Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [14]
“And most of them ended up dying of starvation.” Letty removed the tray from Dominick’s hands. “You’re going to rub right through the silver if you go about polishing thatta way. Be gentle.”
She demonstrated a light, circular motion with the cloth against the tray. The rasp of grit against metal sounded like harsh breathing in the tiny pantry, the grating breaths of a runner, someone fleeing.
No, someone chasing. He was there to chase, to catch, to stop a villainous character, not run away.
And perhaps chase someone else to keep himself safe.
“There now.” Letty returned the tray to the table with a clunk.
Dominick jumped. “I should have asked you to help from the beginning.”
“It’s not my job. It’s yours, and you’re perfectly capable of carrying on if you don’t woolgather.”
“How can I do anything else when I look like a . . . er . . . woolly lamb?” Dominick picked up a clean cloth and removed the last of the grit from the tray. “I shouldn’t have dropped it. Why don’t you simply remind me of that?”
“I can’t think how you came to do that.” Letty cocked her head, waiting to hear.
“Miss Eckles distracted me.” Dominick shrugged. “She was talking about strangers around on the beach. I seem to be the only Englishman in town, and in light of some more of your young men disappearing last night, I don’t wish to be accused of having aught to do with it by virtue of my nationality.”
“There is another English person in Seabourne,” Letty said. “She’s Tabitha Eckles’s servant.”
“And highly likely to be running about at night stealing men from their tavern haunts.”
“Their fishing boats.” Letty’s tone held a hint of ice. “And you were running about last night.”
“Not on the water.” Dominick shuddered hard enough to make the tray rattle as he slid it onto its shelf. “I never went past the beach.”
“That narrows your wanderings down to twenty miles or more.”
“Letty, are you accusing me of something?” He gave her a wide-eyed stare.
She laughed and backed from the pantry. “I’ll wager you got away with everything using those eyes like that.”
“Only with my nursemaid and mother.” Dominick grimaced. “I wouldn’t be here if I could charm my own sex into succumbing to my charms.”
“And here I thought it was charming the fair maidens that was amongst the things that got you here.” Still chuckling, Letty returned to the kitchen and her pots of savory dishes bubbling over the fire.
“If only it had been fair maidens,” Dominick murmured.
He returned the canister of emery grit to its shelf, applied a boar’s hair brush to his coat, and followed Letty into the kitchen. Dinah and Deborah sat at the worktable peeling potatoes. He hoped the young women’s presence would prevent Letty asking him questions or making further innuendos about either his activities of the night before or the circumstances that sent him bucketing across the Atlantic. Tabitha Eckles had put him through enough of that agony already this morning.
Did he have a knife indeed. What a thing for a lady to ask a gentleman.
Except she wasn’t precisely a lady. Nor was he a gentleman any longer.
Social standing aside—this was America after all, where those sorts of things weren’t supposed to matter—nothing changed the fact that she had asked. Her asking signaled one fact—she believed he was responsible for cutting that long, slender throat of hers.
Nodding to the kitchen maids, he strode through the back door and headed across the garden to the laundry. His fingers twitched with the desire to stroke away any pain that cut might cause her. Marring her skin was a crime worse than the act of threatening her at knifepoint. He didn’t understand the drive that compelled some men to violence or greed. His previous sins stemmed from nothing as ambitious as the wish to conquer or gain great wealth. And now his contrary ambitions threatened to make a manipulative, unconscionable