The Last Killiney (34 page)

She crawled from her blankets. “What can I do? Should I bring the surgeon?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, and with that uncertain set to his mouth, she ached inside; she knew what it meant, that fearful expression, but before she could comfort him, he’d leaned into her, hunched over and swaying until his chin rested easily on her shoulder.

She held him as tightly as she could. She wanted so badly to reassure him, but she knew she couldn’t possibly ease the agony of those tracks. With the blood welling up and thickening in them, she wished she could murder Vancouver for all the senseless, stupid things he’d done, for beating Paul so needlessly.

Holding her in his arms, finally he straightened. He showed only minimal evidence of tears, but she knew; while he ran a hand through his tangled hair in a blatant try at indifference, he couldn’t hide that shine to his eyes.

“Guess I’m a bit of a baby,” he said. “Here you’ve almost died and all I can do is get the shite beat outta me.”

“I just passed out, that’s all,” she soothed, but as she lifted her fingers to touch his brow, she saw the casualness he pretended die away. He backed out of her hands, withdrew from her completely.

“You didn’t
just
anything,” he said to her darkly.

A moment or two passed in which she sat stunned by his refusal. She searched his eyes when finally he dared to raise them to hers, and she saw fear there—fear for her. He sniffed, wiped his cheek with the back of his wrist. As if he’d betrayed too much already, he turned away.

Wanting to eradicate his needless suffering, she edged closer. He tried to stop her, but still she managed to kiss his cheeks, his temples, the bridge of his nose.

Yet as her fingers massaged the back of his neck, he broke away from her advances. “You haven’t yet figured it out, have you?” He glared at her bitterly. “You think this is all some sort of coincidence, some New Age test for me t’learn from, yeah?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Ravenna, you almost drowned, do you know that? And just last night I was as close t’shaggin’ you as I’ve ever been.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “You feel responsible because we almost
made love?
That’s why you’ve waited so long to be with me? Because you thought God would kill me?”

“God takes away the people I love.”

“God hasn’t done anything,” she grumbled. “I’m the one who provoked Vancouver. I’m responsible if anyone is. And besides, don’t you think it’s pretty self-important of you to believe your love decides whether people live or die?”

Huddled in a mess of torn flesh and bruises, he shook his head. “I don’t expect you to understand. I’m just telling you the closer you an’ I get, the more likely something will happen t’one of us.”

“Then why are you here?” She challenged him, felt determined to expose him. “Did you come here to talk? To get your wounds doctored? Or maybe you just wanted me to mend your shirt—”

“Don’t be messin’ about with me.”

“Then tell me the truth. You came here so I’d hold you and promise everything’s gonna be OK…except you’re so terrified of death, you won’t even allow yourself that.”

“That’s right, because I’m not like you,” he said, meeting her gaze fiercely. “I’d rather you were living an’ not mine than dyin’ in my arms.”

“Well at least I’m not living in fear of what might happen. At least I haven’t wasted a whole year of our lives.”

Taking hold of her wrist sharply, Paul’s face colored with anger. “You can’t know what you’re saying, can you? You’ve never had someone stop breathing in your hands. You’ve never seen the life go out of someone’s eyes. I’ve seen it only this morning, and I’ll not go through it again, not with you, not after Aidan and m’mother an’ father, so you won’t mind if I don’t feel like shagging you this minute, yeah?”

The past shone in his eyes, tormenting him as he begged her to understand. “But you do,” she whispered. “You want to more than ever.”

With her gentle tone, finally he broke.

Letting go of her wrist, he kissed her. Harshly, feverishly, he searched her lips with a year’s worth of longing, a condemned desperation, as if he’d damned himself and her in the weakness of his need. In that kiss, she felt everything he’d suffered. His tongue moved achingly over hers. She took him deeper, dug her fingers into his hair until at last, with a roughness that betrayed his desire, he surrendered that final remnant of fear and backed her down to the cabin floor.

Sheltered by his brawny frame, she shivered with anticipation. His powerful shoulders loomed above her. His masculine hands slipped into her clothes. Tearing at the cotton, tugging her chemise over outstretched limbs, he was reckless, brutal in his haste…and still she urged him on.

He didn’t whisper. He said nothing at all in his Irish passion. Still, when he sank down between her thighs, he uttered a low, throaty groan of pleasure, and Ravenna dissolved. The feel of his open mouth, the fervor with which he pressed and stroked, it seemed too much, a bliss made all the more perfect by his forcefulness.
I’m yours
, she thought, carried by the hunger of his rhythmic suckling.
Whatever you want, whatever you need
…

Then abruptly, he stopped.

In the quiet of the cabin, she heard his husky growl. “God, you taste good.” His words were a brush of whiskers at her belly, a trailing caress all along her breasts. When he reached her lips, he kissed her tenderly. She didn’t know when he’d taken off his trousers, but as he lowered himself down, she felt the sudden heat of his skin, that soft rigid part of him she’d come to crave now tucked against her, tingling and warm.

“Do you want me, Sweetheart?” With the grim light of love shining in his eyes, he thrust himself a little closer. “Will you never leave me?”

Ravenna’s thoughts centered on that pulsating firmness. “Never,” she murmured, and dizzy with the feel of him, she slipped her hands around his buttocks. “Yes I want you. Please, Paul, don’t make me wait.”

Like an explosion he was, filling her with searing heat as he eased himself inside her. The thickness of him, the weight of him over her, these things made her pull him closer, and wrapping her legs around him, whispering his name again and again, she rocked to his movements until at last she heard his moan in her ear, like a velvet rush flooding everywhere.

She didn’t care what happened after that.

The light faded from the gunport beside them as he went on making love to her. The boards creaked beneath the weight of their movements, the men talked in the nearby cabin and Sarah’s sea-chest was in the way, but somehow nothing seemed so important as coaxing another kiss from him, shivering beneath still another caress. To be able to run her fingers over his hard, silky body, to feel the stubble of his cheek against hers as he murmured over and over that he loved her, that he needed her…these things for which she’d waited all her life were happening, and why should she care if anyone listened?

She only knew he was irrevocably hers when he wrapped his beaten body around her and whispered in the darkness, “Don’t ever leave me…”

* * *

Sometime during the night they crawled into her hammock. Once there, Paul draped himself around her, for his wounds, the slices cut into him by the nine-barbed cat, made it impossible for him to lie on his back. Even then, he slept in short, fitful spells. Ravenna felt sure he dreamt of Vancouver, although each time he awoke, Paul swore he’d dreamt nothing.

He didn’t lapse into a heavy sleep until just after dawn, and it must have been afternoon when they finally got up. Ravenna still ached from her own injury. Her head hadn’t entirely cleared, so it was only after dressing and moving slowly into the corridor that she realized there was an unnatural stillness about the ship; no sailor’s voices, no pounding of feet on the main deck, just the constant creaking of
Discovery’s
hull.

When James appeared in the corridor dimness, he gave her a start. “Christ,” she said, catching her breath. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he gazed past her, into her cabin, and in an instant she felt strong, tanned arms encircling her waist, the weight of Paul’s chin resting on her shoulder.

“Hey,” James said, nodding in greeting.

“Hey yourself,” Paul murmured, kissed Ravenna’s neck.

She found herself slightly embarrassed, especially when James averted his eyes.
Ask him something
. “Where is everybody?”

“Vancouver’s ordered a holiday ashore.”

Paul’s lips stilled. “Then we’re alone?”

“Puget’s in the crow’s nest—,” and for emphasis, James cast a glance toward the hatch, “—which reminds me, were I to be roaming about the ship without irons and in the company of my new rooming partner, I’d find time to thank the lieutenant, both of you. Eight hours spent in counsel with Vancouver on your behalf would warrant at least that.”

Paul’s frame tensed. “Vancouver’s letting us room together?” Releasing Ravenna, he stepped out from behind her. “He beats the bleedin’ life outta me for messin’ with her and then he lets us
room together?”

“I think he’s written us off,” James replied.

“So you’ve told him about yourself an’ Sarah?”

“Two men lost to wanton behavior is nothing compared to an entire crew. Puget made him see the wisdom in that.”

Ravenna frowned. “So now I’m wanton?”

“You know Vancouver thinks you unchaste.” James lowered his gaze, and she was made to wonder what
he
thought, shifting his feet uneasily like that.

But Paul went on. “So Vancouver’s only left Puget to watch us? That’s it? No marines?”

“Just Sarah. That’s enough.”

“And where’s Christian?” Harmless enough question, Ravenna thought, and yet when she saw James’s face, she was intrigued; a trace of guilt flashed deep in his eyes. “James, why do you look like that? Did Christian go ashore?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, he did.”

She regarded him even more carefully then. “What do you mean, ‘manner of speaking’?”

He only shook his head, refusing to answer.

“All right,” she said, taking a step toward him. “What did you do to him? You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

“He saw fit to endanger himself with no help of mine.” James paused, leaned heavily against the wall. “He deserted, Ravenna. Six days past.”

“Deserted? You mean he left the ship?”

“Tuesday the
Chatham’s
boat went missing with two able seamen and Christian with it. He bribed them, I’m quite sure, although why they left now I can’t imagine.”

She turned to Paul. “I know the reason.”

“We
are
the reason,” Paul agreed.

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now,” James said. “He chose his own course and we’ve no obligation whatsoever to disturb it.”

“You mean no one’s looking for him?” She glared at him, getting angrier by the minute. “You’re saying Vancouver’s declared a holiday and that’s the end of it?”

A smirk drifted into James’s expression. “There’s never been a better reason to celebrate.”

“But he’ll die out there!”

James only shrugged. “If he wants to come back, he’ll signal with a gunshot.”

“Does he have a gun to fire?”

“Why do you defend him? He’s trouble incarnate, you know he is.”

“But James, he’s our cousin. He’s part of our family. Does he really deserve to die just because we don’t like him?”

With a severity that surprised her, he took her by the shoulders then. “
Yes he does
. Family is a connection of title, of funds, not of love in his view, and believe me when I say that our future, our very lives, are protected with his death.”

And as if suddenly aware of his own threatening tone, James stepped back. “Forget about him,” he said, and nodding Paul’s way, he vanished into the corridor’s darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Two

What was it he’d told Ravenna? The closer you an’ I get, the more likely something will happen t’one of us.

Well, something had happened. Without being able to explain it, Paul knew the fellah wasn’t coming back. He sensed it in that moment when James walked away, for how else could Christian’s timing be interpreted? It’s too perfect, Paul thought. Here I’ve finally gotten it together with Ravenna, and now this guy’s gone missing?

Of course Paul was responsible, he saw that much.

The funny thing about it was Paul didn’t suffer. When a service was held for Christian two weeks later, when Mr. Orchard read from the Twenty-third Psalm and asked for a song to be played below decks, Paul felt OK with it. He really did. He began “Claire De Lune,” but he was thinking how Ravenna’s history books had claimed she’d been destined to marry, be abused and then widowed by Lord Launceston. Now how could she marry a fellah who’d died? Indeed, she couldn’t—and that was just the point. Christian had done much more than merely add himself to Paul’s list of funerals. Somehow he’d managed to mess things up.

History’s been subverted, Paul thought, and with an overwhelming sense of relief, like a torrent the notes rushed out of him as he threw himself into Debussy’s music. He played recklessly, joyfully, and by the time he’d finished and a speech had been made about Christian’s peerage, Paul was thinking just one thing: If Christian’s gotten it wrong and died, then maybe I can get it right and live.

* * *

Such was his state of mind in mid-July, when they arrived at what Ravenna called the Nimpkish River. Two months had passed. No longer worrying about death as much, Paul was really starting to enjoy the charting and exploring, the Alaska-like wilderness they saw all about them. When they approached the native village off of which Vancouver intended to anchor, Paul wasn’t nervous in the least. In fact he admired the painted house fronts, the forest rising up along the river’s banks. When the clouds moved in and the rain began, he didn’t care. Ravenna’s hand was in his; she leaned at his side with obvious affection, naming bights and points and passages so distant Paul could barely even see them, and soon he forgot the weather entirely, so fixated he was upon her tutorial.