Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [31]
“You all stole my fiancé.” She spoke harshly, lashing out against his appeal to her senses, her female vanity. “His mother is Canadian and was staying with family when he was born, because his father was on a long voyage, so the Navy claimed he was a British subject.”
“I’m so sorry.” He took a few more steps and paused at the edge of the dune, where the grasses waved in the rising dawn breeze. “Did he die?”
“No, he’s returned after two years in your Navy, but—” She hesitated to admit it was too late. She wasn’t certain of that. Most of her hoped it wasn’t. If Raleigh settled there, fishing with his father, he would make a fine husband and wouldn’t interfere with her work. She could have her own children and companionship by the fire. They would lack for nothing.
“War changes men.” Dominick stepped back so she could precede him up the path toward town. “My father fought in a war, and my aunts say it changed him from a carefree youth to the despotic tyrant I knew.”
“What war was that?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
“The one that gives you more cause to dislike me.” Dominick let out a humorless laugh. “Your revolution.”
“Of course.” She studied the ground at her feet, careful not to entangle her ankle with a trailing length of sea grass. “Was he wounded?”
Should she be asking so many questions of this man? Oh, yes, every bit of it and more. Be friendly. Gain his trust.
“Not a scratch. But he lost many friends.”
“Loss makes the soul sick.”
Her father, when she was only sixteen. Raleigh and her mother, when she was only two and twenty. Yes, her soul still felt sick, curled in on itself like a body with a wasting disease.
“Has Harlan Wilkins caused you any trouble?” Dominick asked abruptly. “There’s a man angered by loss.”
“He’s talking against me, yes.” Tabitha bit her lip, glad she was going to be gone for a week at the least, possibly two.
“He wants the mayor to have you arrested. I should have warned you sooner, but I am always a bit distracted in your presence.”
She tilted her head to look up at him. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s why you’re out this early? You suddenly remembered?”
“No, I won’t tell you such a fib.” He set down her bag and tucked one finger beneath her chin. “I have been concerned about you, though. Wilkins is a powerful man.”
“I’m not without influence.”
Or a secret or two of which she wouldn’t hesitate to remind more than one councilman if necessary. She wouldn’t let Harlan Wilkins ruin her livelihood, even if, at times, she would prefer to be a normal female, attending parties and receiving callers rather than delivering other women’s babies.
“Reverend Downing will vouch for me,” she added.
“Even though you’re a heathen?” Dominick smiled into her eyes.
She blinked against a warmth, a brightness in her eyes that owed little to the rising sun. “Why would you call me a heathen?”
“That’s what Wilkins called you. You never go to church.”
“I’m not a heathen.” She sighed with the old frustration of this conversation. “Neither am I a hypocrite. I don’t have any more time for God than He has for me.”
“Yet the reverend will vouch for you?”
“We have mutual respect for one another’s work.” She smiled ruefully. “And I may agree to go to church when I return, for the sake of appearances, of course.”
“Church isn’t about appearances. It’s about worshiping God—at least it should be.”
“I knew that . . . once.” She tried to look away and failed. “I must go, Mr. Cherrett, and you should too. Don’t risk coming out here again.”
“It’s worth the risk to see you again.”
“I wish I believed that.” The words emerged before she stopped herself from uttering something so foolish, so . . . inviting of further flirtation.
“May I see you when you return?” He glanced toward the fishing boat. “Perhaps where and when I won’t risk trouble?”
She wanted to say no. Voices from the fishing boat that came too close to getting stopped by a British frigate, and Dominick Cherrett just happening to be in the vicinity,