Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [107]
At that moment, it was her hand on a wound, an old wound, a scar. When she ran her fingers down and back up again, pausing and repeating the motion, he knew she’d felt the marks, the ridges down his back, even through his shirt.
“Perhaps some air would do you good,” she said in her honey voice. Her hand still on his back, she nudged him forward.
“Keep the girls out of the garden, will you please, Letty, my love?” He spoke the words in a light accent and pleaded with his eyes.
She gave him a sharp nod and returned to the oven set into the hearth.
Feeling a bit weak-kneed, Dominick stumbled over the threshold and had nearly reached the bench beneath the cedar tree before Tabitha stopped him, a hand on his shoulder and her person planted on the path ahead of him. “Who did that to your back?”
Dominick offered her a twisted smile. “That father who you’re so concerned will dislike me for bringing you home.”
“Your father?” She looked like she had after he’d killed the snake—a bit green. “But Dominick, it must have been a—a—whip.”
“A carriage whip, to be precise. When I came home after the duel . . .”
It all flashed before him, his father’s face so full of loathing. The staring servants. The way the falling rain turned his blood pink on the cobblestones of the stable yard.
He made it two steps further and collapsed onto the bench. He wouldn’t be sick in front of Tabitha, but it took willpower.
Tabitha sat beside him and took one of his hands in hers. She said nothing. She simply caressed his fingers one by one and in between.
He started to relax. “He’d already found out. He met me in the stable yard. He already had the whip in his hand.” Dominick shivered despite the warmth of the sunshine. “It was January and raining, but he ordered me to strip to the waist, right there in front of the grooms and coachman and I don’t know who else. When I refused, he ordered two of the grooms to do it for me.” His body burned with remembered shame, and he stared at the brilliant red of a strawberry bush a dozen yards away. Red like blood. “My eldest brother made him stop, or he might have killed me. I’d made him angry before, but that was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Always before, he just shouted and let my schoolmasters do the caning. And in front of the servants . . .” He shook his head. His hair cascaded out of its queue and over his face.
Tabitha brushed it back, her fingers as light as petals. “Why was he so angry?”
“I’d shamed the family.” He conjured up a grin. “You know how it is with us English—family, country, God, in that order. I thought I was putting God first, and in doing so, I shamed the family. So I had to be eliminated.”
“What did he do after beating you?” Her fingers rested on the pulse beneath his ear. He felt it leap to her gentle caress and wanted nothing more than to bury his face in her hair and hold her close.
“He ordered me thrown off his land as I was.” Dominick tilted his head to press her hand between his cheek and shoulder. “I remember landing on the road outside the gate, but nothing more until I woke up at the home of a physician in Lyme Regis. My brothers had carried me there. I stayed for a month until I had enough strength to travel. I got as far as Plymouth with the little money I had, and had some vague notion of heading to the West Indies. I’d forgotten my uncle was attached to the vice admiralty office there. He and my father heartily dislike one another, so he was happy to help me. And here I am.” He straightened and looked her in the eye. “But why are you here?”
“To offer you my help.”
“Tabitha.” The pain of memory, of shame, slipped away. “Why? Because of Parks?” That idea dampened his joy a bit. He wanted her to have come because of him.
“No.” She rose and paced to the strawberry bushes and back again, a ripe berry between her fingers. “I was on my way here when I heard the news. I had to pay a visit to Mrs. Parks first. Duty.” She offered him the berry.
He took it, bit off half, then returned it to her.
She