Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01] Page 8

  She touched the healing mark on her throat. “You don’t need to see me regarding your hand, Mr. Cherrett, unless it’s gone septic.”

  “Alas, it is healing very well, thanks to that vile ointment you left behind. What’s in it? Kitchen waste?”

  “Comfrey.” Her lips twisted into a reluctant smile. “Its foul odor is only outweighed by its healing properties. But if you don’t need me for your hand, why are you here?”

  “For you.” He drew a knuckle along her cheekbone. “I said I would join you on your early morning walk one day.”

  “I should report you for being here,” she thought aloud.

  He took her arm and started walking toward the edge of the wave-flattened sand. “But you won’t. You enjoy my company, despite your suspicions.”

  “I believe I have reason for my suspicions.” Though she hadn’t seen anything that could be construed as a signal. “I won’t tell about this night’s work either, since your mission has failed and the boat got away.”

  That boat had reached the jetty, a quarter mile down the beach. Men’s voices shouting directions to one another drifted toward her. One sounded familiar, and her stomach contracted.

  “But it’s for my own reasons and not for any of your enticing tricks,” she clipped out, then scrambled for an explanation to have ready when he asked the inevitable.

  He picked up her bag from where she’d dropped it on the sand. “If I don’t charm you, and you don’t like Englishmen in general, even ones more charming than I—if that’s possible—I wonder why you’ll hold your peace this time, without the fear of a threat.”

  Tabitha couldn’t help herself. She laughed at his outrageous speech. “You’re incorrigible.”

  Dominick laughed in response. “That’s what my tutors at Ox—” He stopped, as though slamming a door on revealing something about his past. But Tabitha, daughter of a schoolmaster, knew about tutors and Oxford, and her skin tingled with curiosity—with more suspicions—regarding a well-spoken Englishman who’d attended Oxford University, living the life of a redemptioner. Intriguing. Disturbing. Definitely on the wrong side of usual.

  “I suppose all English butlers attend Oxford?” she probed with a smile.

  “Only those of us who excel at our studies.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the sea. “The rest become gentlemen.”

  Tabitha laughed. “You don’t seem to think a great deal of your countrymen either.”

  “I try not to think of my countrymen at all.” His voice dropped to a tone as warm as a caress. “Especially not when I’m with you. You make me forget that I miss home.”

  “Mr. Cherrett—” She stopped, at a loss for words under his onslaught of teasing and flirtation.

  Further along the beach, the fishermen’s voices ceased.

  “They’ve noticed us.” She hastened her steps toward town.

  “And they mustn’t recognize us.” Dominick matched her stride. “You’re protecting me again. Do tell me why so I may use it in my favor for future expeditions into fresh sea air.”

  “I don’t approve of men being treated worse than animals, locked up or whipped if they stray.”

  “You have a kind heart. I wish I’d known from the beginning. I wouldn’t have distressed myself fretting over you tattling on me.”

  “Somehow, Mr. Cherrett, I don’t think you were fretting in the least.”

  “I have been.” His voice sobered. “Your dislike of my countrymen is blatant. I wonder why.”

  “You all stole my fiancé.” She spoke harshly, lashing out against his appeal to her senses, her female vanity. “His mother is Canadian and was staying with family when he was born, because his father was on a long voyage, so the Navy claimed he was a British subject.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He took a few more steps and paused at the edge of the dune, where the grasses waved in the rising dawn breeze. “Did he die?”

  “No, he’s returned after two years in your Navy, but—” She hesitated to admit it was too late. She wasn’t certain of that. Most of her hoped it wasn’t. If Raleigh settled there, fishing with his father, he would make a fine husband and wouldn’t interfere with her work. She could have her own children and companionship by the fire. They would lack for nothing.

  “War changes men.” Dominick stepped back so she could precede him up the path toward town. “My father fought in a war, and my aunts say it changed him from a carefree youth to the despotic tyrant I knew.”

  “What war was that?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

  “The one that gives you more cause to dislike me.” Dominick let out a humorless laugh. “Your revolution.”

  “Of course.” She studied the ground at her feet, careful not to entangle her ankle with a trailing length of sea grass. “Was he wounded?”

  Should she be asking so many questions of this man? Oh, yes, every bit of it and more. Be friendly. Gain his trust.

  “Not a scratch. But he lost many friends.”

  “Loss makes the soul sick.”

  Her father, when she was only sixteen. Raleigh and her mother, when she was only two and twenty. Yes, her soul still felt sick, curled in on itself like a body with a wasting disease.

  “Has Harlan Wilkins caused you any trouble?” Dominick asked abruptly. “There’s a man angered by loss.”

  “He’s talking against me, yes.” Tabitha bit her lip, glad she was going to be gone for a week at the least, possibly two.

  “He wants the mayor to have you arrested. I should have warned you sooner, but I am always a bit distracted in your presence.”

  She tilted her head to look up at him. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s why you’re out this early? You suddenly remembered?”

  “No, I won’t tell you such a fib.” He set down her bag and tucked one finger beneath her chin. “I have been concerned about you, though. Wilkins is a powerful man.”

  “I’m not without influence.”

  Or a secret or two of which she wouldn’t hesitate to remind more than one councilman if necessary. She wouldn’t let Harlan Wilkins ruin her livelihood, even if, at times, she would prefer to be a normal female, attending parties and receiving callers rather than delivering other women’s babies.

  “Reverend Downing will vouch for me,” she added.

  “Even though you’re a heathen?” Dominick smiled into her eyes.

  She blinked against a warmth, a brightness in her eyes that owed little to the rising sun. “Why would you call me a heathen?”

  “That’s what Wilkins called you. You never go to church.”

  “I’m not a heathen.” She sighed with the old frustration of this conversation. “Neither am I a hypocrite. I don’t have any more time for God than He has for me.”

  “Yet the reverend will vouch for you?”

  “We have mutual respect for one another’s work.” She smiled ruefully. “And I may agree to go to church when I return, for the sake of appearances, of course.”

  “Church isn’t about appearances. It’s about worshiping God—at least it should be.”

  “I knew that . . . once.” She tried to look away and failed. “I must go, Mr. Cherrett, and you should too. Don’t risk coming out here again.”

  “It’s worth the risk to see you again.”

  “I wish I believed that.” The words emerged before she stopped herself from uttering something so foolish, so . . . inviting of further flirtation.

  “May I see you when you return?” He glanced toward the fishing boat. “Perhaps where and when I won’t risk trouble?”

  She wanted to say no. Voices from the fishing boat that came too close to getting stopped by a British frigate, and Dominick Cherrett just happening to be in the vicinity, compelled her to take the risk.

  “If you like. I’m certain you’ll know when I return.”

  “Thank you.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “My heart rejoices enough to make my burdens of labor light.”

  “You’re absurd.�
� She smiled at him anyway and started walking toward the village.

  “I’m not absurd.” His voice rang with sincerity. “I’m just beginning to understand a thing or two about my father.”

  “Indeed?” She kept walking, guessing he would follow with her satchel.

  He did, his long legs catching him up with her. “He made it through your war without so much as a cold in the head in the four years his regiment was stationed in the colonies. Spent most of his time in New York City in relative comfort and safety.”

  “How fortunate for him.” Tabitha tried to sound disinterested, though she wasn’t.

  “It wasn’t fortunate,” Dominick said in a voice so quiet he might have been talking to himself. “It gave him time to fall in love with an American girl.”

  Tabitha snorted indelicately. “To believe you’ve fallen in love with me is more than I can swallow, Mr. Cherrett.”

  “Of course it is, but I see how easily it can happen.”

  “And having your loved one go away can happen just as easily.” She tasted the bitterness of her words and tried to soften them as she paused at the trees. “Did he have an unhappy experience?”

  “She refused him because he was English.”

  Tabitha faced him. “Then take heed of his heart wound and have a care you don’t lose your heart to an American lady.”

  “Perhaps I already have.” His smile flashed, bright and warm in the rising sun. Gold lights gleamed in his velvety eyes, all the more intense for the veil of lashes.

  An alarm clanged in her head and she stiffened. “Then I pity you, Mr. Cherrett. I have no balm to heal that kind of hurt.”

  “We’ll see about that, Madam Mermaid,” he murmured.

  Then he kissed her.

  9

  ______

  Raleigh Trower tugged so hard on his end of the net, the ropes parted and silvery fish slid onto the deck of the boat.

  “Trower, you oaf,” Rhys Evans bellowed. “There’s half the catch to collect again and time’s wasting.”

  “You can’t rush fishing.” Rhys’s younger brother Lisle spoke in a gentler voice.

  “This morning proves it.” Rhys grabbed a bucket and began to scoop the catch into it. “If we’d stayed out an hour later like I wanted to, we wouldn’t have encountered that British frigate at all.”

  “It all came out well in the end.” Lisle joined his brother in gathering the fish. “Raleigh has a silver tongue in that head of his.”

  “Telling a pack of lies,” Rhys grumbled.

  “It wasn’t lies.” Raleigh began to gather up the edges of the seine, knotting ropes to repair the portion he’d broken.

  “Right you are.” Rhys guffawed. “Maybe we are a lot of half-wits, risking our skins against the English scum to get a night’s catch.”

  “I never said we were half-wits.” Raleigh frowned over the lines he knotted.

  He wouldn’t have lied. He was a sinner, breaking too many of God’s commandments to feel truly forgiven and redeemed—despite what the ship’s chaplain told him—but lying wasn’t one of them. Or at least nothing as barefaced as that of which Rhys accused him.

  “I just kept saying we’re Americans,” Raleigh reminded his companions.

  “Like you didn’t understand what he was yelling at us.” Rhys wiped silvery scales onto his canvas breeches. “Which made you sound like a half-wit.”

  “And we just kept pretending like we was mute,” Lisle added.

  Raleigh grinned in spite of himself. “That poor lieutenant was getting frustrated, wasn’t he?”

  “Especially when the first lieutenant came along and told him to let us go,” Rhys said.

  Raleigh’s grin faded at the knowledge that the officer had said to let them go because he knew Raleigh, knew he was free to be home.

  For now.

  “The other lieutenant sounded like some lordling,” Raleigh explained. “There’s a lot of them who don’t approve of impressing Americans, just like they wouldn’t fight against us in the last war.”

  “This isn’t war,” Lisle said. “Not if President Madison can stop them from taking our men.”

  “We can’t fight the greatest Navy in the world.” Raleigh looked out to sea to where he thought he caught the merest hint of the frigate’s topsails against the bright horizon. “Or the most powerful country.”

  “Then let’s stay out until after daybreak next time,” Rhys admonished. “They seem more inclined to steal us in the dark, like the criminals they are.”

  “All right,” Raleigh agreed. He had accomplished what he needed to and had seen Tabitha. He’d seen too much.

  Raleigh dropped into the hold and began to work the net free of the hatch hinge it had caught on. He let the brothers talk, Rhys venting his spleen on Raleigh to ease the tension of those moments beneath the prow of a man-of-war, Lisle soothing like one of Tabitha’s healing balms.

  Except what he’d glimpsed from the boat felt more like she’d rubbed salt or lye on an open wound. He saw his lady, his love, talking to another man.

  He was a stranger. Or at least a stranger to Raleigh. A big man with hair longer than most men wore theirs nowadays and a confident way of holding his head. Raleigh heard laughter floating on the sea air, the man’s deep and husky, Tabitha’s light and young.

  As she had laughed with him so many times before the lure of the sea tugged him away like the undercurrent of an ebbing tide during the full moon. Now she laughed with another man.

  She had more than laughed with him. Though the distance was great enough that they had become little more than doll-sized at the edge of the village, Raleigh saw the man’s head dip toward Tabitha’s. Quickly. Briefly. Not so briefly he couldn’t have kissed her in that time. And Tabitha made no move to shove the rogue away from her.

  You pushed me away the first time I kissed you. Which made him think this wasn’t the first time for these two. No wonder she’s been avoiding me. Raleigh jerked the entangled ropes so fast, he slid on fish scales and landed hard enough on the deck to see stars—red, shooting stars from the burning heat of anger.

  “Easy there,” Lisle called down. “You’re making a mess of things.”

  “What’s got your back up?” Rhys kicked at the tangled net. “You’re the one who wanted us to come in now so’s we met up with that ship.”

  Raleigh sighed. “Never you mind me.” As fast as a comet streaking across the heavens, the outrage passed. He couldn’t blame Tabitha for seeking someone else. He’d left her without an explanation. She was so lovely, of course another man would court her.

  Yet his mother said Tabitha remained unattached. Tabitha confirmed it. And the predawn rendezvous on the beach held a clandestine appearance that set the hairs rising along the back of Raleigh’s neck.

  The man must be unsuitable for Tabitha. Who in a village like Seabourne would be unacceptable to her?

  Bracing himself on the bulkhead for support as he clambered to his feet, Raleigh determined to find out who the man was. Somehow he must keep him from Tabitha, or tear him from her if necessary. If she wouldn’t fall in love with Raleigh again, nothing he had done, none of the steps he risked, would be worth the danger into which he’d placed himself to win his freedom from the British Navy.

  He finished untangling the lines and gathered the edges of the net together for hauling on deck. It was a good catch. They would divide it into three equal parts and take some to the market and the rest home for preserving in brine. Once he would have taken a basket to the Eckleses. Now he wasn’t welcome, maybe less welcome than he first thought.

  His body tensed at the memory of that scene with Tabitha and another man, the man’s head bent so low over Tabitha’s his hair formed a curtain around their faces. Raleigh’s stomach knotted like the hauling seine.

  “Lord, this can’t all be for nothing,” he cried aloud once Rhys and Lisle went to their own cottage further up the shore. “I can’t be risking all this for nothing.”

  Somehow h
e must succeed so he would be in a position to make up to Tabitha the hurt he had caused her. Somehow he must make himself worthy of God’s love and forgiveness by undoing the damage to Tabitha’s faith to which he had contributed. Somehow—

  If she’d found interest in another man, Raleigh was too late.

  He hauled home his catch in a two-wheeled handcart. Father greeted him at the cottage door, dressed and ready to take the bulk of the fish into town.

  “Looks like a good night’s work, son.” Father smiled, deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth. “Good to have you home. I got some sleep for once.”

  “I’m glad I can do that for you, sir.” Raleigh released the cart. “It was a good night’s work.”

  “But a risky one.” His father glanced at the swells of the sea sparkling in the sun. “We heard gunfire.”

  “Yes.” Raleigh’s mouth tightened. “The British were out, but they left us alone.”

  “Maybe that’s a good sign. If they don’t stop taking our men off our boats, there’ll be war.”

  “That’s what the Evans brothers were saying. President Madison would be a fool to get us into that. We couldn’t possibly win.”

  “We’ll see about that.” A muscle in Father’s jaw bulged. “I’d better get going. We’ll go crabbing later today.”

  “I’d like that.”

  So many boyhood memories lay in crabbing with his father, learning about the different sorts of sea creatures and birds. More memories of Tabitha filled his head. He’d shown her how to fish, to crab, to handle a sail and tiller. He’d shown her living sea creatures, for her own father—a schoolmaster with weak lungs—possessed little energy to teach his daughter about the true sea, the one outside of books and a few withered specimens he’d collected in his younger days.

  Raleigh’s heart squeezed with sorrow for the girl of ten or so years he’d met as she wandered alone on the beach, while her father drowsed in the garden between lessons most of the time, and her mother and grandmother tended patients. She thought they’d notice how useful she could be too, if she brought home a basket of clams, but she was trying to dig at high tide and came close to drowning in waves taller than she.