Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [73]
Dominick skirted the parsonage and slipped between the church and graveyard on his way to Kendall’s back garden a hundred feet beyond. The darkness there proved complete, and Dominick slowed further, his hands in front of him to meet the gate before he crashed into it with his entire body. He’d never returned in such complete blackness and feared losing his way amidst the gravestones.
He sensed rather than saw the walls rising up on either side of him, enclosures for the gardens of an empty house on one side and the mayor’s on the other. His hand trailing the rough bricks of the wall, he followed the line.
He caught the smell of wet wool and spirits an instant before his hand struck something hard and unyielding, but wearing a coat of wool, not a coating of moss.
Another person.
He jerked his hand back, but not fast enough. Fingers coiled around his wrist and yanked him forward.
“Who is this?” Harlan Wilkins demanded.
19
______
Tabitha moved a candle so she could look into Raleigh’s eyes. They contracted from the sudden flare of light, his lashes dropped over the deep blue eyes, and he groaned a protest.
“Looking to see if you’re concussed.” She smoothed the soft brown hair away from his brow, stopping when her hand met the bandage she’d wound over the stitches. “You can rest now.” She started to turn away.
“Wait.” He caught hold of her hand. “Tabbie, what did he tell you?”
“You need to rest. We’ll discuss what happened later.”
“Now.” He sounded like a petulant child.
She spoke to him in soothing tones. “Raleigh, you have a badly bruised jaw and a banged-up head. You need to rest.”
“I’ll rest when I know what he’s been telling you about me.” He tried to smile. With one side of his face swollen and purple, it looked like a monster’s grimace. “Please.”
“All right.” She returned to the chair on which she’d been sitting while repairing the damage to his skull. “It will only take a minute. He told me nothing more than that you were unconscious in a shed.”
“Did he—did he admit to doing this to me?” Raleigh touched his jaw and winced.
“No.”
She’d presumed he had and as much as accused him of it. He hadn’t denied it. Neither had he confirmed her assumption. He’d simply been angry with her for thinking the worst. Angry with Raleigh for trying to ruin him.
But Raleigh wouldn’t do that. He might feel he was in competition with Dominick for her attention and interest, but he was neither vindictive nor mean-spirited.
At least the Raleigh she’d known as a child, as a young woman, as his fiancée, hadn’t been. No, he’d simply been irresponsible enough to abandon her because he wanted an adventure.
“Did he do this?” she asked as she had earlier. “Are you quite, quite sure?”
“I—” He rolled his eyes toward her, then closed his eyes again. “The build was much the same.”
“The build?” Tabitha leaned forward, her hands clasped on her knees. “Let me be clear on this. You’re accusing a man, a redemptioner—so the consequences are far worse than if he were an ordinary citizen—of striking you down in the dark, but you only think so because of his height and . . . what else? Shoulder breadth?”
A nice shoulder breadth, perfect for laying her head upon in apprehension and despair.
Her insides twisted. She didn’t know why she’d thought that. She had Raleigh. She could rest her head on a broader shoulder, a sturdier shoulder, in more ways than one. Raleigh was an American—home to stay, he claimed—a man with an occupation and kindness.
Yet his kindness had come into question tonight, as in the past. A kind man wouldn’t have abandoned her. A kind man wouldn’t be accusing another man on such flimsy evidence.
“Didn’t you talk to him?” she demanded, voice harsh. “You can recognize his accent in a few words.”
“Yes, he talks like some lordling.” Despite his deformed features, Raleigh’s sneer was apparent. “We had a lieutenant like