The Last Killiney (21 page)

Nevertheless, turning her around gently, he released her with a nod toward the servants’ stairs. “After you,” he whispered.

Chapter Fourteen

When Ravenna sat down at the foot of her bed, she thought Paul seemed different. There was relief in his countenance. The pain in his face, his anger over Fiona and getting back home, these things had been replaced by a tranquility of sorts, and yet Ravenna sensed it—he was still uneasy.

He hesitated before sitting down, carefully distancing himself so that even their clothes didn’t touch. “I’ve been thinking about our row,” he said, “about us being meant t’be here together.”

“Paul, I’m sorry.” And she really was, wished with all her heart she’d never said those things. “I shouldn’t have criticized Fiona or your marriage, or—”

“Yes you should have.” Rubbing at his neck, Paul gazed at the carpet, at the bedpost beside him before daring to continue. “And in fact you were right. I didn’t want to accept it, but you an’ me together, it’s just…God’s put us here for a reason, and the woman isn’t part of His plans, y’know?”

Ravenna bit her lip. “Maybe that
is
the reason. Maybe He put you here so you’d see how you really felt about your wife.”

“No, there’s something else,” he said, “something I have to tell you.”

Wearily, he let his hand slip from his neck, down to the coverlet beside her fingers. “When I first saw you,” he said, his thumb moving over the damask pattern, “you see, I was telling you a lie. I did remember you, and…an’ I knew I’d been in love with you.”

Ravenna didn’t move, didn’t dare believe what she’d just heard.

“I don’t know how I knew it, and I’m not saying I still am,” he went on, “but it’s there, rollin’ around in the back of m’mind. That’s why I danced with you, though I haven’t had a date in me life, why I took you round to Christ Church instead of going home. That’s why I’ve been so surly with you.”

Hearing those words, that he’d felt something even in Dublin, that he
loved her
…Ravenna nursed a shudder. When he leaned a little nearer, his eyes imbued with unwitting warmth, she found herself reaching for his hand, covering it with her own awkward caress. “The longer we’re here, the stronger the feeling gets, doesn’t it?”

“You know, it does? But that doesn’t change me having t’get back to Fiona.”

“What? But you just said—”

“I know what I said, but you see, whether I love my wife or not isn’t the issue now. I can’t just abandon her. She might still want a divorce, even from Killiney, and how do I know he’ll not keep it from her on general principles?”

“So you are going to divorce her?”

“I’m gonna go back and tell her I’m alive even if it takes four years, t’make sure she’s taken care of one way or the other. Beyond that, I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’m telling you, I’m not doin’ it here.”

Ravenna watched him carefully. She could tell he wasn’t angry, for he still hadn’t taken his hand away. “If you’re talking about marriage,” she said, “I’m sorry about what happened with James. I didn’t know he would force you like that.”

“But I knew he would. I knew it. He wasn’t going t’have it any other way, and if we’re gonna get on that ship of Vancouver’s, being engaged can’t hurt, now, can it?”

She glanced down at his hand in hers. “It might hurt you.”

Paul’s jaw stiffened. “It might,” he said, and raising their fingers clasped together, he kissed the back of Ravenna’s wrist. “But lookin’ at you, I’ll get used to it.”

* * *

When she saw Paul the next morning, she knew immediately his feelings hadn’t changed. There seemed something added, deeper and more stirring, when he looked at her across the breakfast table. The awareness of what he’d said hung in the air between them, and when he passed the butter, it was with an affable, lopsided grin that sent Ravenna’s heart skittering.

Staring at the hair on the backs of his hands and finding it inexplicably enticing, she was glad for the distraction when the servants came in to stoke the fire. They seemed to think the dining room was a strange place for breakfast. When Ravenna asked about it, Sarah was quick to explain how the bedroom was the more usual location for the morning meal. If they wanted to be correct, they should take their breakfast while the various servants came to receive their daily instructions.

Sarah then told Ravenna she’d been given orders of her own. James, still not out of bed, had charged Ravenna with fitting out the entire household in mourning black. Ravenna had no idea how to do this, but Sarah, having been informed by James of her mistress’s true identity, had already taken care of the assignment. Ravenna had only to see James in his bedroom and tell him as much.

So walking up the stairs and down the long, central passage, Ravenna called his name. She didn’t know where she might find him, but soon James responded with a muffled shout that led her into a dark-paneled bedroom where amid a wilderness of sheets and blankets, the new marquess lay sideways across his bed.

Wrapped in the length of a linen nightshirt, there was something of a smile on James’s lips when she came in. He invited her to pull up a chair, and as she did, Ravenna gazed at the tangles in his straight black hair, at his smoothly sculpted face which, against the white of the bed sheets around him, seemed impossibly dark.

“These are our father’s chambers,” James said, glancing around. “I couldn’t sleep in my own bed last night, thinking of what I’ve felt in these rooms. It seemed fitting to sleep here.”

“David thought so, too,” she said. When James seemed confused, she explained, “Your descendant, the twelfth marquess. He took this room when his father died, just the way you have.”

“And what year was this?”

“1991.” Ravenna leaned forward in her chair, put out her hand toward James cautiously. “I’m Ravenna, if Paul didn’t already tell you.”

“You mean in that drunken fit he was in the night before I left for London?” James’s smile broadened as he shook Ravenna’s hand. “Yes, he told me.”

“So you really do believe we’re not Elizabeth and Killiney?”

“As long as he marries you, if you both continue behaving as you have, him with warmth and you with intellect, I’ll believe anything.”

For a moment James gazed at her, and she found herself thinking of Killiney. That selfish tone she remembered from her vision, the pain of his insults…she couldn’t imagine Paul talking like that. “He wasn’t a very nice person, was he?”

“Killiney?” James shrugged. “Not reliably.”

“So you like Paul better?”

James hesitated before he answered. “Your Paul has a kindness and honesty about him which Killiney could only dream of. Would that I’d never met Killiney himself, there might seem no difference, but I know the man far too well.”

“They’re the same on the outside but not on the inside.”

“The same but for the accent, yes.”

“And what about my accent? Don’t I sound different?”

He tilted his head. “Now that I’m paying attention, yes.”

“That’s because I’m American.”

“And how is that? Didn’t you say your home was Nootka? It’s a Spanish possession, so shouldn’t you speak Spanish the way Paul does?”

“Things are different in 1991.”

James’s brow furrowed slightly; one could almost see the questions popping up in his head as he considered her statement carefully. “Then the Spanish will lose their claim on the land?”

“I don’t think I should tell you,” she answered.

Averting his eyes, James laughed to himself. “What could I do with such information? I’m not going to take over the world, you know.”

“I know.”

“So tell me.”

She shook her head. “Nope, I can’t. It just doesn’t seem like a smart idea, handing out history as if it were—”

“Ravenna,” and sitting up in bed, he leaned toward her, dipping his head slightly as he regarded her with a sobering expression, “if you really are from the future, there’s never been a better time to prove it, yes? With Vancouver’s voyage coming up, and with me leaving…”

Ravenna stifled her grin. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you might know things that could help my studies. What you take for granted in the everyday world could be very important to the Royal Society, not to mention Vancouver.”

He’s bartering with me
, she realized.
He’s going to get me on the voyage!

“For instance,” he went on, “let’s say we’ve entered Juan de Fuca’s Strait. Before us lies a dangerous passage, and Vancouver has ordered the yawl and crew ahead for soundings. The procedure’s slow, darkness is falling—”

“You’re asking if I’d let the ship run aground?”

“If you’d call this historical interference, then you’d best tell me now.”

“And what makes you think I’d know how deep the water is?”

“You’ve described the reefs of these North Pacific coasts. One only considers such things with experience, and although I expect it’s unreasonable to assume you have a memory to match mine, I’d hope you’d remember at least something of these waters you call your home.”

She raised a brow. “Something, yes, but I don’t think you know what you’re asking of me.”

“Do you think I’d lash you to the bow to shout directions to the helm?” Laughter sharpened his high, chiseled cheekbones. “No, if you’ll only tell us something of these waters in the appropriate moments of need, I’m sure Vancouver would find you invaluable, even if he needed your assistance only once. The fact that you know something of the native peoples I’ll write about for the Royal Society, that would unquestionably be of value to me.”

“You really believe I’m from the future, don’t you?”

“Wasn’t that your intention?”

“Yes, but it’s a lot to ask. Here I’m exactly like your sister and yet I’m planning the voyage with you. That must feel pretty strange, I’d think.”

James squinted ever so slightly. “No—,” and she felt his appraisal of her features, “—no, believe me when I say you’re nothing like Elizabeth. There’s a substance to you which she couldn’t even comprehend, let alone simulate.”

“But will Vancouver believe it? Can he be convinced, too?”

Turning to the commode beside his bed, James opened the top drawer, took out a sheet of cream-colored paper. “It’ll be difficult,” he said, putting the sheet before her, “but Vancouver will be forced to own as I have that the advantages of your presence far outweigh the chance we’ll be found out.”

“And how do we do that?”

James took out a bottle of ink and a pen. “Draw me some charts to put before the man. Mark down every last damnable thing that might be important to the voyage,” he said, “including soundings, if you remember as much.”

“I can only give you that for the waters around my island. Oh, and my parents’ house, too. And it won’t be exact.”

“These are places Vancouver will sail?”

She nodded, wondering how good her memory was.

“Then this will have to do.”

That was the last she saw of James’s good humor. On the following Monday, the marquess’s funeral was held in the church near the edge of the estate. When his father’s coffin was brought from London, a noticeable change came over James.

He conducted business as usual, but there was a dullness to his eyes, a flat quality to the way he answered questions. He didn’t really become himself again until the day of the funeral. On that cold January morning, he scared the daylights out of the gravediggers. He sent them away in a completely irrational fit of shouting, and his reasons for this remained a mystery, for no one had the courage to ask James why he dug his father’s grave himself.

Of course, nothing was said of Mrs. Armistead or the circumstances of the old marquess’s death, but Ravenna wondered if this played a part in James’s odd behavior.

When the funeral was over, he regained a little of his old character. He asked Ravenna dizzying amounts of geographical questions that evening. He kept her up until well after dawn, and when she told him there was no more, that she’d not taken enough geography classes and couldn’t remember another thing that would render her invaluable to Vancouver’s voyage, James took her impromptu charts and ordered his carriage.

Against her protests, he went out just as he was—clothes wrinkled, eyes narrowed. He was going to see Vancouver, he said, confide in him about Father’s affair with Fox’s lover and the way Ravenna’s prediction had come true. When Paul and her had gotten a night’s sleep, they were to go to Hallett House, their London residence, where James would meet them as soon as he could.

* * *

With James finally gone, Ravenna went to bed. She slept all day and into the night, recovering from the effects of his cross-examination. When she finally awoke, the rest of the household was already sleeping, everyone having been alerted to the fact they’d be going to London quite early.

With no one to talk to and nothing to pack (as Sarah had packed everything for her), her thoughts drifted right back to James and his behavior at the funeral. Why
had
he dug his father’s grave?

She could think of only one way to find out.

With the yellow glow of a candle to guide her, she crept down the passageway toward the marquess’s chambers.
James’s room now
, she thought,
and James’s desk, too, or had he left his father’s things intact?
Either way, she hoped to find answers in the unlocked, uppermost drawer. She set down her candlestick, pulled up a chair. With a certain, delicious thrill, she began to read through the papers there, hoping to learn something of James’s secrets.

Household accounts, receipts for lodgings, bills for beer, coal, and sugar filled the drawer. When she finally found the stash of letters, she was elated; in discovering an unfinished letter from the marquess to someone named Quinn, she fairly stamped her feet with excitement, for it said:

“You know, my friend, in matters of the fairer sex Lord Broughton is sticking to his guns, as they say. Would that he marry an empty-headed heiress, he might not suffer these difficulties. Instead, he fancies our sharp little maid, Sarah, with even greater distraction than two years ago, which you know forces my hand…”