Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [38]
He did catch the tone of the rumbling voices, though. Anger. Frustration. Hard determination to do . . . something. President Madison’s name seeped through more than once. Whether or not they supported the new president, Dominick couldn’t gather before Letty and the girls warned him of someone approaching the kitchen door.
“All right.” Dominick heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I can’t hear a thing anyway.”
“What were you hoping to hear?” Letty gave him a speculative glance. “Secrets?”
“Sedition, of course. You know, extort my way to freedom.” Flashing her a grin, he ducked into the butler’s pantry, where a pile of newly washed silverware awaited his polishing cloth. One or two of the knives appeared in need of emery grit through the K carved into the handles. Grumbling, he removed the can of the polishing substance from a high shelf.
“Mr. Cherrett,” Deborah—or perhaps it was Dinah—called. “You have a visitor.”
Dominick’s heart leaped. Perhaps it was Tabitha. She’d come to tell him her journey had been canceled and she wanted to give him a smack on the face for kissing her.
He was smiling when he entered the kitchen to find a stranger standing in the doorway. Sunlight behind him cast his face in shadow, but the breadth of his shoulders and bulging muscles of his arms spoke of a laborer or sailor. Nothing about him struck a chord of familiarity with Dominick. Judging from Letty’s and the girls’ faces, they found the stranger baffling too.
“May I help you?” Dominick asked in his best lord-of-the-manor accent.
“Are you Kendall’s redemptioner?” the man demanded.
Dominick winced. Put neatly in his place by a laborer or sailor. Served him right for forgetting his lowly status and acting the arrogant lordling he most certainly had no right to be.
“I am.” He inclined his head. “Did you need something from me?”
“Aye—yes.” The man’s hands balled into fists. “I’d like to speak with you alone.”
Letty caught Dominick’s eye. “The rooms in the house are all filled up with guests, but there’s that bench in the garden.”
Which was too far from the kitchen door for Dominick’s comfort. He didn’t like the looks of this man, and those clenched fists boded no good.
“If you’re here because you’ve got a grudge against the English,” Dominick drawled, “I’d rather not ruin my uniform by engaging in fisticuffs. Do please allow me to change. And be warned. You’re likely to get powder in your eyes.”
“It’s words I want to exchange, not blows,” the man said, “if you’ll talk to me.”
“Of . . . course.” Dominick strolled toward the door, his steps slow, deliberate.
Ahead of him, the man turned on the heel of a thick-soled boot and marched to the center of the kitchen garden. A man of his brawn didn’t fit in the center of strawberry bushes, but he didn’t seem to notice. He set his hands on his hips and thrust out his jaw.
Now, in the sunlight, that jaw shone hard and firm beneath lean, bronzed cheeks and a thin mouth. Deep blue eyes met and held Dominick’s gaze without so much as a blink of the stubby, dark lashes.
Dominick stopped a yard away. “Who are you?”
“The name’s Raleigh Trower.”
Dominick waited for more. The name meant nothing to him. The accent sounded too quick to belong to someone native to the region, and too lazy to be British. But that hint of an English accent set Dominick’s senses on high alert.
“I’m a friend of Tabitha Eckles,” Trower announced. “An old friend.”
“I expect she has any number of friends.” Dominick’s bored tone hinted at none of the strain tensing every nerve in his body.