The Last Killiney (32 page)

With effort, she fought the reeling in her brain. “Isn’t that what men want?”

“Not this one,” he said, lifting his eyes to look at her once more.
And where was the confidence, the devilry she’d known?
She saw only devotion. “Don’t get me wrong,” he went on, “shaggin’s great fun an’ all that, but em…bein’ in love is what it’s all about, yeah?”

Again she was struck by those breathtaking words. That he said them so easily after she’d spent months and months wondering, wishing, imagining that very phrase whispered in her ear, it was enough to make a shiver run through her. Empowered with the truth of it, she pushed back the hair from his eyes. She kissed his forehead. His skin was enticingly warm beneath her lips, and she let her mouth linger, drowning in the feel of his hands at her hips. “Say it again,” she mused. “Let me hear you say it again…”

Instead, his fingers slid up to her shoulders, pulling her, lowering her, until she found herself being guided down onto his lap. His arms encircled her comfortably. He gazed at her, soaking up her uneasiness with appreciative eyes, and leaning close until his nose just brushed her cheek, in an instant Ravenna was breathing his breath, feeling the distance between their lips like a keen, painful desert as he asked her teasingly, “You want to hear me say it again?”

“
Yes
,” she said, moving her hands up his shirt, over his throat to touch his face, his temples, the curious blond of his brow. “Tell me once more, I want to hear you say it.”

“You say it first.” And skimming his hand along her thigh, he finally closed the gap between them and led her into a succulent kiss. He grazed her lips with a tender pressure, opening her mouth, laughing a little as he moved his tongue in a velvety caress over hers. Tracing the inside of her lips until she responded with her own, he groaned when she sucked him in, tasting him, until her shaking intensified so much that she couldn’t sit still on his lap. She squirmed within his arms, trying to do as he wished, to meet his slow, drugging kiss and still make sense of the feelings that threatened her.

But as she curled her arms around his neck, he stopped and drew away. He pushed her hair tenderly behind her ear; he slipped his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her face to meet his. “I know you need t’go slow the first time. Maybe not even the first time. Maybe we could just mess around a bit, for both our sakes. Nothin’ grand and important, just something small.”

She swallowed hard and did her best to nod. His kiss still burned in her mouth with an insatiable sweetness, and she couldn’t stop herself from reaching up, tracing her finger along his lower lip to feel that softness once again. “What would we do?” she asked.

“Well, the cutter is comin’ for us in four days, is it?”

“On Saturday,” she said, looking down at the crucifix around his neck. Slipping her hands into his shirt, she took up the tiny cross, studied it carefully.

He glanced down at what she was doing. “Hey,” he said gently, catching her attention, “you know you haven’t done what I’ve asked you to.”

“I don’t…What did you ask me to do?”

Like a schoolboy muddling through his first crush, he faltered then. Anxiety flickered behind his eyes, and just the tone of his voice made her heart ache. “I was hopin’ you’d say it, that you, you know…”

“That I love you?” She saw the emotion sweep over his eyes in a shudder when she said this. Moved by the sight, she felt enabled by the power of it, that she could affect him so drastically with merely a spoken phrase, and leaning close to him again, she felt the butterfly touch of his lips against hers as she said it once more.

Longer than before, deeper, she kissed him as if she’d never get enough until at last he withdrew and whispered in her ear with a voice like melted butter. “Then you’ll call the shots.”

Chapter Twenty-One

For four nights they experimented on each other. The first she spent in his arms, listening to the auklets’ voices in the darkness as she learned exactly what sort of kisses made him moan with pleasure. She never did stop shaking that night.

By the second, she’d grown more accustomed to his caresses and she calmed somewhat, even become so bold as to run her fingers over the corded muscles of chest and down to the front of his linen trousers. Her curiosity was driving her crazy, but that second night she could do no more than feel him through the fabric, firm and waiting as her fingers traced the shape of him.

In the lamplight, she saw her every probing touch written in his face. With his eyes shut loosely, he turned his head away from her, and his body slowly and sensually writhed beneath her hand. She thought she was torturing him. Paul was quick to reassure her it was a torment he enjoyed, savoring every stage of it as he was. They’d only have this moment once, he said; he could easily wait for the final act.

By the third night, she was getting more comfortable with the whole thing. She’d explored the curves of his hips, the soft, wet recesses of his mouth. She’d showered him with kisses from the back of his sturdy neck all the way down his satiny chest, so that when his fingers moved from her breasts to the buttons of her shirt, she wasn’t alarmed.

He was laughing about something, Dillon’s endowments or some other silly thing, when she felt the cool night air against her skin. She didn’t even think about it then. She drew him closer as his hands slid over her, warming her, fondling her with a sleek caress until she found herself moving to meet his touch. He fell silent, and it was only a moment more when she felt the heat of his tongue across her nipples, the pleasant jolts of craving that shot through her body when he buried his face against her breasts.

Stroking her, holding her to him, at last Paul drew himself up and smothered her mouth with a penetrating kiss. “How’s that?” he asked, an impish grin on his handsome face.

She skimmed her fingers over the contours of that smile, taking in the endearing light of lust in his eyes. Then she slipped her hands in his hair. “Lower,” she murmured, pushing him down.

Soon she felt her trousers being undone, the trail of his chin down her belly as he covered her with wet and searing kisses. She lay back and shivered beneath his lips, and when he was finished, she would have done anything he asked.

But he didn’t ask. Gathering her up in his arms, he held her snugly for the rest of the night, whispering in her ear about his childhood in Dublin, about the life he’d led in the chill stone rooms of Swallowhill, about Aidan. Listening to him, Ravenna fell asleep and dreamed of those Dublin streets. Again and again she saw the seventeen-year-old face of the boy she’d known in Disneyland, his punkish haircut, his ungainly walk and those vulnerable, sensitive eyes.

* * *

By the fourth and last night, they were exhausted. They’d slept little in the course of their explorations, and in the daylight between those nights they’d spent all their time hard at work, fulfilling their promises to Vancouver.

Paul had told the captain he’d have a galley filled to the rafters with venison, but perhaps Paul’s penchant for boasting had gotten the best of him. Having grown up in the city, he’d never seen a deer outside of Phoenix Park. Even when he’d hunted with James in New Zealand, he’d had Mr. Manby’s superb sporting skills to help him out. Applied to the expensive double-barreled gun Manby owned, these talents had made the master’s mate responsible for most of the game they’d shot, not Paul.

Eventually Paul had to admit that either he was a lousier sportsman than he’d thought, or there were no deer on the island to be found—seals hauled out on every beach, but no deer. All they had to show for their efforts were clams, crabs, and crows. In the mornings, Ravenna dug the clams and dove off the island’s beaches for crabs while Paul shot the crows.

In between these chores, they managed to find time to look for woolly mammoth bones as Ravenna had hoped. She was ecstatic when she found a section of tusk, petrified and about two feet in length, high in the cliff behind the island. She lugged it back to their canvas tent, enshrined it with wild roses at the head of their bed. Paul didn’t understand, but he didn’t say so.

In the afternoons they spent the time fulfilling their other promise to Vancouver. They made sketches. Together, they sat on the bluff copying the features of the coastline, and while Paul made jokes about whatever came to mind, she documented the occasion by drawing his portrait.

“That’s me, is it?” he asked, leaning into her shoulder.

She nodded, and his mouth wrinkled in a smile. “Well I don’t think m’nose is
that
big,” he said.

“It’s not,” and she giggled, glanced down at his trousers, “but maybe I’m just showing what the rest of you is like. You know what they say, about men’s noses and their—”

“And their what?” He gazed at her expectantly, and she blushed just thinking about it—how that velvety-soft, rock-solid part of him had filled her hand with exquisite heat.

But Paul was shaking his head. “Sweetheart, you’ve barely seen mine, let alone anyone else’s.” And leaning close, he brushed her lips with a kiss. “Although I must admit, I’m flattered you think of me
as such
.”

* * *

That final night on the island, the air was balmy and breezeless. Paul built a fire, but he let it burn down as soon as their crow dinner had cooked. The evening was gorgeous anyway. They didn’t really need a fire. Besides, they had each other for warmth, although after a long day’s work ashore, Paul fell asleep before any real heat could be generated between them.

So it was that when morning came, Ravenna was shocked to hear the patter of rain above her head. When had the clouds rolled in? How had the temperature dropped so fast? She and Paul had slept in a tent, so getting drenched themselves wasn’t a problem, but what did disturb them was the fact that somehow, by some dreadful mistake, they’d left the roll of pictures outside.

She was certain she’d brought them in the night before. Paul swore he’d seen them propped against the seam of their tent in the lamplight. As his kisses had been so intoxicating, Ravenna was willing to admit that her recall might not have been the best that night, and yet the strange thing about it was this: They found that roll of watercolor sketches in the grass
behind
their canvas tent, just as if they’d been tossed aside.

Perhaps the wind
, Ravenna thought.

However the drawings had gotten there, she dreaded going back to
Discovery
when the cutter came at the appointed time. They had no deer, no eggs or ducks. To show for their excursion, they had only a couple of auklets, twelve crows, a bucket of clams and crabs, and a packet of badly streaked watercolor pictures.

She prayed Vancouver was in good spirits as the cutter approached
Discovery
and maneuvered alongside the ship’s hull. When she saw Vancouver near the fo’c’sle, Ravenna knew even Paul’s prayers couldn’t help. The captain’s coat was soaked from the storm; the rain ran down his nose; worst of all, the scowl twisting his face could have made even Captain Bligh run for cover. From this, she gathered that Vancouver’s day so far hadn’t been the best, and she elected right then to keep the drawings’ fate a secret.

So with the bucket of clams and crabs in hand, she clambered up the side. Paul followed with the drawings wrapped in the tent. The rest of their things, the pans and such, were kindly brought up by the sailors in the cutter, and when the last of these men slipped over the railing and placed her mammoth tusk on the deck, Ravenna got a good look at Vancouver’s scowl—a genuine frown by this time.
What have I done now?
she wondered.
Can’t I bring home a souvenir?

Fearful of another argument, she hid behind Paul, but it was Paul himself whom Vancouver addressed in striding across the rain-slicked deck. “Killiney, Sir,” he said, and although he hadn’t raised his voice, when the captain began peppering his salutations with “sirs,” everyone knew what was coming.

The sailors started to look at each other and shake their heads. James glanced at Paul warningly;
caution, my friend
, he seemed to say, but Paul never had the chance to speak.

“Lord Killiney, am I mistaken,” Vancouver asked, “or did I not issue you an order to procure venison for our larder?” The captain glared down at the deck beside Paul, at the mammoth tusk next to the pots and pans. He tapped it with his shoe. When this distracted Paul, Vancouver said calmly, “Answer the question, Sir. Didn’t I ask you to find meat for this ship?”

“I’d no idea there wasn’t a solitary deer on that—”

“Answer the question, my lord. All that’s required is a yes or no.”

The men lifting the cutter stopped what they were doing. All eyes were on Paul and from across the deck, Ravenna saw Mr. Puget meet his gaze, urge Paul with subtle gestures to concede.

“Yes,” Paul muttered, looking away.

“Then your orders were to supply this crew with venison?” Vancouver’s hooded eyes drilled into him. “Was that not why you were sent, my lord? With arms and supplies reserved for missions of import, to feed these men—these hardworking, tireless and loyal men who profess to be your friends?”

When grudgingly Paul nodded, Vancouver drew his foot back and kicked the mammoth tusk hard with his heel. “Then why do you bring me stones?” he asked. “Did you manage to acquire for these hungry men the slightest game to speak of?”

Paul hesitated. Then, feeling her moving behind him, he turned clumsily as Ravenna put the bags in his hand.

“My lord, I’m speaking to you, and I would have your—”

“Crows,” Paul said, and turning back to Vancouver’s impatience, he presented the bags resentfully. “I’ve twelve crows for you, some seabirds and some clams, as well.”

“Five days I give you, and you reward me with crows?”

“I’ve done the best I could, considering there’s not a deer on that shaggin’ island.”

“How dare you suggest so to me,” Vancouver snarled. “I rely upon you, Sir, to employ your judgment in turning to advantage the hours and location assigned to you and you bring me game such as Mr. Manby could provide in a single afternoon’s leave?”