Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01] Page 7

  “Have you ever attended at a lying-in?” Tabitha asked as they reached the town square. “Or perhaps you have children of your own?”

  “No.” The curtness of the word was unusual in the sweet voice, then Mrs. Lee giggled. “But I’ve been around a number of cats and dogs in a similar situation.”

  “Then you can help me, if you like, but I suggest you change. I seem to already have blood on my dress.”

  Dominick Cherrett’s blood, because she’d held his hand too tightly, too close over her lap when she’d tended to his cut.

  “I saw Mayor Kendall’s redemptioner cut himself.” Mrs. Lee shuddered. “I’d have gone to help him, but my uncle said it was inappropriate. I didn’t know helping a body in need was inappropriate, but then, I’m always being told—” She broke off and laughed. “Like talking too much. And there’s poor Ginger.”

  Tabitha heard it too, a pitiful whining drifting from the parsonage garden. She hastened to go through the gate and straight to the distressed spaniel. Ginger, named for her spotted coat, lay on her side in a corner beneath the low boughs of a pine tree. Her sides heaved, but nothing happened where it should be happening.

  “I’m here to help you, Ginger.” Tabitha knelt by the dog’s head and rubbed the silky ears. “We’ll make things all better, me and Mrs. Lee here. Will you let us?”

  Ginger licked her hand and panted despite the cool, fragrant bower.

  “She trusts you,” Mrs. Lee said, her voice full of awe.

  “She knows me, don’t you, girl?” Tabitha began to pat the dog down, smoothing the dulled coat over her ribs, then moving on to her distended abdomen. When she reached the hind end, she glanced up. “Will you hold her head? Even the sweetest dogs can get snappish at a time like this.”

  “Like some humans?” Mrs. Lee dropped down beside the dog and began to pet her with one hand while holding her muzzle gently with the other. “Ever been bitten?”

  “Yes, and not by a four-footed patient.” Tabitha probed with one finger, then two. “Ah, a puppy turned incorrectly. Let’s see what we can do.”

  Dogs were difficult, being so small. But Tabitha’s hands were small too, as had once been required of a midwife by law. With Mrs. Lee stroking and soothing, and Ginger alternately licking and growling, Tabitha managed to turn the puppy. In minutes, it slid into her hand. She set it under Ginger’s nose. The dog struggled to rise, but Tabitha held her down.

  “Easy, girl. You’ve got more in there.”

  Ginger licked the first puppy clean. Tabitha attended to the delivery of the second, third, fourth, and fifth, which came so rapidly they must have been waiting in line, anxious for their first and biggest brother to get out of their way so they could experience the light of day and a mother’s love.

  And she loved them. Tabitha and Mrs. Lee ceased to exist for the spaniel once her brood surrounded her, squeaking and clamoring for their first meal.

  “I think they’ll do just fine.” Tabitha rose and grimaced at her hands and skirt. “Is there water anywhere?”

  “There’s a pail by the door.” Mrs. Lee also stood and made a face. “I think this gown is for the rag bin.” It was covered with birth matter.

  “Try soaking it in cold water and salt,” Tabitha suggested. “That works for me.”

  “I will, but no matter if it doesn’t.” Mrs. Lee shrugged. “It’s still too close to mourning clothes for my liking. How much do I owe you?”

  “Owe me?” Tabitha blinked at the rapid change of subject. “Nothing.”

  “Nonsense. You used your skills to help this dog. You should get paid.”

  “I . . . never think about the fee for anything but human babies.” Tabitha rubbed her soiled hands against her worse-off skirt. “Farmers usually pay me with eggs and the like.”

  “Well, I don’t have the like, but I do have money.” Mrs. Lee’s nostrils pinched at the mention of money, as though it smelled worse than the afterbirth.

  “Then pay me what you feel is fair.” Tabitha felt too warm inside her light muslin gown. “I don’t have fees for a puppy delivery.”

  “Then I’ll come by tomorrow. No, I can’t. We’re going fishing. I’ve never been on the ocean before. Have you?”

  Tabitha smiled, her heart twanging. “Often.”

  Before Raleigh left.

  “I think I’ll like it, if I don’t get ill. Day after tomorrow then.” Mrs. Lee rubbed her own hands on her skirt. “Will that do?”

  “Whenever it’s convenient for you, ma’am.” Catching sight of faces peering out of the windows, she bade goodbye and beat a hasty retreat home. The last thing she wanted was for the parson and his family to feel obligated to invite her inside their home. The last time she’d talked with Reverend Downing had been when her grandmother died. He’d tried to give her words of comfort, assurances that God loved her and was with her.

  “I’d rather have a family alive than God’s invisible, silent presence,” had been her cold response.

  And she’d never set foot inside the church again. It often isolated her. Women who might otherwise be friends with her stopped inviting her to their gatherings. She was unmarried, worked to support herself, and chose solitude in a town where activities centered on the church.

  She wanted a life centered on a husband and children, not a church, not a God who had ignored her prayers for her father and mother, for her fiancé and her grandmother. Possibly for herself most of all, burdened as she was with the knowledge that she could surely have prevented her parents’ deaths.

  She hadn’t realized that at the time. She hadn’t known her father, never strong, would go seeking birds’ eggs for his students. She could have gone to the patient’s lying-in in her mother’s place.

  But she had stayed home with her own occupations both times, and now her house felt too big and quiet with Patience off visiting friends, and Japheth, the man of all outdoor work, presumably doing such, or crabbing. It was a house her great-grandfather Eckles had built for a family, with a kitchen big enough for everyone to gather around the table, two parlors, and four bedrooms above. Her mother and grandmother, though midwives too, had been married and were mothers by Tabitha’s age. She had lost one prospect after another to the sea until Raleigh had vanished altogether.

  Now that he had returned, she didn’t know if she wanted to see him. She didn’t trust him not to leave, and seeing him felt too dangerous, too likely to lead to the wish to renew their relationship, their plans.

  Being alone was safer. Being alone gave her the freedom to come and go as she needed or pleased. But sometimes the silence grew intense. She spent a great deal of time reading—the heavy tomes her father had loved, the herbals from her mother and grandmother. She practically had them memorized.

  How she’d wanted that novel she’d seen in the market. How thoughts of the novel made her think of Dominick Cherrett. He gave her the impression he liked to read too. Mayor Kendall’s study contained books only on politics and money, Adam Smith and Edmund Burke. Dull stuff.

  The temptation to lend him her father’s volumes of Shakespeare’s works grew within her. She had thought about getting to know him better, to discover if he was up to no good. She needed to look at his hand to ensure it was healing well.

  On Friday, she packed a volume of Shakespeare into her satchel and walked into town. Dominick was just emerging from the laundry with a pile of linens. He glanced up at the creak of the back gate, and his face reddened.

  “You find me in the ignominious work of laundress,” he greeted her. “I, apparently, am the only one unoccupied enough to take on the chore.”

  “It’s not good for your hand.” She hastened forward and took the wet sheets from his arms. “What was Letty thinking? Sit down. Let me look.”

  “If it brings you to fuss over me, I’ll do this more often.” He grinned at her.

  She reminded herself he was English to minimize his effect on her. She reminded herself he was a patient. “I’ll help you hang these. Where is
everyone?”

  “At a farm purchasing the finest of produce and meats for Kendall’s guests.” Dominick held one end of a sheet. “These, apparently, were put away less than dry and smelled too musty for company.”

  “But—never you mind that. How is the hand?”

  “It started aching the instant I saw you. Surely it needs your tender ministrations.”

  She couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m pleased it’s healing well.”

  And the banter continued, nonsensical, ridiculous, and making the task of hanging the heavy sheets fly by.

  When they finished, she examined his hand, pronounced it healing well, then, cheeks warm and eyes downcast, she drew out the Shakespeare volume. “I thought you might enjoy this.”

  “Oh, I would.” Reverence filled his voice. “The Tempest is my favorite. Yours?”

  She glanced up. A tempest inside her warned her to flee.

  “I rather like Twelfth Night,” she said past a dry throat.

  “Hmm, a midwife who reads Shakespeare.” He rested his thumb on her chin. “My dear, you intrigue me.”

  “Right now, I’d better leave you. That is—” She sprang to her feet. “I have work waiting.”

  He followed her to the gate. “When will I see you again?”

  “A week. I’ll remove your stitches.”

  “Too long. I’ve looked for you in the market and on the beach in the morning.”

  “I’m only out in the morning if my work demands it.”

  But if he was on the beach early, when he shouldn’t be, maybe she should join him there—keep him from, if not learn, what mischief he was up to, if any. She must give him the benefit of the doubt about his dawn activities. He could be innocent of wrongdoing. Yet if she met him by more than chance in the early morning and someone saw him, her reputation would surely suffer.

  How she would enjoy discussing books again. She hadn’t done so with anyone since Grandmomma died. And this man sounded educated, intelligent . . .

  “Tell Letty you can’t get that hand wet,” she admonished him, and fled.

  She arrived home to the news that she was needed for a woman on the other side of the cape.

  “They want me to go to a lying-in in Norfolk,” she told Patience. “We’ll leave early Monday.”

  She disliked leaving her community for long periods of time, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. She went where and when she was needed, mostly out of a sense of duty, partly out of financial necessity. She had a household to support, and the Belotes were going to pay her well for what seemed to be a routine lying-in.

  On Monday morning, she woke before dawn, only to find Japheth and Patience already in the kitchen with breakfast going.

  “It’s going to be hot today,” Japheth said. “Thought we should get an early start.”

  “I’d like a walk before we leave.” Tabitha inhaled the aromas of coffee and frying ham. “But some breakfast would be good. Why don’t you meet me in the village, Japheth. If I’m going to ride twenty miles in a wagon, I’d like a walk along the beach first.”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Miss Tabitha.” Patience flipped over the ham slices. “It ain’t safe.”

  “The press-gangs aren’t going to take up a female.” She touched her fingers to her throat. Though she might see an Englishman.

  Patience and Japheth argued. Tabitha ate her breakfast in silence and thus quickly. She grabbed a shawl from a hook by the door, picked up the satchel she liked to keep with her at all times, and departed with a brisk, “I’ll meet you and the wagon in the square.”

  Warm, damp air swirled around her as she left her garden. She crossed the dunes and headed along the tide line. The breeze picked up and turned cooler, lifting the spring mist from the water and creating odd shadows along the brightening horizon. Waves pounded against the land, suggesting a storm out to sea.

  Watchful, Tabitha headed south to where one of the numerous small waterways cut into the land to form a haven for fishing boats and well-worn paths on which to lengthen her walk to town. Halfway there, she paused at the Trowers’ inlet. Their jetty stretched into the stream. Raleigh could be coming into it with his father and their boat at any time. She couldn’t avoid him forever in a village like Seabourne. But neither did she have to make their next encounter look deliberate. With a sigh, she turned away from the sea and toward the nearest path over the dunes, through the sea grasses to where the trees began and the village lay beyond, sheltered from ocean storms.

  A creak and rumble drifted to her ears over the muted roar of the sea. She paused and turned back. Wind lifted the veil of mist to display a golden pink line between dark sky and darker sea.

  And against that sliver of light, as sharp as silhouette cutouts, a three-masted vessel bore down on a fishing boat.

  “No,” she shouted, as though she could stop the inevitable. She ran toward the sea.

  “No,” her voice echoed.

  No, not an echo—another protesting cry, lower pitched than her voice. Footfalls followed, pounding the hard-packed sand toward the edge of the water.

  “Don’t!”

  Light flared across the water, glittering in the waves. Arms wrapped around her and dragged her to the sand as the concussion of a cannon blast surged toward the land like a tidal wave.

  8

  ______

  Tabitha gasped for breath. She lay on her back on the sand packed as hard as rock, staring at stars fading into streaks of lavender, and wondered if the air driven from her lungs would ever return, or if the blast of gunfire had caused irreparable damage.

  “Miss Eckles, are you all right?” Dominick Cherrett asked.

  “You,” she gasped. “You . . . oaf. You . . .” She ceased speech in favor of a struggle to sit up.

  “Let me help you.” He slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and raised her to a sitting position.

  He didn’t remove his arm. He knelt beside her, his head bent over hers, his hair falling soft and free of ribbon and powder to caress her cheek.

  Breathing continued to prove difficult, though the effects of her fall—the numbing jolt to her torso—had already faded. She lifted a hand to brush away his soft waves, and he clasped it.

  “I’m so sorry I hurt you.” The pale blur of his face hovered near hers, his breath brushing across her lips. “I acted without thinking.”

  “I doubt that’s the first time.” She tugged her hand free of his but made no move to elude his supporting arm. “The first time you’ve acted without thinking.”

  “In truth, Madam Midwife, I rarely act without thinking. But I usually don’t have a ship of the line firing so close at hand.”

  “The ship.” She jerked out of the circle of his arm and surged to her feet so she could look out to sea. “How could I forget it?”

  Easily. She wasn’t thinking with Dominick Cherrett so close to her, smelling of sun-dried linen and heady sandalwood—an expensive fragrance for a bondsman, and hauntingly familiar.

  She peered into the lightening sky. The ship appeared as nothing more than a curved dark hulk against the horizon, while the fishing boat swooped toward shore like a dolphin fleeing a net.

  “They got away.” She spun toward Dominick, heart soaring. “They didn’t get captured.”

  “It looks that way.” He caught hold of both of her hands. “For once.”

  “Indeed.” She started to yank her hands free, felt the bandage wrapping his left palm, and hesitated. “Mr. Cherrett.” As much as she wished to be free of his hold, she didn’t want to hurt him. “Please let go of my hand,” she said.

  “Which one?” Teeth flashed in a grin.

  She ground her teeth. “Both of them.”

  “Ah, if you insist.” He drew his fingers away, the tips grazing her palms, stopping. “What is this?” He traced the scabbed-over marks where the rosebush had punctured her palm.

  “A disagreement with a rosebush.”

  “I have been so distracted by your lovely face I didn’t not
ice before now. I am sorry. It must have been painful.” He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the palm. “Better?”

  “No, worse.” She’d rather have a hundred thorns driven into her flesh than to feel the jolt of heat rushing through her, stealing her breath as though she’d been knocked to the ground once more. “You shouldn’t do that.” Her voice sounded breathless.

  “Probably not.” He released her hand, remaining close to her. “But be assured I didn’t do it without thinking first.”

  “Why would you—”

  Tackle creaked above the hiss of the retreating tide. She glanced toward the sound and caught sight of the fishing boat heading toward shore, hull down with its night’s catch, and she understood.

  Dominick Cherrett, the Englishman, wanted to distract her from the incident of the frigate firing upon that single-masted craft.

  She faced him, eyes narrowed. “When threats don’t work you resort to—to—flirtation?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He sounded bored. “Does a man need a reason to kiss the hand of a lovely lady?”

  “I am not lovely and I am not a lady,” she snapped. “And you, sir, are once again on the beach at an hour when you’re supposed to be in your master’s home. And, once again, we have a British vessel invading our territory at the same time you appear on the beach. Coincidence? I think not.”

  “Neither do I.”

  His calm reaction to her accusation left Tabitha speechless.

  “I came out early in the hopes of seeing you. I hoped to waylay you to inspect my hand.”

  “In the dark?” She snorted. “Unlikely.”

  Up the beach, the fishing boat entered the inlet and lowered its sail in preparation for tying up to a jetty. Other men in proximity—American men—lent Tabitha a sense of security. Dominick Cherrett wouldn’t harm her with others so near.

  Her hand still tingling from his kiss, she doubted he could harm her at all. When she encountered him under other circumstances, she believed him to be as innocent as he claimed. On the beach at dawn, with a British vessel vanishing over the horizon after firing on a fishing boat, she believed him capable of anything dastardly.