Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [71]
Tabitha appeared at the top of the steps. “I don’t want to get ill, so I promise to wear it. As for the decency of the matter—where is he, Dominick?”
“A shed behind his house.”
“Then you fetched his family?” Tabitha raced down the steps, heels clattering, and snatched the cloak from Patience. “His mother knows what to do about most injuries.”
“Yes, but—” Dominick glanced toward Patience, took the cloak from Tabitha’s hand, and whirled it over her shoulders. “I’ll take good care of her, Miss Patience.”
“Humph.” She grabbed the edge of the door. As he and Tabitha headed down the flagstones to the gate, he felt Patience’s gaze boring into his back.
“How bad is he?” Tabitha asked.
Outside the wall, the wind hit them full force, cold and damp and smelling of the sea. They walked along the landward side of the dunes but could hear the sea, its roar a beast threatening to devour the land.
“We’d better hurry.” He grabbed her hand and picked up their pace.
“Because of the weather or Raleigh’s condition?” she demanded.
“I don’t know how bad his condition is. Bad enough I thought he needed more care than I could give him.” Or wanted to, after what he’d heard Trower say about him. “There’s a lot of blood, Tabitha. From his head.”
“You didn’t go to his family,” she said.
“I made him as comfortable as I could, then came here. It seemed . . . safer that way.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t want them to know you’re out this late.” She looked up at him. “And why are you out this late, and with Raleigh?”
“I had a yearning to see the sea during a storm. Thought it might remind me of home.”
Which wasn’t precisely a lie. He did miss the stormy English Channel.
“And just happened to be at the Trower house?” Be it the truth or not, Tabitha’s tone said she didn’t believe him.
“No, I didn’t just happen to be there. I saw him skulking around town and thought I’d follow him to see why he was out on such a night.”
“When he could ask the same of you? Dominick, you’ll have to do better than that. You wouldn’t risk having him tell Kendall about your own wanderings.”
“If he were going to tattle on me, he already would have.” He squeezed her fingers. “Then I’d let my uncle—” He bit his tongue for the slip, cleared his throat. “I’d let my acquaintances in the British Navy know there’s a deserter right here.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Thank you for your faith in me. Of course I wouldn’t, but he doesn’t know that.”
“Oh, you two.” Tabitha made a growling noise not unlike the sea’s. “I should knock your heads together.”
“From the look of it, someone already knocked Trower’s head into something.”
“Someone? You two didn’t fight?”
Dominick felt like she had knocked his head into a wall. “No, Tabitha, we didn’t fight. Why would we?”
“Maybe because he was watching us earlier?”
“That wasn’t Trower. That was Wilkins.”
“You’re sure? Why would Wilkins—of course.” Tabitha’s sigh sounded as gusty as the wind. “More evidence to discredit me. I wish it had been Raleigh and you were there tonight to tell Raleigh . . . something.”
“I followed him out of curiosity, is all. He doesn’t even know I was there, nor will he.”
Nor would either of them know of his little excursion to the Trower house after he wrapped strips of his shirt around Trower’s head and before he raced to Tabitha’s house.
Dominick hesitated, then said, “He was talking of how to destroy me.”
“Dominick, no. He wouldn’t.”
“He was, but you’ll have to take my word for it unless we find to whom he was speaking.”
“I don’t want to believe Raleigh would do that, or that you’d make it up.” Tabitha stroked her thumb over his knuckles, and he flinched. “This knuckle is swollen. What happened?”
“I struck it against the shed wall trying to help him. Not that he deserved my help after trying to incriminate me.” Dominick spoke through gritted teeth. “But you seem to think that condemns me guilty of striking him with it.”
“It seems . . . suspicious. I mean, did you see anyone else who could have done so?”
“Would you believe