Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [103]
Raleigh hoped the storm would give him a reprieve from his next obligation. Although the rain fell throughout the night, it dissipated by midnight. Unable to sleep, he knelt at the side of his bed and prayed.
Rather, he tried to pray—more than, “God, help me, please help,” which stuck in his throat.
He couldn’t ask God to get him out of the situation in which he found himself. He hadn’t trusted God to get him out of the Navy. He’d made the break for himself, using his ability to swim to slip overboard one night and head for shore while the ship was anchored in Halifax. He had relatives who would harbor him—he thought.
But they hadn’t been home. While he tried to figure out a way to break into their house, he encountered one of the officers from his ship attending a party at a neighbor of Raleigh’s relatives. Bad luck. Bad timing. A lack of forethought. He’d been caught, and he thought what he was doing was worth saving his neck from being stretched from the yardarm.
But not anymore. If he couldn’t work out the identity of his contact, he was nothing less than a traitor to his country, to his family, to Tabitha. The only good that might come from it was that he might be able to implicate Dominick Cherrett and send the Englishman packing back to England or to an American prison.
Surely Dominick was involved. He’d been lurking outside the shed, Raleigh was quite certain. Outside the shed listening to Raleigh attempt to destroy him, another despicable action. Yet if Dominick were involved with stealing men and selling them to the British, what harm could Raleigh have done to him?
Of course Dominick was involved. Raleigh’s contact had known Dominick was outside. Raleigh’s contact merely used the ploy of hearing someone to catch him off guard and distract him long enough to knock him senseless.
“God, I don’t want to be a traitor, but I already am.”
And if he didn’t get out of his situation soon, he would commit the crime again.
“Help me find a way, or keep the storm here.”
But the storm rolled off across the land, leaving a gentle breeze and light swells behind. It ended up a perfect night for their mission.
Listening to the silence with his stomach dropping to the pit of his belly, Raleigh rose and pushed open his casement window. Cool, sweet air blew into his face, and the chirp of a cricket pelted his ears.
No, it wasn’t a cricket. No night insect chirped with such a regular pattern. It was the signal for him to come out.
Despite what the ship’s chaplain claimed, God had left Raleigh to his own devices, the consequences of his folly. He couldn’t blame God. Raleigh had made his choices, made his mistakes.
“I’ll find a way to make up for this,” he whispered to the night, to God, to Tabitha across the dunes.
He vaulted over the sill to land as light as a cat on the porch roof then the saturated ground. His footfalls made no sound, nor did the footfalls of his master. The man sneaked up on Raleigh and closed hard fingers around his forearm halfway between dunes and water.
“You’re going in the wrong direction.” The man’s raspy whisper cut through Raleigh like a cutlass. “Into the village.”
“The village?” Raleigh’s tone went high, like a youth whose voice was breaking. “Those might be people I know.”
“You should have thought of that before you chose life and treachery.” The man laughed.
Bile rose in Raleigh’s throat. He said nothing. He couldn’t. If he stopped his work, the British Navy would hang him. If he went to the authorities here, the Americans would hang him.
Unless he had valuable information.
He considered swinging around and snatching the mask off his companion’s face. He would learn the identity. Dissipating clouds had left behind a cleansed sky with a moon as bright as a lantern hanging low over the water. But Raleigh wouldn’t live long enough to tell anyone who the traitor amongst them