Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [46]
Dominick rolled his eyes. “Church as Almack’s.”
“Where?” Letty asked.
“A private club in London whose primary purpose is to make matches. A sort of marriage market.”
“I can’t believe you failed there,” Dinah said from his other side.
“Failed to get a wife there?” Dominick laughed. “My dear girl, I failed to get accepted into such august halls of society. By the time I might have been interested—” He broke off.
Across the church yard, Mrs. Phoebe Lee was looking at him. A man several years her senior stepped between her and Dominick. Though the man’s back was to them, Dominick recognized Harlan Wilkins.
“Looking for his next wife?” His tone dripped contempt.
“With Mrs. Downing’s approval.” Deborah grimaced. “His wife not in her grave three weeks and he’s escorting that young woman home.”
One of Wilkins’s brawny arms went out. Mrs. Lee grasped it in her tiny, white-gloved fingers, and they headed for the parsonage.
“The poor girl,” Dominick murmured.
“Poor?” The other servants stared at him.
“I hear tell she’s quite wealthy,” Deborah said.
“I don’t like him.” Dominick gazed after the retreating pair and the rest of the Downing family. “He’s trying to make trouble for Miss Eckles.”
“That’s mean-spirited,” Deborah declared.
“We shouldn’t talk about our betters like this,” Letty admonished them.
“Harlan Wilkins is hardly my—” Dominick made himself shut up. Right now, everyone there considered a merchant superior to a mere redemptioner.
Dominick’s good suit of clothes chafed as though made of the cheapest of wools. He wished to tear off the coat at the least and dive into the cold waters of the Atlantic—dive deep and swim far.
He trudged back to Kendall’s house, his heels kicking up puffs of sandy soil in the rising heat of mid-June. Kendall and his guests were dining at the home of some local landowner, so Dominick was free the rest of the day, Letty informed him after their dinner. He could go where he liked.
“But see you’re in at sundown,” she reminded him.
“Yes, ma’am.”
He changed his clothes for the casual garb of a country gentleman, laughable under the circumstances. But the Hessian boots and buckskin breeches gave him far more freedom of movement than his servants’ garb, and he needed the ability to stride along the dunes until he reached a certain cove. His uncle wouldn’t be there for nearly two weeks, but perhaps he would have the foresight to send a boat in the event a message lay in their agreed-upon place.
Standing at the edge of the cove not much bigger than a village pond and nearly as still at low tide, Dominick doubted his uncle would take the risk of sending one or more of his men ashore. Even trusted men might be tempted to fly. If they didn’t succumb to temptation, they might be caught. A house lay on the other side of the nearest dune. Its occupants could too easily walk in this direction for fishing or viewing the sunrise, though it was in the opposite direction of the village. If more dwellings spread along the coast, the occupants might have business that could bring them—her—in the cove’s direction.
No one stirred on the hot Sunday afternoon. Even the sea merely rippled and swirled on the surface with wavelets no bigger than what a cat’s paw would produce as it speared a fish.
Certain of not being observed, Dominick pulled the note from his pocket. Oiled paper protected it from the elements to some extent. Unless the tide rose unusually high, a pile of rocks like a cairn would provide the rest of the protection and keep the message from flying away. Without much hope of anyone finding the message before June 21, Dominick slipped the note inside the pile of rocks. It said little, but that little could alert the wrong party of