The Last Killiney (8 page)

Not surprisingly, Killiney ignored her.

She waited until evening to confront him. In the very late hours she heard his music, and stealing downstairs, she meant to tell him of how the potion had arrived, for it had, just that night; it’d been brought in at supper whilst Killiney and James had been plotting and scheming.

Thus she stood against the music room wall, aching inside for the memory of his touch, when Killiney happened to glance up. His hands stilled at the keys. A mask of annoyance settled over his features. “Must you always be like a mouse, Lady Elizabeth?”

She wondered if she dared risk his anger, and yet, with his attention so shrewdly upon her, she’d no choice but to say something in reply. “I came to ask if James has given us his consent.”

Killiney’s eyes fell to the sheet music. “You assume I’ve asked for it.” As if he’d no thoughts for anything save music, he shuffled those pages attentively.

It took several seconds for his words to sink in. “So you’ve no intentions of marrying me?” She glared at him, letting the anger gather inside her. “You’d use me for…for bringing your precious angel and satisfying your base, bestial
stupid
needs as if I were your personal whore?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “No, I’ve treated you better than that. We were friends, you and I; Broughton need never have known as much.”

“So you did tell him? James knows about our intrigue?”

“Is that the word you use?” Taking up the notes again, he chuckled. “I’d say
sex
would be a more accurate term; or perhaps
copulation
, for the benefit of us both and in the interest of pleasure.”

Pleasure
. The word stung her ears, cut into her heart like a well-worn knife. Playing the lightest of melodies, Killiney appeared not to notice as much, but this only enraged her further. “Does it not take love to feel such pleasure?” she asked, edging closer to the piano. “Didn’t you say that you loved me, my lord?”

Touching the highest notes in a flutter, he played on. “I did not,” he said quietly. “That I would remember.”

She couldn’t bear it then. Between his hands and the keys, she threw herself toward him, found courage enough in her agony to force his fingers away from his music. “But I saw it!” she cried. “I saw love in your eyes, you can’t deny that?”

“You saw respect, my Mary. You shan’t see it again.”

“
Liar!”
she shouted, and with the kisses he’d stolen raging in her heart, she lost all control. She attacked him, clawed at his face, screamed curses as foul as she’d ever heard. “Damnable Hibernian rake, you
loved
me! Forget the ruins, for I’ll never give you that potion now, and to hell with your angel—”

Killiney’s hands stilled. His jaw set into a dangerous line. His eyes, the colour of winter frost, narrowed upon her, and in the midst of her yelling, whilst she pummeled his shoulders with fists of hatred, he slammed his own down hard on the piano.

“Enough!” he snarled. Before she could step back, he’d seized her arm. He yanked her around and pushed her down, toward the candles where they’d toppled. “You
will
gain me passage to my angel,” he said, holding her near the guttering flames. “We’ll go to the Swaneton ruins tomorrow and you’ll say nothing to your brother, do you understand?”

She nodded, frightened.

Yet even though he held her so brutally, his voice betraying nothing of the whispers they’d shared, Elizabeth couldn’t help rejoicing when she realised what he’d said.
He wanted the potion
.
He wanted her
. They’d make love tomorrow, and whether in the ruins, for his angel or for any other reason, it could mean just one thing—that he cared for her still.

Eventually Killiney relented. He let her go, and when she fell wearily against his chest, felt his heart pounding next to hers, she knew the way he’d threatened her, the candles burning close, even the pain in her twisted arm, all of these things meant little in the end.
There’s yet another chance
, she thought,
a second try to win him
.

Raising a hand to steady her trembling, Killiney spoke softly. “You’re a wild creature, my Mary.” With a gentleness that shocked her, he stroked back the length of her raven-black hair. “Were things not as they are, indeed I might come to love you in time. I might.”

Chapter Five

When at last Ravenna closed the diary, the fields outside had fallen into darkness. The house was quiet. Her head was spinning with the diary’s sadness, crowded with images of Killiney here, maybe in this very room—hadn’t he sat just there, his back to the door, when he’d talked about his precious angel?
Where will you take me, Wolvesfield House? Will you show me what happened to them after the diary? What became of Killiney and his arrogant ways?

Then it hit her, what the diary had said. Killiney had gone on Vancouver’s voyage. George Vancouver. The famous captain, that great navigator after whom the city in British Columbia had been named, he had stayed
here
, in this house.

She’d met George Vancouver in her past life
.

This was a big deal to Ravenna. How many times had she pictured this man? His eighteenth-century naval uniform, his tall ships at anchor near her island home? Back when those headlands had been undisturbed by vacation homes, Vancouver had been the first European to chart Puget Sound and all the waterways of the Pacific Northwest. Now Ravenna was to learn that when Vancouver had named Mount Rainier, Port Townsend, and countless other features of the Washington landscape—even her own island—she’d been on friendly terms with the man?

She could have wrestled with such a coincidence for hours, wanting to accept it, skeptical nonetheless, but she had little time to consider. Hearing David’s voice in the hallway, she had to put down the diary and go off to greet him.

* * *

She felt a little awkward about joining him for dinner. Not because it was in his private apartments—which, perhaps, she should have at least paused over—but rather because of the books he brought to the table with him. The man was indeed obsessed. As Ravenna was served a French-looking appetizer from the hotel’s kitchen, David propped up a country house volume beside his plate; he picked up a fork, and without eating a single bite, he began to read. Out loud.

It was something about his ancestors, a man named Christopher whose marriage to a commoner was the source of many rumors. Ravenna listened…a little. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning. The French-looking appetizer was calling her name, and as she dug into it greedily, she didn’t care much about Christopher Hallett.

“So Killiney,” she said, breaking into David’s recitation, “he went on Vancouver’s voyage, right? In 1791?”

“He died on that voyage, yes.”

Ravenna stopped chewing. “He died on Vancouver’s voyage?”

“Somewhere.” Peering down at the illustrations, David added mysteriously, “Maybe James will tell us where.”

She squished her brows. “What do you mean?”

“James had a safe. It’s in the library under the wallpaper. You never know what you’ll find when you de-Victorianize a five-hundred-year-old house, do you?”

“And you haven’t opened it? The safe, I mean?”

“We’ve only just found it. I’ve got a specialist in antique locks coming next month. Seems we can’t get it open without breaking the thing, so no, we haven’t opened it yet.”

Ravenna imagined the contents of that safe. Indian artifacts, rare jewels, maybe even the most valuable of treasures, historic information. “You think James wrote about Killiney’s death?”

“Look,” David said, and he flattened the book firmly, “let me just read this before I answer any more questions, all right? It says ‘Augustus James, Lord Broughton (later fourth Marquess Wolvesfield) was also known for his association with the explorer, George Vancouver. When James accompanied this famous captain to the North Pacific in 1791—’”

“So this is about Killiney’s death?”

“Just listen,” David said. “‘Vancouver planned to find the legendary Northwest Passage. No doubt James found this prospect attractive, given his interest in the Royal Society; participating in Vancouver’s voyage would virtually guarantee him fellowship. Indeed, James left behind title and privilege to pursue these interests, for his father died just prior to the expedition’s departure in what would become known as the Armistead Affair—’”

“Right, Armistead,” Ravenna said impatiently, “but can’t you skip to the part where it talks about Killiney?”

David shot her an irritated glance. “If you’re going to be that way,” he said, and turning the page in such a fashion she knew she’d upset him, he began again. “‘Lord Killiney of Swallowhill, Dublin, also accompanied Vancouver’s voyage. Although his seafaring experience was, like James’s, limited to touring…’”

David paused, skimming ahead in the book, and Ravenna found herself asking again, “What about his death? Does it say anything about how he died?”

“‘Like the sketches he’d made for Vancouver’s journals, Lord Killiney, too, did not survive. While
Discovery
awaited the return of the
Chatham
, Vancouver paid a visit to the local Indian village. As Vancouver’s hosts were in every appearance friendly, the captain observed no special precautions in sending Killiney on a hunting excursion following the course of a nearby river. There he and James were ambushed by an Indian group.’”

“He was killed by Native Americans?”

David shook his head. “Native Canadians. It says, ‘So it was that while Vancouver partook of the natives’ hospitality only a few miles away, Lord Killiney was shot dead. His body was taken into the forest, never to be recovered. And while James escaped to the
Discovery
with his life, he did not remain there. He set out on foot for the Spanish fort at Nootka Sound—’”

“So they were on Vancouver Island?”

“Somewhere,” David said, “but here’s where it talks about you. It reads, ‘James was accompanied on this journey to Nootka by his elder sister, and indeed, nothing about Lord Killiney would seem half so important without understanding his relationship to her. Elizabeth and Killiney were engaged to be married. It was widely known that James’s sister accompanied the voyage to be with her fiancé, and even conceived of a son shortly before Killiney’s demise.’”

“
A son?”
She couldn’t help interrupting him again. “We had a baby? Killiney and Elizabeth had a child?”

“It’s more complicated than it sounds. It says, ‘A fourth character must be added at this point, for it was never made clear who had fathered this child, Killiney or the rakish Earl of Launceston, for he, too, took part in the expedition. Launceston was known to have escorted Elizabeth from Nootka Sound to the Leeward Islands where, in late 1792, he asked for her hand. She’d barely been Launceston’s wife for two months before bearing him an heir, a son named Elijah Paul.

“‘This child was probably Killiney’s, or at least Launceston seemed to think as much if one should judge from his letters. And although Killiney’s seat at Swallowhill devolved upon a niece whose husband adopted the name of Henley, his viscountcy became extinct.

“‘Lord Launceston was not to last much longer,’” David said, and Ravenna leaned over her plate intently. “‘Elizabeth’s son succeeded to the earldom at the tender age of two months when Launceston, having gained a reputation for debt and debauchery, was challenged to a duel and—’”

“Killed, right?” Ravenna frowned dismally. “But the book doesn’t say who won the duel? Nobody knows?”

“‘Local legend claims it was Killiney’s ghost. Other sources tell of Elizabeth cherishing the memory of Killiney far more than her roguish husband, driving Launceston mad with jealousy and so inviting an unnamed protector to defend Elizabeth from his abuse.

“‘Whichever the real story, what is certain is how Lord Launceston died. He bled to death. The seventeenth-century rapier reputed to have delivered the fatal wound now hangs on the wall at Wolvesfield House, the identity of its owner having never been determined.’”

David snapped the book shut. “And the rest just goes on about James’s travels in Honduras,” he said, stretching his arms, “but that’s all there is about Elizabeth and Killiney. Christian, on the other hand—”

But Ravenna wasn’t listening. Her host chattered on about Christian’s picture in the National Gallery, about the shortness of Christian’s life, and all the while Ravenna let her thoughts wander. There was something here that begged to be noticed. It was the way David punctuated his sentences with heavy, swift gestures and stabs of his fork, the comfortable sprawl he displayed at the dinner table. As he went on talking, it persisted, this something, unnerving and familiar, coursing through her attention until she couldn’t hear what he was saying anymore, only how he was saying it: “We
gave
the National Gallery that painting, so why did they take it upon themselves to decide what year it was painted? And Christian, he wasn’t a furniture maker. I don’t know where…”

His voice
, that’s what it was. Laced with complaining and subtle anger, it stirred something in her. She found herself welcoming it, calling it forth. Suddenly she had the strangest impression—that a transparent photograph had been laid over David, his own picture, a portrait of him dressed in eighteenth-century clothes. It slipped over his features with ease, not quite matching, almost aligning, until finally he looked up and the full strength of his soul pierced her like a knife.

The picture aligned itself perfectly then. Seeing his blond hair dusted with powder, his gray eyes sharp with insatiable need, she realized they were Christian’s eyes,
Christian begging her not to forsake him when all the world pressed him to be something he could not
.

She gasped softly. Was her mind playing tricks on her? Her cousin Alia had said people reincarnated in groups, but had the diary and her imagination gotten the better of her senses?