Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [30]
“Neither do I.”
His calm reaction to her accusation left Tabitha speechless.
“I came out early in the hopes of seeing you. I hoped to waylay you to inspect my hand.”
“In the dark?” She snorted. “Unlikely.”
Up the beach, the fishing boat entered the inlet and lowered its sail in preparation for tying up to a jetty. Other men in proximity—American men—lent Tabitha a sense of security. Dominick Cherrett wouldn’t harm her with others so near.
Her hand still tingling from his kiss, she doubted he could harm her at all. When she encountered him under other circumstances, she believed him to be as innocent as he claimed. On the beach at dawn, with a British vessel vanishing over the horizon after firing on a fishing boat, she believed him capable of anything dastardly.
She touched the healing mark on her throat. “You don’t need to see me regarding your hand, Mr. Cherrett, unless it’s gone septic.”
“Alas, it is healing very well, thanks to that vile ointment you left behind. What’s in it? Kitchen waste?”
“Comfrey.” Her lips twisted into a reluctant smile. “Its foul odor is only outweighed by its healing properties. But if you don’t need me for your hand, why are you here?”
“For you.” He drew a knuckle along her cheekbone. “I said I would join you on your early morning walk one day.”
“I should report you for being here,” she thought aloud.
He took her arm and started walking toward the edge of the wave-flattened sand. “But you won’t. You enjoy my company, despite your suspicions.”
“I believe I have reason for my suspicions.” Though she hadn’t seen anything that could be construed as a signal. “I won’t tell about this night’s work either, since your mission has failed and the boat got away.”
That boat had reached the jetty, a quarter mile down the beach. Men’s voices shouting directions to one another drifted toward her. One sounded familiar, and her stomach contracted.
“But it’s for my own reasons and not for any of your enticing tricks,” she clipped out, then scrambled for an explanation to have ready when he asked the inevitable.
He picked up her bag from where she’d dropped it on the sand. “If I don’t charm you, and you don’t like Englishmen in general, even ones more charming than I—if that’s possible—I wonder why you’ll hold your peace this time, without the fear of a threat.”
Tabitha couldn’t help herself. She laughed at his outrageous speech. “You’re incorrigible.”
Dominick laughed in response. “That’s what my tutors at Ox—” He stopped, as though slamming a door on revealing something about his past. But Tabitha, daughter of a schoolmaster, knew about tutors and Oxford, and her skin tingled with curiosity—with more suspicions—regarding a well-spoken Englishman who’d attended Oxford University, living the life of a redemptioner. Intriguing. Disturbing. Definitely on the wrong side of usual.
“I suppose all English butlers attend Oxford?” she probed with a smile.
“Only those of us who excel at our studies.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the sea. “The rest become gentlemen.”
Tabitha laughed. “You don’t seem to think a great deal of your countrymen either.”
“I try not to think of my countrymen at all.” His voice dropped to a tone as warm as a caress. “Especially not when I’m with you. You make me forget that I miss home.”
“Mr. Cherrett—” She stopped, at a loss for words under his onslaught of teasing and flirtation.
Further along the beach, the fishermen’s voices ceased.
“They’ve noticed us.” She hastened her steps toward town.
“And they mustn’t recognize us.” Dominick matched her stride. “You’re protecting me again. Do tell me why so I may use it in my favor for future expeditions into fresh sea air.”
“I don’t approve of men being treated worse than animals, locked up or whipped if they stray.”
“You have a kind heart. I wish I’d known from the beginning. I wouldn’t have distressed myself fretting over you tattling on me.”
“Somehow, Mr. Cherrett, I don’t think you were fretting in the least.”
“I have been.