The Last Killiney (39 page)

He stood up slowly, and the look he gave Christian, with his brown eyes blackened to smoldering coals, could have put the fear in anyone. The smugness vanished from Christian’s features. In an instant, he was scrambling for cover as James ducked under the beam of the cabin’s ceiling and straightened over Christian. “Where is he, Cousin? Tell me where he is or I’ll break every bone in your miserable little—”

“On my mother’s grave, I don’t know!”

“You know well enough.”

“That watch was given to me by a savage,” Christian stammered. “How was I to learn the details of its thieving? Do I speak their savage language?”

“From your endless Indian stories, yes, I think you do.”

“But this was a different sort of Indian, and I couldn’t possibly—”

“So this wasn’t in the village? You received this watch at Nootka Sound?”

“Yes! In the prison, I—”

“When?” James asked. He took another step. “When did you meet this Indian at Nootka?”

Cowering against the cabin wall, Christian hesitated. His eyes roved wildly, glancing around at the planked floor, the table, at anything but James until finally James reached down and seized him by the collar, lifted him slowly off his feet. “
When
.”

“Three…four days ago,” Christian said. “The savage gave me the watch four days before you arrived and then the Spaniards shot him! How could I have asked from whom he’d stolen it? We couldn’t converse but with simple gestures.”

Hearing this blatant contradiction of his earlier claims, his detailed story of Paul’s death, Ravenna couldn’t help speaking at last. “He’s lying,” she muttered under her breath.

James raised Christian higher against the wall, gave him a shake. “Why does she call you a liar, Cousin?”

Swallowing hard, Christian glanced at her. There was trouble building in those gray eyes, she saw it, trouble born of that fear and cowardice which drove everything about him so that when he managed to regain his composure, when his voice steadied, Ravenna wasn’t surprised at all. “I fabricated a version of the Paddy’s death,” Christian said carefully. “I do understand your indignation, but you must believe I’m sorry. It was merely something that had to be done.”

“You told me they put a knife through his head!”

“I did tell you that, but only to make you believe my story.”

“A knife through his head?” James nodded toward her. “As she sits there grieving, you told her that?”

“Would you rather I’d told her the truth? That I got nothing from the savage, save his fleas?”

With a grimace, James put his face near to Christian’s, intimidating, threatening. “If you’re lying to me—”

“I don’t speak savage, I’ve told you as much.”

“And I’m telling you that when we get back to Nootka, you’re going to show me who shot this Indian and together, we’re going to comb that coast for Paul
night and day
, you understand me, Cousin? If those Spaniards remember anything at all, which nation he belonged to, what dialect he spoke or the type of his canoe, then we’ve only to hire soldiers to accompany us to every village until you and I have—”

“Has mourning driven you both mad?” Christian stared at James in shock. “Listen to yourself! He’s dead! You’ve told her so a dozen times at least, and now you fill her head with hopeless fantasy?”

“Better that than the daggers you’ve put in his.”

“It’s beyond your understanding, isn’t it, James? Why I’d invent that awful description?”

“Stole,” Sarah reminded him.

“Yes, deliberately, so my words would ring true, so she’d believe and get on with her life!”

James’s hands loosened the slightest bit. Christian slipped an inch down the wall. “She needed a finality which the truth couldn’t provide,” he went on, “and as much as it wounded her to hear my lies, at least she faced the brunt of her grief, which is more than I can say for your notions of going back to that godforsaken place.”

“She needs to bury him,” James insisted. “Should she have his remains for a fit and proper service—”

“Then she’d have a plot in the ground, wouldn’t she? We all know he’s dead—would you have her wandering that coast for years, searching for him, endangering herself and her child merely for the sake of burying his corpse?”

James’s shoulders hunched uncertainly.

“If you love her,” Christian said, “then convince her there’s no point in going back.
You
paint the image of the Paddy’s death. She’ll listen to you. She’ll do anything for you.”

From behind him, Ravenna saw only the back of James’s head, all that black, straight hair messed in a ribbon.

Wave after wave rocked the ship.

Finally James lowered his head, lowered his grip and, wavering with the pitch and plunge of the deck, he set Christian down and stepped away.

She couldn’t believe it. She was about to yell at him, to demand that he strangle Christian, tear him limb from limb or whatever it took to get the truth, but as she started to open her mouth to say so, James turned around. Only then did she see the look on his face.

His brows were drawn together in an agonized expression. His jaw was clenched, and she realized what Christian had so skillfully done—he’d transferred the blame. He’d played on the remorse and self-damnation that shone so readily in James’s eyes and invoked the guilt already there; after all, Christian was thinking of her welfare, and what was James thinking of?

Swaying with the rollers that crashed against the hull, James went to her then. He put his arms around her, crushed her against him with penitent urgency, and Ravenna didn’t like the things he whispered. “They shot him, don’t you remember how I told you? They shot him in the chest with a musket, Love, and he died…I know he died.”

He whispered such things for three days.

And after hearing again and again how Paul had fallen while the gun’s report echoed down the riverbed, how James had seen Paul’s eyes close and his limbs go lifeless as they pulled him through the tall salal…with all that emotion charging James’s voice, she had to believe him.

* * *

Christian refrained from telling his stories after that. As time went on, Ravenna reached the conclusion he’d indeed been truthful, that he’d only uttered such graphic descriptions to enable her to leave that coast behind and get on with her life, for he was much kinder in the months afterward.

What’s more, he didn’t condemn, ridicule, criticize or irritate James in any way again, at least not during the voyage home. Nor did he use the word “mongrel,” not even when he spoke to Ravenna privately.

These sacrifices were not lost on James. He tolerated Christian more and more, until it made Ravenna sick to think of what Christian had threatened, how he now so pleasantly poured James’s tea.

During those long months on the ocean swells, the merchant ship made incredible time. With the hold reeking of Cantonese tea, they sailed southward to Valparaiso, a Spanish port on the coast of Chile. There their captain obtained ship’s supplies and rested the crew for three whole days—the dangerous passage around Cape Horn was waiting, the captain said, and they needed all the rest they could get before battling those unmanageable seas.

Howling westerlies and pounding rollers came in off the Pacific as they struggled ’round the Horn. Those days were the most frightening Ravenna had known in all her years of being on the water, especially since she had no doubt whatsoever that their captain cared more about hurrying to cash in on his precious cargo than about any of his passengers or crew.

Both before and after the Horn, the ship never saw land for more than a day or two at most, but as they drew nearer to civilization, Ravenna realized that in passing up those ports, their captain had actually worked to her advantage.

Christian couldn’t marry her aboard ship.

Whenever they put in for the few supplies their captain judged they couldn’t do without, Christian was quick to hop into the jolly boat and inspect the port for its matrimonial suitability. Luckily, of the few harbors they’d encountered, he’d deemed them all uncivilized.

Until they reached Barbados, that is. There he promptly declared Bridgetown worthy of hosting their nuptials and he set about enforcing his threats by approaching James with the most wily of schemes: Respectfully and with as much modesty as he could muster, he asked James’s permission for her hand.

Rescuing Christian from the Spanish prison had been one thing. James allowing a marriage was entirely another. Ravenna expected his newfound tolerance to explode into a full-fledged murder, or at least a rekindling of the feud between the cousins.

This didn’t happen. James came to her on deck that first night and when she saw his face, she knew her last hope of escaping Christian’s threat had gone.

“He’s asked me, you know,” James said in a low voice.

She didn’t answer. Gazing out over the aquamarine water, she was thinking of Paul, of how stupid they’d been in believing his fate could be subverted somehow, that history could be cheated.
If only you’d made a will to protect us
, she thought bitterly.
If only we’d married so your son could inherit Swallowhill and give us a home, an income, an escape
.

“Should I even ask if you love him?” Seeing the way she stared at the sea, James touched her shoulder, turned her gently to face his question. “He’s keen to have me believe so, but I know you, Ravenna. You pity him, if anything. Your compassion is for that man inside him he’ll become in two centuries and I told him as much.”

“You told him about David?” She glanced up, scarcely believing he’d done such a thing. “I thought we agreed we wouldn’t talk about the future, or the potion we got in—”

“Don’t lie to me, Love.” James regarded her with solemn, raised brows. “He’s called you Ravenna, you know he has. I see how you keep your secrets with him. You didn’t tell
me
about Paul’s watch, did you?”

She bit her lip. She fixed her eyes determinedly on Bridgetown in the distance until James had turned away, his hand slipping pointedly from her shoulder. “If you confide in him so much,” he said, “maybe you do want to marry him after all. I’ll not stand in your way. More than I hate him, I love you, Ravenna, and I’d have you do as you wish with your life, so long as you go on living it.”

With this pronouncement, her fate was sealed.

They were married in a sugar plantation’s opulent seventeenth-century rooms. Apparently, even with the deplorable state of Christian’s clothes, the plantation owners had been impressed enough with his peerage to offer their house for the wedding. They’d even told Christian it’d be a great honor.

The moment they set eyes on Ravenna, they probably changed their minds. When she arrived in the nearly 80 degree heat, waddling in James’s extra large shirt and his breeches with the waistline let out to the seams, it became obvious why Lord Launceston would so adamantly wish for a private service—Ravenna was nearly eight months pregnant.

No one said a word about her condition. She was given use of the owners’ room, as well as a tub and a few of their toiletries. She hadn’t had a proper bath in quite literally years, and the idea of lounging in the tub while Christian waited impatiently downstairs was the only appealing aspect of the wedding.

She whiled away at least an hour, just watching the palm fronds sway outside the fancy sash windows. She tried not to think of Paul, but there was a heaviness to her thoughts, a mindless numb that constantly spoke his name no matter how she fought to shut it out. All she could do was lie there in the water, stifling the sound of her tears in a bath sheet as her last moments of spinsterhood ticked away.

By the time James came for her, she was a mess. The air was cool, yet she still sweated in her donated gown, her hand in James’s as thoughts of Paul drifted uneasily through her mind. He’d once joked that they’d marry on the island with Federal agents for witnesses, spend their honeymoon in prison for trespassing on government land, set up house in Las Vegas and wear gold lamé to the grocery store—had Paul come to his senses earlier, had he married her, instead of meeting Christian before the reverend as she was, she might now be Lord Killiney’s widow, long ago wedded in Tenerife or Cape Town. Had it been so, she’d have the Killiney title, castle and tenants’ rent and she’d certainly not have been marrying Christian.

But she wasn’t Paul’s widow. And being that she had no other choice, she allowed James to escort her into the drawing room where, waiting for her amid gilded furniture and tropical flowers, Christian stood fidgeting.

She expected him to be wallowing in self-satisfaction when she approached him willfully, took his arm. Yet he was anything but satisfied. She saw his eyes slide away in discomfort, toward the windows and the cane fields, toward anything other than the sight of her crying.

Because she was crying. She couldn’t help it. When the ceremony began and Christian was prompted to recite his vows, Ravenna was thankful James stood behind her; had he seen those tears trickling down her cheek, he would’ve stopped the entire proceedings, and what would Christian have threatened then?

She couldn’t risk it, so she promised to love, comfort, honor and obey. She found the strength to turn toward Christian, to speak those vows, but it was Paul’s summer sky eyes she saw. When Christian muttered some oath of fidelity, she heard the huskiness of Paul’s Dublin tone the way it’d sounded in the quiet of their cabin, felt the butter-soft touch of Paul’s hand in hers, remembered that moment when he’d knelt down before her, slipped the malachite ring from his finger and onto hers, saying,
Elizabeth, would you be my wife?

Thinking of it, fighting back tears, she realized the moment had arrived she’d dreaded. Christian stepped nearer. He slipped his fingers around her arm, and with his coltish features pinched in a wince, he finally dared to meet her eyes. Penitence, humility, these were the things she saw when he licked his lips and bent down close. Feeling the warmth of his sweet-smelling breath, she braced herself, certain that when she closed her eyes, she’d meet head on with a greedy kiss.