning over the loss of more young men, without a clue to their whereabouts, and the midwife had vanished from Dominick’s presence like the mist she’d stepped out of on their first encounter.

  Meanwhile, he played his role of butler, preparing for the important guests due to arrive the following week, and chafing under the dullness of his existence. So far, in the nearly three weeks he’d resided under Kendall’s roof, he had served only one guest at a time, and those infrequent. Kendall dined out at the homes of others more than he remained at home. But, at last, he announced that the minister and his family would be coming home with him after church on Sunday.

  “His wife is related to the Lee family, and the niece coming with them is a Lee. So make certain everything goes well,” Kendall admonished Dominick.

  “Yes, sir,” he responded with a calm outward demeanor.

  Inside his uniform, his skin crawled at the idea of serving a minister. The last man of God with whom he’d come face-to-face didn’t want the kind of favor Dominick was prepared to give—his life.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Dominick muttered on his way back to the kitchen. “You have a droll sense of humor, making me wait on one of your servants.”

  Dominick didn’t know who the Lee family was but presumed they could help advance Kendall’s political ambitions. He wondered how the minister felt about being invited because of his wife and not because the mayor wanted spiritual advice. Not that Kendall seemed lacking in his faith. He read his Bible along with the newspaper every morning. For all Dominick knew, the minister liked political connections as much as did the mayor. The vicars whom the Marquess of Bruton appointed to the livings he controlled tended in that direction. The dozens of other vicars whom Dominick had made a point of meeting preferred other distractions to keep them from serving God.

  Perhaps Sunda
y should be the day he acquired a case of the ague or broke a leg. He disliked the idea of bowing and scraping to men who traded favors for advancement in their profession, when they were supposed to have thoughts of a spiritual nature.

  “I believe I’ll direct the serving from in here,” Dominick told Letty Sunday morning. “I’d rather not serve the dinner.”

  “It’s your job to carve the meat for guests,” Letty said. “Carry the roast to the sideboard and lay a slice on each plate. Deborah or Dinah will take the plates to the guests, and they’ll pass around the removes.”

  “I know how a dinner is served,” Dominick responded. “But I’ve never done the actual work. That is . . .” He eyed the hunk of meat glistening under a glaze of juice. “I have no idea how to carve.”

  Letty sighed. “Whatever got a gentleman’s son into a situation like you’re in, if it wasn’t females or gaming?”

  “Stubbornness. Now show me what to do.”

  She showed him on a ham. Preserved in salt, it needed a swift, hard slice of the knife to break through the surface, but he managed to make credibly even and straight wheels of meat. He didn’t think about the tenderness of the roasted beef presiding on its china platter.

  Deborah and Dinah carried the bowls of crab soup to each guest. All Dominick had to do was stand at the sideboard and fill the bowls from a tureen. Trying not to yawn, he watched the guests from beneath his lashes and realized halfway through the first course that one of the guests watched him in return.

  She was the minister’s niece, a golden-haired beauty with eyes the color of spring grass. From beneath her own long, dark lashes, she gazed at Dominick and ignored her food and her aunt’s frowns. When their eyes met, she smiled and looked away.

  Dominick pretended not to notice. Flirting with the guests was certainly not acceptable for him. Flirting with a servant was not acceptable for her, and he would never be the cause of a lady getting into an awkward situation, however unwittingly.

  He picked up the now empty tureen and headed toward the kitchen.

  “Do tell us about your manservant, Mayor Kendall,” the young woman said as the door swung shut behind him.