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gone to Barbados,” he grumbled to his reflection in the glittering surface of the tray.
    At least in the Caribbean all he would have to worry about pertained to simple matters like yellow fever and field worker uprisings. Unlike the eastern shore of Virginia, where disaster could land on his head at any moment—literally.
    “At least a bash to the skull would knock off the powder.”
    He grimaced at the quantity of white froth adding its detritus to the emery grit. The pallid color aged him, making his skin appear sallow rather than lightly bronzed from the sun. Not attractive, whatever Letty told him and however the other female servants flirted with him. He didn’t need their approval.
    He needed Tabitha Eckles’s approbation.
    “I’ll get that when Barbados gets snow.” He shook his head, sending a shower of powder onto the nearly polished silver.
    His yell of frustration brought Letty stomping into the doorway. “What are you grousing about, laddie? You were the one to drop that tray. You have to be the one to polish it up again.”
    “And I’m the one ordered to wear this . . . flotsam on my head.” He yanked at a curl tumbling from his queue. “It’s utterly ridiculous.”
    “It’s charming.” Letty tucked the errant strand beneath the ribbon.
    “It gets over everything.”
    “It wouldn’t if you didn’t stamp around here like an angry bull.” Letty softened her admonishing tone. “Dominick, you’re likely going to be here for at least four years. You may as well resign yourself to the fact and do your work with good cheer.”
    “Sensible advice.”
    “That you don’t intend to take.”
    “I understand the gentlemen who settled this colony—”
    “State.”
    “It was a colony then and will be again, if my country has its way.” He flashed Letty a grin. “But as I was saying, the gentlemen who settled in this blighted place two hundred years ago were just that—gentlemen. They didn’t intend to work. They intended to get rich off of the land.”
    “And most of them ended up dying of starvation.” Letty removed the tray from Dominick’s hands. “You’re going to rub right through the silver if you go about polishing thatta way. Be gentle.”
    She demonstrated a light, circular motion with the cloth against the tray. The rasp of grit against metal sounded like harsh breathing in the tiny pantry, the grating breaths of a runner, someone fleeing.
    No, someone chasing. He was there to chase, to catch, to stop a villainous character, not run away.
    And perhaps chase someone else to keep himself safe.
    “There now.” Letty returned the tray to the table with a clunk.
    Dominick jumped. “I should have asked you to help from the beginning.”
    “It’s not my job. It’s yours, and you’re perfectly capable of carrying on if you don’t woolgather.”
    “How can I do anything else when I look like a . . . er . . . woolly lamb?” Dominick picked up a clean cloth and removed the last of the grit from the tray. “I shouldn’t have dropped it. Why don’t you simply remind me of that?”
    “I can’t think how you came to do that.” Letty cocked her head, waiting to hear.
    “Miss Eckles distracted me.” Dominick shrugged. “She was talking about strangers around on the beach. I seem to be the only Englishman in town, and in light of some more of your young men disappearing last night, I don’t wish to be accused of having aught to do with it by virtue of my nationality.”
    “There is another English person in Seabourne,” Letty said. “She’s Tabitha Eckles’s servant.”
    “And highly likely to be running about at night stealing men from their tavern haunts.”
    “Their fishing boats.” Letty’s tone held a hint of ice. “And you were running about last night.”
    “Not on the water.” Dominick shuddered hard enough to make the tray rattle as he slid it onto its shelf. “I never went past the beach.”
    “That narrows your wanderings down to twenty miles or