Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [62]
And if he believed in miracles, perhaps he could work out whether or not Raleigh Trower was truly a repentant Yankee come home to hide from the British, or something worse. Dominick would be better off with faith. It had done him well for most of his life, until he chose to go his own way and his luck had run out six months ago.
Suddenly too weary to walk back to the mayor’s house, he continued to lean against Tabitha’s garden wall. Above the aromas of salt spray and sea grass, he caught the fragrance of roses and honeysuckle. Glancing up, he saw a trailing vine of the latter and plucked a handful of blossoms to hold under his nose.
He tossed the flowers away and started walking toward the village by the short route, not along the seashore. He didn’t have time for sentimentality. He had to work for a living and, somewhere in between, spy on the very people who were giving him safe haven when his own countrymen, his own family, rejected him. And for what? Pompous and overfed drunkards like Jennings, the sloop’s commander.
Dominick glanced toward the cove. The sloop remained, riding at anchor until the tide or the wind turned so the vessel could get back to sea. Closer to him, two figures walked along the landward side of the dunes, a man in plain, dark garb, the lady in flounced pale muslin and fluttering ribbons. The two people from the fishing boat. Dominick recognized the female’s hat and gown. She looked a bit wet, the hair beneath the hat tumbled and shining russet brown.
Dominick paused and waited for them, a smile curving his lips. This should be interesting, meeting the blustering English traitor with her, with Tabitha, the lady Dominick knew he could never have and yet—
No, he wouldn’t think he wanted her. She was a means to an end, an excuse to spend a great deal of time at the seashore.
Which meant he needed to be rid of the supposed Yankee. If she decided to renew her engagement to Raleigh Trower, Dominick lost a valuable ally. Or, at the least, a valuable guise for his activities on the beach.
He straightened from his slouched stance against the wall and raised a hand in greeting. Trower stopped, his spine stiffening enough to be noticeable from a hundred feet away. Tabitha kept walking for a pace or two, then stopped, glanced back at Trower, and grasped his hand. Dominick didn’t hear her say anything, but her gesture said it all: “Come along, Raleigh.”
Dominick’s insides tensed at the sight of her holding Trower’s work-hardened hand. Those calluses would scratch her smooth skin. He probably stank of fish. Surely she wouldn’t kiss him . . . too.
They came within hailing distance. Neither of the pair called to Dominick, though Tabitha looked at him, her brows arched in question. Odd that he’d never noticed how those brows, a deeper brown than her hair, came to little points on the outer corners like wings. It lent her eyelids an upward curve, as though they smiled perpetually.
He felt as though he were back on the sloop, dipping and swaying from the waves slipping beneath the hull. His mouth went dry, and he couldn’t think what he should say, how to explain why he stood leaning against her garden wall, other than the words he would never speak in front of Raleigh Trower, or possibly even to her.
I couldn’t go another day without seeing you.
It was a lie. Of course it was. He could, he would, go the rest of his life without seeing her and not suffer for it.
Much.
That last thought roused him from his paralysis, and he sauntered forward, smile firmly in place. “Where’s your boat?”
“How do you know we were in a boat?” Trower demanded.
“I recognized Tabitha’s hat ribbons.” Dominick bowed to her. “How are you, my dear?”
“Wet and weary.” She smiled and didn’t look weary. With her cheeks a bit pink from sun, she looked more beautiful than the shiniest diamonds of the first water of London Society.