Laurie Alice Eakes - [Midwives 01] Page 9

  Raleigh smiled. “I’ll take a couple of baskets of these fish to Momma and the girls to preserve.”

  “You do that.” Father nodded. “Never too early to start preparing for winter.”

  He departed for town with the cart, and Raleigh, a basket of shad in each hand, rounded the house to the kitchen garden.

  The sight of his mother and sisters ready for him with knives and a barrel of salt gave him an idea he realized he should have thought of at once. Momma and the girls knew everything that went on in Seabourne.

  “You had faith in my ability to still seine,” he greeted the three ladies awaiting him on the back porch. “And rightly so.”

  “What is it?” Fanny asked.

  “Shad.”

  She wrinkled her pert nose. “Ew. All those tiny bones.”

  “It’s good eating.” Momma grabbed the back fin of a fish. “Let’s get to work, girls. What was that gunfire we heard, Raleigh?”

  “A quarrelsome British frigate.” Raleigh made his tone light. “But we pretended not to understand their accents, and they let us go.”

  “I’d say it was my prayers.” Momma began to scale. “Can’t have you getting taken up again when you’re finally home, just because we were born in Acadia. Now go change out of those clothes in the barn. I’ve left fresh ones and water in there for you. And get yourself some breakfast. It’s waiting on the hearth. Then get some sleep.”

  “I’d rather stay and help you all.” Raleigh began to clean another shad. “I’ve missed you all so much, and sleeping just takes me away.”

  “But you look tired,” Felicity pointed out. “I don’t think you sleep more than four hours in a day.”

  “The training of the British Navy.” Raleigh grimaced. “And it’s a bit too quiet here after two years on a ship.”

  “I couldn’t do it.” Slowly, with obvious reluctance, Fanny began to strip heads, tails, and fins from the fish. “The noise. The smell. Nothing but water around you.” She shuddered.

  “But all those men.” Felicity chopped off a fish head with unnecessary force. “There aren’t any for us females here on land with the British Navy stealing them from us.”

  “We don’t know the British are responsible,” Raleigh pointed out.

  “No, there’s just a British ship around every time someone vanishes.” Felicity smacked the shad into a barrel. “I’m two and twenty and don’t even have an escort for the Midsummer Festival.”

  “The Midsummer Festival?” Raleigh’s head shot up. “It’s still going forward?”

  “Of course it is,” Fanny and Felicity chorused.

  “Many a young couple gets themselves—” Momma stopped, her face stricken.

  “Engaged there,” Raleigh finished.

  He and Tabitha had three years ago. He’d departed six months later.

  “You should take Tabitha this year.” Felicity spoke Raleigh’s thoughts aloud. “Surely she’ll have forgiven you by then.”

  “I hope so.” Raleigh bent low over his work, suddenly nauseated from the odor of fish. “I understand she rarely goes to church nowadays.”

  “She prayed you’d come home,” Momma confirmed. “We all did.”

  “But we didn’t lose faith,” Fanny added.

  “Her mother died at the same time.” Raleigh felt the need to defend Tabitha’s absence from Christian fellowship. “But maybe my return will help bring her back.”

  “It’s all in God’s perfect plan,” Fanny agreed. She gave her sister a pointed look. “Including finding us husbands. Either the men will get brought home, or new ones will come.”

  Raleigh set down his scaling knife. “That reminds me. Are you certain there are no new men in town? I thought I saw—” He hesitated. He didn’t want to admit he’d seen Tabitha with a man on the beach. It could ruin her reputation, which would make her an ineligible wife for him, if he wanted to rise to more than just another fisherman in the community, someone worthy of Tabitha. “Someone,” he finished lamely. “We don’t get many strangers about.”

  The girls exchanged glances.

  “I can’t think of anyone,” Momma said. “No one except for farmers and fishermen who find themselves here for market or even Tabitha’s care.”

  “Except for Mr. Cherrett,” Felicity murmured, her eyes half closed, her knife poised in midair.

  A glance at Fanny told Raleigh she too was poised as though caught in a dream. Hairs along his arms rose as they had when he saw the man kiss Tabitha.

  Raleigh jabbed his knife through the next shad. “Who is Mr. Cherrett?”

  “No one appropriate,” Momma snapped. “You girls shouldn’t think about him.”

  “But he’s so handsome,” Felicity crooned.

  “Those eyes,” Fanny added in a similar tone of adulation.

  “Handsome is as handsome does,” Momma clipped out. “Only a terrible deed like gaming debts or worse would get an Englishman with his breeding trapped as a bondsman.”

  “A bondsman?” Raleigh set down his knife and put his hands on his hips. “An English bondsman of good breeding? You’re certain?”

  “I met a few English aristocrats in Halifax,” Momma pointed out. “I know the accent when I hear it.”

  “He has a beautiful way of talking,” Felicity fairly hummed. “So clear. So crisp.”

  “It’s possible it’s not his fault he’s a redemptioner.” Fanny gazed into the sun still hovering over the ocean. “Maybe his father lost the family money.”

  “And maybe you girls had best get back to work,” Momma admonished. “We’ve bread to bake once this is done. You get to work too, Raleigh, if you aren’t going to sleep. Why the interest in strangers?”

  Raleigh shrugged and set to work again. “As I said, I thought I saw one. What does this Cherrett fellow look like?”

  The twins sighed.

  “You shouldn’t have asked.” Momma cast her daughters a half-annoyed, half-amused glance. “He’s too good-looking for the peace of mind of any mother in Seabourne or mistress of a female servant. A few inches taller than you, but not as broad in the shoulders, and he wears his hair long. He’s serving mainly as Mayor Kendall’s butler, so he wears his hair powdered.”

  “He’s so elegant,” Felicity proclaimed.

  “Like a cavalier out of a story,” Fanny added.

  The man’s hair hadn’t been powdered that morning, but Raleigh didn’t doubt for a moment that the man he’d seen kissing Tabitha was the bondsman about whom his mother spoke and over whom his sisters were moonstruck. A bondsman strolling freely on the beach before the curfew for bondservants ended.

  Raleigh began to smile.

  10

  ______

  “You are either very clever, my boy,” Dominick addressed his reflection in the tiny scrap of mirror that had to serve him for shaving, “or you are the biggest fool who ever walked the earth.”

  He’d been acting like a fool for the past seven years, seeking his own ends regardless of who got hurt, since he only intended that person to be himself. But he couldn’t help thinking that kissing Tabitha Eckles was not one of his less intelligent actions.

  At least it didn’t feel unintelligent an hour later, as he prepared for a day of standing about waiting for Kendall’s guests to arrive, wasting time if the primitive tracks this blighted country called roads hindered their progress. Kissing lips as soft as the rose petals she smelled like could never be a mistake.

  A thrill ran through him at the memory, and he drew the razor away from his throat before he slit it.

  Shaving himself was one more thing he had to get used to. Until his disgraceful actions came to light in a scandal with the impact of a broadside from a seventy-four-gun ship of the line, Dominick had enjoyed the luxury of a valet who shaved him, kept him supplied with starched neck cloths, and cut his hair. He was getting used to doing these things for himself, except for the hair. That he left to nature.

  And consequently Kendall’s powder.

  He
grimaced at his reflection, knowing the dark locks would soon be pale from Letty’s ministrations with the powder pounce. An hour ago, he’d used his hair to shield Tabitha from view of the three fishermen as he’d touched his lips to hers with no more pressure than a feather fallen from a white heron’s wing.

  The action left her speechless, not angry, as Dominick had feared. It left her dazed, judging from the way she didn’t smack him, and the way she picked up her bag and headed for the village without a word, her cheeks as rosy as the sunrise, her eyes misty.

  It left Dominick far more shaken than he expected.

  Than he wanted.

  Wooing her to encourage her to step onto his side was a matter meant for the good of many. Finding himself drawn to her more than he was ever drawn to any pretty female looked like danger to him.

  “Though not as dangerous as that frigate.” He scraped the last of the foaming soap from his throat and pressed a cloth steeped in warm water against his face and neck. “It shouldn’t be this close in.”

  But he’d heard of ships sailing right into bays and up rivers to inspect American vessels and take men aboard. The fishing boat seemed to have gotten away, lucky fellows.

  Too lucky.

  Dominick removed the towel from his face and frowned at his reflection. “I don’t like it one bit.”

  One week, three men disappeared, while a British naval vessel cruised off the coast. The next, three blithely sailed away from a frigate that had looked determined to stop them at all costs. The fickle Navy? One British captain scrupulously honest and another one not?

  Dominick needed to learn the identity of the men aboard that fishing boat. That should be a fairly easy task. He knew the location. Others would know whose jetty lay there. And Tabitha had been in the vicinity two weeks in a row.

  He flung the towel into the basin and began to don his hateful uniform. Even though Tabitha Eckles had been on the beach this morning when the frigate fired and two weeks ago when three young men disappeared, that was not reason enough to think she could possibly be involved. She was a midwife. She traveled about at all hours of the day and night. And she hated the British.

  Or claimed to.

  Claimed too much dislike too openly?

  “Now you are being a fool.” Dominick stamped his foot into shoes that looked more suited to a ballroom than a seaside village mayor’s house. But he liked the stockings Kendall provided for the visit. Instead of plain lisle cotton, they were silk—rather expensive accessories for a merchant and small plantation owner to provide for a mere servant, and a bondservant at that. Kendall’s land and business must be prosperous.

  Or he received money from a less legitimate source.

  “You’re suspecting everyone these days. And that’s no way to find real answers.”

  He had less than three weeks to find those answers before the first scheduled rendezvous with his uncle’s messenger. That could mean only sixteen more days as a servant. He must, must, must get answers, not mere suspicions if he wanted away from servitude and a return to a life of—what? He’d achieved his goal of escaping from the church. What came next didn’t matter if he couldn’t complete his mission.

  Dominick tugged on his coat and ran down the two flights of steps to the kitchen. Halfway down the second stairwell, he smelled burned toast.

  “Not again,” he groaned.

  He would have to start eating plain bread. That’s all there was to it. Dinah and Deborah couldn’t toast bread that was cut as thin as he liked it, regardless of how much they wished to impress him. But untoasted bread didn’t work so well in his coddled egg.

  Resigned to going hungry again, he pushed open the door into the kitchen.

  “Deborah burned it this time,” Dinah declared. “She was pretending you were dancing with her at the Midsummer Festival.”

  “Dinah, that wasn’t nice to tattle,” Letty scolded.

  Dominick glanced at Deborah’s scarlet face. He should either offer to dance with her at some festival or tell her why he was a redemptioner. The former would get her toes smashed enough to quell any romantic notions, and the latter would give her an outright disgust of him. Likely, it would give everyone such a disgust of him they’d send him inland to Kendall’s plantation to pick whatever these colonists grew.

  No, they weren’t colonists now. Or was that yet?

  “I don’t dance.” He bowed to Deborah. “Or I’d be honored to take a turn with you at this fete about which I know nothing and am probably not welcome.”

  “But you are,” Deborah burst out. “We all are. The ticket money goes to a fund for widows of sailors and fishermen, so anyone with the admission price is admitted.”

  “A good cause. But how, pray tell,” Dominick asked, “does a bondservant get money?”

  “He takes on extra work that pays.” Letty scooped an egg from a pot boiling over the hearth. “Three minutes and I’ll make the toast.”

  “Deborah and I’ve been taking in sewing,” Dinah explained. “We want new dresses.”

  “Alas, I have nothing I can do to earn my fee.” Dominick feigned disappointment, but it was no jest. He would love the money to take Tabitha. Nothing like convivial company and moonlight to make a lady trust him.

  So long as this lady didn’t get called away to a birthing or a broken skull.

  “You’ll get tips this week if you do well.” Letty slid pieces of thinly sliced bread onto a toasting fork. “Mayor Kendall’s friends are as generous as he is.”

  “That’s because they are paying us not to gossip.” Dinah giggled.

  “They talk politics, like this.” Deborah whispered. “Like it’s treason they’re planning, but I never heard any sed—anything bad against the government.”

  “Sedition, I believe you mean.” Dominick seated himself at the table and picked up a spoon to break the top of his egg. “Perhaps I’ll manage the fete after all. When is it?”

  “June 21,” Letty said.

  Dominick hit his egg too hard, shattering the shell and sending soft-boiled egg oozing across his plate. “My apologies.” He snatched up a piece of bread and used it to mop up the runny egg.

  The twenty-first day of June indeed. Surely, for this cause, he could gain permission to be out after curfew, which would make meeting his uncle’s messenger that much easier. Especially if Dominick escorted a lady.

  “Whom will you escort?” Both girls gazed at him with their big blue eyes.

  “Neither of you.” Letty slapped the toasted bread in front of Dominick. “He’ll keep his affairs out of this household.”

  “I don’t have . . . inappropriate relationships, Letty. Do please believe me.”

  Guilt twanged his innards. Kissing Tabitha was probably inappropriate. It was wrong, calculated, intrusive . . .

  “You’d best get your hair ready.” Letty broke into his musings. “I have to get dinner started. Can you carve a chicken with that hand bandaged?”

  “I doubt I can carve one with my hand unbandaged.” Dominick rose. “Let’s get the powdering over with. I have . . . er . . . politicians to charm.”

  They arrived in plenty of time for Letty’s dinner, three men from the state legislature and their wives. Between serving at the table, fetching and carrying for the male guests and, more often than not, the servants they had brought with them, Dominick found little time to think about Tabitha or even overhear snippets of conversation. With ladies present, the men didn’t talk politics at the table. Afterward, when the ladies withdrew, they sent Dominick and the other servers out of the room and kept their voices so low that an ear to the dining room door allowed Dominick to catch only an occasional word.

  He did catch the tone of the rumbling voices, though. Anger. Frustration. Hard determination to do . . . something. President Madison’s name seeped through more than once. Whether or not they supported the new president, Dominick couldn’t gather before Letty and the girls warned him of someone approaching the kitchen door.

  “All rig
ht.” Dominick heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I can’t hear a thing anyway.”

  “What were you hoping to hear?” Letty gave him a speculative glance. “Secrets?”

  “Sedition, of course. You know, extort my way to freedom.” Flashing her a grin, he ducked into the butler’s pantry, where a pile of newly washed silverware awaited his polishing cloth. One or two of the knives appeared in need of emery grit through the K carved into the handles. Grumbling, he removed the can of the polishing substance from a high shelf.

  “Mr. Cherrett,” Deborah—or perhaps it was Dinah—called. “You have a visitor.”

  Dominick’s heart leaped. Perhaps it was Tabitha. She’d come to tell him her journey had been canceled and she wanted to give him a smack on the face for kissing her.

  He was smiling when he entered the kitchen to find a stranger standing in the doorway. Sunlight behind him cast his face in shadow, but the breadth of his shoulders and bulging muscles of his arms spoke of a laborer or sailor. Nothing about him struck a chord of familiarity with Dominick. Judging from Letty’s and the girls’ faces, they found the stranger baffling too.

  “May I help you?” Dominick asked in his best lord-of-the-manor accent.

  “Are you Kendall’s redemptioner?” the man demanded.

  Dominick winced. Put neatly in his place by a laborer or sailor. Served him right for forgetting his lowly status and acting the arrogant lordling he most certainly had no right to be.

  “I am.” He inclined his head. “Did you need something from me?”

  “Aye—yes.” The man’s hands balled into fists. “I’d like to speak with you alone.”

  Letty caught Dominick’s eye. “The rooms in the house are all filled up with guests, but there’s that bench in the garden.”

  Which was too far from the kitchen door for Dominick’s comfort. He didn’t like the looks of this man, and those clenched fists boded no good.