Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [105]
If he’d been certain she was wrong, that he loved her enough to stay in America or risk taking her to his family, he would have gone after her. But her words pounded through his head when she said them, while he watched her walk away, and as he paced the six feet of open space in his attic room behind a locked door.
He loved her. He didn’t doubt that for a moment. Yet he would give her up if she stood between him and regaining his honor or gaining his father’s respect.
Well, at least his father’s acceptance back into the family. He needed that removal of the burden from his soul first. That took away his right to go after her or even ask her to help him, to touch her, or to expect her to seek him out. Still he looked for her and ached from her absence and the anguish she would feel over Parks’s disappearance.
From some of the glances shooting his way, he might end up aching from a beating by the crowd. One burly Scot gripped a hammer like a cudgel. Dominick had his knife, but he wouldn’t use it.
“You can’t blame him,” Letty cried. “I can vouch for him myself. He gets locked in his room at night.”
“Don’t the mayor trust him?” an Irishman demanded.
“He doesn’t.” Letty grinned. “He was sneaking off at night to court a lady somewhere out of this village.” She shot Dominick an apologetic look. “Mayor thought he just might not come back at night.”
“Sure it was a lady?” someone yelled. “Or some naval captain?”
“He came back smelling like roses.” Letty chuckled.
Dominick’s face burned.
“And then he got himself caught red-handed,” Letty continued. “So he gets locked up at night, and he’s too big a fella to get out his window, even if he could climb down from the attic.”
“But he’s English,” a woman protested. “He’s got every reason to steal our menfolk for their Navy.”
“If I could do that,” Dominick said, “don’t you think I’d have gotten myself away by now?”
A few people murmured. Most looked on in silence.
“I signed my indenture papers,” he said, pressing his advantage of the moment. “Just like the rest of you.”
“You don’t talk like the rest of us.”
“I don’t.” Dominick nodded. “I admit I’m from an important family. Important in England, that is.” He dug his toe into the stones beneath him and tried to smile. “So important they got rid of me.”
A handful of people chuckled.
“Why?” Letty demanded, her green eyes narrowing.
Dominick took a deep breath. He might as well tell everyone. Once he told her, they would all find out eventually anyway. “I injured someone in a duel and my father sent me packing without a penny.”
Letty frowned at him. Most of the other women’s faces softened. A few of the men nodded, either in understanding of his father’s actions or in sympathy. He couldn’t tell. He noticed more the lowering of that Scot’s hammer and lessening of hostility.
He slipped his arm through Letty’s and bent to whisper in her ear, “What gives with the unfriendliness toward me? It’s never happened before.”
“Someone’s been talking out of turn.” Letty still scowled. “Dueling indeed. Over a female, I’m sure.”
“No, not a female.” He scanned the crowd again, seeking another face besides Tabitha’s, the face belonging to the man he suspected of pointing a finger at him as the one responsible for the disappearances. “My behavior has been reprehensible, but never where females are concerned.”
If his suspicions were correct, then perhaps Kendall wasn’t guilty. On the other hand, he liked his English butler, so perhaps locking Dominick in his room was a way of protecting him from incidents like this one. Or to direct suspicion away from his household. Kendall, after all, was not home. That didn’t mean he was in Norfolk, as he claimed he would be.
Dominick didn’t see Raleigh Trower, but he did see Tabitha. A basket over her arm, she strolled into the square with her long-legged gait and paused beside a cart bearing butter and cheese.