Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [61]
He hadn’t expected the message, a mere slip of paper that had appeared in his shopping basket that morning. The wording had been brief, telling him to meet the sloop that afternoon. He’d gone and received a longer missive.
Uneasiness crawled under his skin like weevils through a ship’s biscuit. He didn’t like his uncle’s ship being in such proximity to the American coast a week before the scheduled rendezvous. Was war more imminent than anyone suspected?
If only Dominick had been able to hear the talk amongst Kendall’s august guests, he might know more. He might know enough to please his uncle.
He sighed. “You’ll want to be off these shores soon. We English are heartily disliked here.”
“Not until the tide turns.”
“Someone should have told you to bring a boat in instead of your whole ship,” Dominick pointed out.
“Sloop,” Jennings reminded him. “Only post captains get ships.”
“Right. Two masts. Three masts. What do you call something with one mast?”
“Depends on who’s aboard. If it’s a captain’s gig, it’s honored company. If it’s one of these Yankees, it’s bait.” Jennings laughed uproariously again.
Dominick smelled brandy fumes and realized the man was drunk at four o’clock in the afternoon. He tried not to show his contempt as he made a pretense of peering out the stern windows again so he could dump his brandy into the sea, with a silent apology to the fish.
“Please just see that the vice admiral knows I picked up my letter.” Dominick set his glass in between the fiddle boards on the table. “I can see myself out. No need to rise.”
Head bowed to avoid the low deck beams, he opened the cabin door. Although still reeking of bilge water, pea soup, and worse, the air flowing down the companionway ladder smelled like perfume compared to the stifling commander’s quarters. Dominick heaved a sigh of relief to be getting away safe and clear.
Outside the cabin, the marine guard saluted. Dominick laughed in his butler’s garb. No one saluted him, not even at home. But the marine guard didn’t look amused at Dominick’s mirth. Stone-faced, he called for someone to escort the guest over the side and into the boat that carried Dominick the dozen yards to shore.
Free at last to look at the letter the sloop had brought him, Dominick headed up the beach, quickly putting as much distance between the sloop and himself as he could. Catching sight of the walled garden, he paused, tempted to rest in its shadow to read his letter, perhaps wait for Tabitha. He had an excuse—to congratulate her on dealing Harlan Wilkins a blow at the village council.
Which was what the man needed.
Dominick’s fingers curled into fists, crumpling the vice admiral’s letter. He leaned against the wall, where the spreading branches of a cedar tree lent him some shade. He broke the seal of the letter with his thumbnail and gripped the edges of the parchment against the tug of the rising wind.
The missive began simply with, “Nephew.” The rest was brief and to the point.
Your request would take far too long. Carry on as though your suspicions are founded. If you have nothing to report by 21 June, you must wait to report until as late as Christmas. I’ll be on the channel station during that time. Good luck and God be with you.
If God was with him, did he need luck?
Dominick frowned at the last line. It felt better than thinking about the rest—about having little more than a week to find answers that would either free him or find him stranded on enemy shores, a servant, for another six months at the least.
He certainly did need luck. God might be with him, but the Almighty would do no favors for a man who had rejected Him and done his best to demoralize His church, or at least those who served in the church.
Yet those men Dominick wrote about were politicians or social climbers using the church for their personal