Lady in the Mist - Laurie Alice Eakes [90]
Dominick raised his arm. His hand disappeared beneath his fall of hair and emerged curled around the handle of a long, glittering knife.
“You can’t.” Tabitha’s voice emerged more like a squeak. “Water moccasin bites are usually deadly—”
The snake lunged. Steel flashed. Blood spurted, and the snake’s severed head lay on the white sand beside a knife with an eight-inch blade, a mere inch from the toe of Dominick’s right boot.
“What kind of bondsman carries a knife like that?” Tabitha asked with a calm that pleased her. Then she gathered up her skirt, raced a dozen yards down the beach, and fell to her knees to be sick in a tide pool. She’d eaten little that day, but her stomach rebelled as though she’d downed a banquet. She doubled over, racked with pain and silent sobs.
“Hush.” A strong arm encircled her shoulders. Warm breath and a swath of satiny hair brushed her cheek. “It’s dead and no harm done.”
“But it was there.” She gasped for breath to control herself. “It was in my basket.”
“Probably the smell of the bait. Here. Drink.”
Cool glass touched her lips. She reached up and curled her fingers around the bottle. He didn’t let go. Together they tilted the container. The sweet tartness of lemonade washed over her tongue and down her throat, refreshing, nourishing, cleansing. She swallowed once, twice, then he took it away.
“Not too much. Water would be better, but the only stuff we have is in your basket, and I didn’t think you’d want that.”
“No.” She shuddered. “Where is it?”
“I’m afraid I dumped it all in the ocean.” His dark eyes smiled into hers. “Basket, food, and our serpentine visitor. Or what was left of him.”
“Yes, his tail.” The lemonade threatened to come up. She gulped. “You killed it so fast. How—I mean, the knife . . .” Her voice gathered strength. “What is a redemptioner doing with a knife and skill like that?”
“It’s not the usual skill and habit for a gentleman either.” He raised the bottle of lemonade to his own lips, and for the first time she realized his hand trembled. “I thought I might need such a weapon against an unsavory man, not a monster. What did you call it?”
“A water moccasin. Some call them cottonmouths.” She looked into his eyes so he could read her gravity. “I’ve seen them be aggressive toward people, and if he’d bitten one of us . . . My mother got called to treat a bite . . . The man died.” She shuddered. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Perhaps it crawled in the basket in search of food.”
Tabitha dropped her gaze to the bottle in his hand, where sunlight reached through the green glass to flash off of liquid unstable enough to sparkle like rippling waves.
He tucked the flask into a pocket of wet sand. “Or perhaps someone put it there.”
“That basket was covered. It couldn’t have gotten in on its own.”
“Now, really, Tabitha, how could someone have done that without us knowing?”
“Too easily from the boat. We were making enough noise ourselves to cover up any another person might have made, and you know it.”
“I know it.” He sighed. “I hoped you wouldn’t come to the same conclusion.”
“I have.” She knelt there in the sand and grasped both his hands. “Dominick, someone tried to kill one of us.” She strove for a light tone. “Since it was my basket, probably me.”
“Who would want to harm you?” He freed his hands and cupped her face in his palms. “Who would want to destroy such beauty and kindness?”
“Who would want to harm you?”
Light flamed in Dominick’s dark eyes. “The dozen people coming this way don’t look particularly friendly.”
Tabitha jerked away from him and turned. Indeed, what looked more like a score of people swarmed down the beach or over the dunes toward them.
Raleigh, his face pale, walked amongst them, leaning on his father’s arm. He released it and straightened. “Tabbie, are you all right? We heard a scream.”
All eyes swiveled past her to Dominick, curious, wary, hostile. She felt rather than saw him rise, and struggled to stand too, but she entangled her foot in her skirt.
“You need to modify