The Last Killiney (3 page)

It’d only gotten worse when she’d reached England, when she’d found that painting Alia had mentioned.

Hanging in one of the many alcoves of the National Gallery, it had been a life-sized double portrait by John Singleton Copley that had stopped Ravenna dead in her tracks. Like many of its time, it featured a couple in fancy dress walking their dog. Never mind that the woman looked exactly like Ravenna; no, that wasn’t even the most disturbing thing about the picture. It was the husband in the portrait who had jarred her heart most. Just the sight of him had brought out an irrational response, a terrible sadness defying explanation. She’d felt friendship and loathing for him, each emotion as strong as the other. This was not the boy from Disneyland. This was not the Irishman. This new man, with his elegant, careful pose, was someone Ravenna had pitied, not loved.

Resonance, that’s the best way to describe it. It’d been as if there were a bridge between paint and flesh, a portal between that life and this one. Ravenna ached with misery as she read the picture’s title. “
Lord and Lady Launceston
, or ‘
The Evening Walk
,’ 1788. Wedding portrait of William and Elizabeth Hallett, donated by the Hallett family of Wolvesfield, Devon, 1840.”

This was all she’d needed. She’d rented a car, studied a county map of Devonshire. Tourist destinations were clearly marked. Castles and historic homes were indicated by symbols, and beside one of these, on the coast near the town of Dartmouth, she’d found the words
Wolvesfield Country House Hotel
.

The check-in incident had followed shortly thereafter.

Now, shivering with the image of her Irishman, she rose from the bed, eyes fixed in bleary disbelief as she looked around at the Georgian furnishings, the mellow gray walls and plaster decoration of her hotel room. A ribband-back chair stood in the corner. A copy of
The Blue Boy
hung over the bed. It seemed a world away from her island, the comfortable cabin on her little boat, and yet she felt so…Running her finger along the white marble mantel, she shuddered.

It’s this house.

Grabbing her room key, she went downstairs. Guests milled in the hotel corridor, but she avoided their stares as she rushed through the midst of them, intent on only one destination.

When she got to the music room door, she stopped.

What had her life been like before? Those twenty-seven years she’d spent on the water, the beaches she’d walked, the resident killer whales she’d known by name, every shred of it slipped away when she saw the piano.
His
piano.

What the hell was happening to her?
Staggering forward, she squeezed her eyes shut. She tried in vain to retain her identity, her sense of surroundings, but a dizzy melancholy gained momentum in her thoughts as the feel of this room, the smell of it, rapidly flooded her consciousness and drowned out everything she’d known before.

Hadn’t she stood at this very window?
Grief consumed her. He was never coming back. She’d never hear his satin voice, feel the dampness in his russet-colored hair nor see that wonderful, lumbering gait of his through these halls, never again. She heard the wind move over the fields. She felt its draft coming through where it could. Lifting the sash window, letting in the storm, she wrapped her arms about herself and repeated his name like an incantation
. Love you,
she thought
. I’ll do my best, but I’ll never love anyone the way I loved you.

Tears filled her eyes when finally she focused on the woman beside her.

“Miss Evans?” The woman smiled, and Ravenna recognized the check-in clerk. “Are you all right, Miss Evans? Can I get you anything?”

Ravenna was shaking uncontrollably now. Her knees felt weak. She reached for the piano, turned away from the woman’s stare, for how could she speak? Words seemed impossible when all she could think of was living without him, drowning,
dying
.

When the clerk disappeared in the direction of the front desk, Ravenna sat down. With her back to the wall, she mashed her face in her trembling palms and tried to determine what she’d just been through. Was she losing her mind? Making sense of these spontaneous images, insulted by the Irishman in one scene and in terrible grief over him in the next, was becoming more difficult with each passing moment.
Had
he loved her? If he’d hurt her so bitterly, why would she mourn him?

Maybe I ought to rest for a while
, she cautioned herself.
Take a nap. Have some chamomile tea
.

Then she became aware of a presence. Someone was approaching her again, probably the clerk coming back, and she wondered, how many people would offer to help her?

Yet before she could decide whether to look up or not, she heard a gentle, hesitant voice. “Miss Evans?”

She jumped at the sound. There’d been nothing threatening about it, and yet she’d started at the young man’s proximity: He was crouched right at her outstretched feet and she hadn’t even noticed him there.

Get a hold of yourself, Ravenna.
“No,” she said, feeling ridiculous in front of this stranger. “I mean, yes, I’m Ravenna Evans. I was just…” What
was
she doing? And why had the clerk given out her name?

Wiping her eyes, she tried to stand, for surely she shouldn’t be leaning against the antique wallpaper. But the young man put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re upset,” he said gently, and he looked at her with such a warmth and concern, she forgot her grief. “Please, stay where you are. Relax for a moment. I’ll find a glass of water for you, all right?”

Embarrassed, she nodded. Still the young man didn’t leave. His gray eyes wandered over her face. His fingers at her shoulder tightened reassuringly, calming her, lulling her, making her thoughts drift ever so slightly, until at last it dawned on her what was going on.

He was staring at her.

As if she were an apparition, a movie star, a girlfriend he hadn’t seen in years—this was the way he looked at her.

She saw nothing unusual about him. Dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, he wore no tie and there was no particular order to the layered mess of his dusky blond hair. He had a thickset, effeminate face, and almond-shaped eyes the color of slate. He was trim and attractive in a comfortable sort of way, but no matter how much he tried to disguise the fact, he was obviously not comfortable with her.

She began to fidget under such attention. Pushing the hair back from her eyes, she took a deep breath, shifted her feet whilst his gaze moved over her face, her earrings, the Celtic cross around her neck.

Finally the man collected himself, stood up from his crouching position. “Will you stay, Miss Evans?” Straightening, he turned toward the door with the promise, “I’ll be back in two moments with something cold.”

Only then did she realize it.
He was the marquess.
He was the owner of Wolvesfield Hotel. It’d taken a moment for his features to register, but she recognized him from the photo displayed at the check-in desk.

“Wait,” she called after him, getting to her feet.
Maybe she shouldn’t be alone in this room, because what sort of delusion would come over her next?
“I’m fine,” she said, brushing off her jeans. “I just need a change of scenery, that’s all. Would you…would you mind?”

She nodded toward the door, and the marquess broke into a friendly smile. He held out his hand. “Would my office do?”

Chapter Two

Dalkey, Co. Dublin, 1991

Paul was dreaming. Stretched out on the sofa, in his mind he was exactly where he didn’t want to be—in Belfast, in 1976 and on that same street in the Republican Markets section of town. Aidan was beside him, bundled in a duffle coat.

“Are you goin’ in or not?” Aidan asked, nodding impatiently toward the music shop door.

Paul stared at his friend, in wonder at the sight of his clean-cut looks, his familiar face, even that mohair jumper he’d borrowed so many times before.
You’re alive.
“Yeah,” Paul said in the dream, “but, em, give me the money fer the cigarettes first.”

Aidan scowled.

Paul knew he shouldn’t have asked for that money, not because Aidan disapproved of smoking, but rather because of what Paul intended the cigs for—clocking girls, looking cool. Aidan hated poseurs. Still he turned over the money to Paul, shook his head with an obvious frown. “You don’t even know how t’smoke the bloody things.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Paul said. “Look, I’ll only be a moment. See if they’ve got a recording of that Mendelssohn song you were playin’ the other day.”

“The concerto?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” and stepping into the traffic, Paul hardly glanced back as he crossed the street for the public house.

He should have glanced back. In the dream, he might have, catching one last glimpse of Aidan’s expression, that mop of blond hair, even his brusque way of walking which belied Aidan’s natural inclination for shyness…but he didn’t. Feeling the dread building in his heart, Paul wrestled with himself there on the sofa. He tried to wake himself out of the dream.
Turn around
, he thought,
bloody hell go after him, don’t let him go in that record shop alone
.

But Paul didn’t turn around. Just as he had on that fateful afternoon, he went in the pub, asked for the cigs. He picked up his change, and in the midst of it, in that horrible moment when the explosion went off, Paul’s sixteen-year-old ears filled with the sounds—the bomb blast roar, the shop fronts shattering, metal shards and pavement raining down.

With a jump, he woke up. His drawing room, still littered with textbooks and newspapers, was quiet, cold. No army units. No bombs.

No Aidan
, he thought, rubbing his eyes.

Forcing himself to sit up, he focused his attention on the view of Bray Head outside his window. He tried to numb his thoughts, but each time he did, image after image coursed through his mind—Aidan on the beach, Aidan cooking mint potatoes at two in the morning. As Paul fought the pain, he told himself wearily,
Don’t start this. Don’t even go there or you’ll be bashing your head through the walls again, won’t you?

Putting everyone through that a second time wouldn’t win points with the lads, he knew. The gardaí coming, Trevor explaining his fit to the barman and the woman being called to fetch him home…what would Paul do this year, he wondered? Pick a fight and get himself killed? How best to celebrate the anniversary of Aidan’s death?

* * *

When eventually the key turned in the lock downstairs, Paul paused in his brooding.

Fiona
, he thought in a rush of heartache.

With his back to the door, he listened as his wife came up the steps, set her books down, fished through her purse for the crinkling of her cigarettes. Paul didn’t dare turn around to greet her. What good would it do? If he could get her in his arms again, tell her about his dream of Aidan and all those feelings he kept inside, then maybe, maybe it would mend his soul.

But he wouldn’t get her back.
I’ve a better chance of winning the pools.

Staring out at Killiney Bay, he waited until he saw drifting smoke before he even bothered with looking up. At the sight of Fiona, he wished he hadn’t. Her hair was mussed. Her lipstick was smudged.
Figures
, he thought, for her blouse—the one he’d always hated—was misbuttoned near the top; the scalloped edge of her fancy bra showed all too plainly, and as she held out her cigarette with cold fingers and even colder eyes, he felt the rage kindling inside him.

He took the smoke from her anyway. He inhaled it as deeply as he thought he could stand.

“It’s not ’til tomorrow, is it?” she asked.

With the burning in his lungs almost as painful as her voice, he nodded, handed back the cigarette. “Yeah, tomorrow.”
As if she’d care
.

She started to walk away.

“But em,” and getting to his feet, he caught her eye, “Fiona, I was thinkin’ maybe, maybe this year you could come down to the pub with me. Trevor an’ Deirdre will be there as well. Maybe you an’ Deirdre could find something to talk about, y’know, politics or film?”

She shook her head. “You’re not going to the pub this year.”

Paul stopped in front of her. With the curls in her blonde hair and the lipstick she wore, he knew why she’d dolled herself up for the night.
Not for me. I’m just the fellah who pays her bills, aren’t I? I’m only the fellah who’d give his life t’make her happy, not the guy she’s been shaggin’, the one who’s waitin’ outside in the car.

Feeling that anger welling up again, he lifted his hand, touched the place where her buttons didn’t match. “I’m
going
to the pub.”

For a fraction of a second, turmoil flared in her light blue eyes. Her mouth opened the slightest bit, and even though he loathed the way he needed her, still he found himself wanting to kiss her with all the hurt he felt inside.

He never got the chance.

“Fine, then,” she said, pushing him away. “But don’t be thinkin’ I’ll feel sorry fer ya. I won’t, Paul Henley. Not when the gardaí come, and not when you’re ringing me up from a holding cell.”

And just so he understood, she reached for her purse, took out her cell phone and tossed it on the table. All too keenly he felt her contempt. She held him responsible for the way she had to lecture him, to look after him.
I am responsible,
he thought dismally.

“So you’re going out?” As if he hoped she would, that’s how it sounded, and hastily he touched her arm. “I mean, you’ve got your hair all curled an’ that, I thought maybe you were meeting him tonight, since—”

“Yes, I’m meeting him.” She closed up her purse. “And if you’re not gonna top yourself ’til tomorrow, I can go, can’t I? I don’t see any point in stayin’ here.”

She turned toward the door, and Paul felt a jolt of fear go through him, so strong he couldn’t bring himself to release her arm. “Fiona, wait—”