Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [113]
“Did you learn the hard way? I mean, were you caught?”
“Yes, ma’am. My footprints gave me away to my elder brother, who took my nursery pudding for a month to keep his silence.”
“I think you’ll have to translate nursery pudding for me.” She held up her hand. “Later. Raleigh’s room is above the porch. Should I distract the others again?”
“A wise idea.” Dominick looked preoccupied as he headed for the side of the house.
Tabitha approached the kitchen door. She’d never in her life seen anyone enter the Trowers’ house from the front. They rarely used their parlor. But when she walked through the open door in the back, she found a nearly dead fire and no signs of cooking. Only the smell of fish hung in the air, and voices rose and fell from the direction of the parlor.
She let herself through the door. Talk ceased at her appearance. Fanny scowled at her but bit her lip, as though keeping herself from saying something rude.
“I came as soon as I learned,” Tabitha said, going to Mrs. Trower. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you for coming, child.” Mrs. Trower clasped Tabitha’s hand. “This must distress you greatly.”
“It does.”
Tabitha studied the woman’s face. Although her swollen eyelids bore the evidence of previous tears, the rest of her face was calm, peaceful.
Her smile was genuine and warm as she drew Tabitha down beside her. “We’ve been praying for him, and I know the Lord is taking care of him.”
“I admire your faith.”
Tabitha wanted the Lord to take care of her and know it as certainly as Mrs. Trower did. But Raleigh’s mother was a good woman, a woman who could pray, a woman without a conscience burdened by the guilt of knowing she had given too little to others. Even now, Tabitha sat with the family and a few neighbors only because Dominick was searching for clues to what had happened to Raleigh and needed to go unnoticed as easily as possible. Clues that could lead to his freedom. Freedom to return to England and away from her.
“Let us hope God chooses to listen to your prayers,” Tabitha said.
“It’s the English.” Fanny curled her upper lip. “And Tabitha there is courting the one who’s probably guilty.”
“Mr. Cherrett is a gentleman, for all he’s a redemptioner,” Mrs. Downing interjected before Tabitha could respond. “And he couldn’t have taken Raleigh because he is a bondsman.”
“Never you mind her, Tabbie,” Felicity soothed. “She’s just jealous because he never looked at her.”
“That’s not true,” Fanny cried. “Momma, how could she say such a thing?”
“Girls.” Mrs. Trower sighed. “Fanny, go fetch a cup of coffee for Tabitha. She looks tired.”
“No, thank you.” Tabitha rose, afraid Fanny would see Dominick if she went into the kitchen. “I should go look in on Mrs. Parks. With the upset, she could go off her milk.” She pressed her cheek to Mrs. Trower’s, nodded to the other ladies, and beat a hasty retreat.
She didn’t see Dominick outside. Thinking he might have returned to the village on his own, she started in that direction. Movement behind an outbuilding caught her attention. She turned. Dominick leaned against the shed where Raleigh had been knocked down. He stared inland, his face an expressionless mask.
Tabitha joined him out of sight of the house. “You found something.”
“I did.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the rough wood of the shed wall. “My dearest, please hear me out before you take a scalpel to my gullet.”
“Hear you out about . . . Raleigh?” She shivered despite the day’s heat. “Is it . . . bad?”
“I think so.” Dominick faced her and took her hands in his. “Tabitha, if you’re an impressed man, you have a limited number of ways to get out of the Navy. You get out by dying, because your ship is paid off—taken out of commission or destroyed—or by desertion. Yet Raleigh, who is questionably a subject—I mean, a citizen of the United States of America, at least as far as the British Navy is concerned—came home claiming they let him go. I’ve always had my suspicions about him, but I couldn’t prove anything,