Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [138]
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“No, we haven’t ever met.”
“English.” Parks started up. “You can’t make me go back.”
“No, I can’t.” Dominick laid his hand on the other man’s shoulder and nudged him down. “Officially, I’m a redemptioner belonging to Mayor Kendall. I am also a spy trying to stop a war, and you can help.”
“You’re a what?” Parks looked as though Dominick had struck him across the face. “Mister . . . um . . .”
“Officially, it’s Lord Dominick.” He smiled. “But you can call me Cherrett, if you don’t have other choice names for an Englishman.”
Parks smiled through cracked lips. “What do you need to know?”
Dominick told him, and Parks answered to the best of his knowledge. By the time Tabitha raced downstairs in canvas boots and a woolen cloak over her gown, her hair tied up in a knitted cap, Dominick had all the information he could glean from the American.
“You need to think about what you’re doing, Dominick,” she said. “The sun is beginning to set.”
“If I have the answers to the disappearances, everything will be all right.”
He hoped.
He glanced at Parks. “Shall we send someone to notify your family of your return?”
“Please.” Parks raised himself on one elbow. “I don’t think I look as bad as I did earlier, do I?”
“They’re not going to care.” Tabitha touched his brow as though he were a child with a fever. “I’ll send Japheth before we leave.”
“She shouldn’t go with you,” Parks said.
“I know. But if I don’t take her, she’ll go on her own.” A twinge of envy twisted inside him. “She needs to save Trower.”
“I need—” She broke off and headed for the door, calling for Japheth.
Dominick followed. In moments, they were heading out across the beach toward the jetty and Raleigh Trower’s boat. Dominick thought of reasons why she shouldn’t go, from her injured shoulder to the risk of confronting a man with armed marines and hundreds of sailors at his command. Dominick’s rank should help save him, but if things went badly, not even he could protect Tabitha.
He stopped her at the jetty. “You can’t go.”
“You can’t stop me.” She caressed his cheek. “I have to do this for—for Raleigh.”
“Yes, Raleigh.” He gritted his teeth.
He was willing to get her former fiancé back for her, if he still lived, but he wasn’t willing for her to go after him. But she was right. He couldn’t stop her. If he took the Marianne, she would find another boat. She was safer beside him than alone.
He hoped.
“All right, but do everything I say.” He grasped the painter and drew the little craft closer to the jetty. “Climb aboard.”
She obeyed and leaped aft to loose the sheets. Her face glowed in the slanting sunlight. Sunlight that spelled trouble for him if he failed to return before it faded. Sunlight emphasizing her beauty. His heart bounded toward her before he loosed the painter and jumped aboard.
“Hurry,” she called.
He hurried. He hadn’t been aboard a sailing boat since the brief peace of 1802, when Englishmen felt secure sailing the channel for pleasure. But he had enjoyed that year of freedom before he left Dorset for Oxford and had spent every minute he could on the water.
He raced to hoist the sail while Tabitha took the tiller. Slowly, agonizingly, the craft turned on the ebbing tide and light breeze and headed out to sea.
“Wind,” Tabitha cried from the wheel. “We need more wind.”
“We’re not going all that far, though it may take a bit to find the frigate, if she hasn’t upped anchor. In which case we won’t find her at all in the dark.”
“We have to try. But Dominick—”
A shout sounded from shore. She glanced back, then leaned over the wheel as though she could make the fishing boat move faster, a groan escaping her lips.
“What is it?” Dominick shoved the belaying pin into the rail and ran back to her. “Is it your wound?”
“No, it’s Harlan Wilkins. He saw us.”
35
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The Nemesis rode at anchor miles down the coast from where Donald Parks had gone over the side. By the time they found