The Last Killiney

by J. Jay Kamp

  Chapter Eighteen

  Then I’ll be yours. That’s what he’d said, hadn’t he?

  Ravenna wondered all during their coach ride to meet Vancouver at Falmouth Bay. Where she’d expected Paul to kiss her, to put his arm around her and trade affectionate glances the way a boyfriend would, instead she met with nothing; nothing save his usual, amiable charm.

  And there were hours and hours of that. Muddy roads and plenty of sheep made certain their journey to Cornwall was slow. Paul chattered convivially to while away the time, but for Ravenna, this was a torture made all the more unbearable by that grin he flashed, so disarming and suggestive, as he asked her about island living and getting paid to swim under boats.

  Of course, he said nothing about the night before.

  By the time they arrived at Falmouth, she’d given up worrying about it. It was dark, still trying to rain. She couldn’t see Discovery where it rocked at anchor, only pieces of it illuminated by lanterns on deck, but she was excited just the same as she followed James aboard ship, below decks. Down a dark and narrow ladder, through one chamber and then another, at last they emerged in the lamplight of the ship’s great cabin. There, squinting in the brightness from behind James’s shoulder, Ravenna strained to see a short, bald and most eloquent man.

  Eloquent because, at the sight of her, the man lifted himself from his chair with unimaginable poise. Ravenna wondered who he was, this gentleman who firmly took her hand and with all respect kissed it, but as his hooded eyes met hers, she realized he seemed completely familiarized with her presence—and yet he, too, stared.

  “You do not know me,” he said quietly.

  “No,” she agreed.

  All the men in the room had fallen silent.

  “Well, doubtless there will be much to learn in the months to come,” he said, glancing around at their submissive faces, “for all of us. Forgive me, my lady. I am George Vancouver, captain of this ship. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  In her wildest historical fantasies, she’d never pictured Vancouver like this. The man who had charted hundreds of miles of wilderness coast, who’d named great mountains and numberless harbors, the captain who had literally put the Pacific Northwest on the map, was all of about five-foot-two.

  He was also bald. Ravenna was later to learn he shaved his head, that he usually wore a wig, but meeting his deadly serious eye, she didn’t know these things. All she knew was that he looked nothing like the portrait she’d been shown as a child.

  Vancouver beckoned them to sit at the table with the other men, and as they fell to discussing the finer points of fate and destiny, Ravenna began to fade with exhaustion. She’d been awake nearly twenty hours since leaving the inn the night before, and now Vancouver’s cabin seemed a hallucination, a flashback to her youth when his name had been a family legacy. How many times as a young girl had she tried to picture this cabin around her? How often had she wished to have been a part of this moment?

  She was still reeling from lack of sleep when she went out on deck a few hours later. The weak, predawn light didn’t allow her to see much of the casting off, so she contented herself with the sounds of it. Orders were given for the fore and top sails to be unfurled. Officers passed commands between themselves in a procession of echoes. The topmen with laughter scrambled aloft, and when the gunshot sound of canvas catching the wind made Ravenna jump, she knew at last the voyage had begun.

  Soon the morning strengthened into a pearly haze, and Ravenna could just make out the accompanying ship, Chatham, following dutifully in their wake. Swaying on the rain-slicked deck, she was spellbound by the sight of their consort sailing against the whitening sky so that she hardly noticed when someone came up behind her and whispered quietly in her ear.

  “How I do so love a man in uniform.”

  Spinning around, she was greeted by a smirk.

  “Christian?” she gasped. “How did you…Who let you…”

  As her eyes searched the deck, hunting through the sailors, hoping for a glimpse of James or Paul, Christian appeared completely unconcerned. “Who are you looking for, Beloved? Your commander, perhaps? To issue the orders for our return to port?”

  “I don’t know how you got on board,” she said, “but when Vancouver finds out, he will turn the ship around.”

  “I’m sorry, Beloved, but he won’t.”

  “Stop calling me that! You have no business being here. You know I don’t want to see you anymore, that James will kill you if you so much as—”

  “Then he’ll face the Admiralty, won’t he?”

  Ravenna frowned, but Christian only seemed to relish her dismay. “Allow me to properly inform you of my position aboard this vessel,” he said, and with a flourish of his hand, he smiled broadly. “You see, I’ve been appointed assistant to Mr. Menzies, this complement’s naturalist, and as such I represent the interests of the Royal Society and its president.”

  “The Royal Society put you on this ship?”

  “As you’ll recall, Mr. Banks and I share a certain history as well as a number of unsavory, disreputable acquaintances whose identities, due to my limitless generosity, shall remain nameless.”

  “You mean you blackmailed him,” Ravenna muttered.

  “All perfectly legal, I assure you.” Regarding her with almost a sneer of sorts, he nodded toward the companion ladder. “Vancouver knows I’m here, Beloved. And neither he nor your mongrel brother can do the slightest thing about it.”

  “Christian, doesn’t it matter to you that I don’t want to see you? That I’m engaged to Killiney? Why do you go on chasing me?”

  “Why?” Taking a step closer, he touched her arm. “Because I love you, of course. Because I must be where you are.”

  Those slate-colored eyes welled up with honesty, filling her thoughts with another place, another man gazing at her just the same. Pure and untainted by ambition or desire, that voice contained the future David as surely as Ravenna lived and breathed, and still he was talking. “Now you must own that from experience, you know the manner of my courtship could best any suitor you might fancy, even more so the likes of these bestial sailors. Will it be so hard to endure my affections? For between the Paddy and I, you’ll suffer nothing so much as the result of our rivalry.”

  She found herself shaking her head, just staring at this apparition of David.

  “And of course,” he continued, “you know what the question will be. Who will win? Who will cultivate your fond endearments, your acquiescence and consenting passion? Who will survive the voyage to claim you in the end?”

  With the word survive, the spell was broken. Paul could die on this voyage. Christian was right, whatever his motivation for suggesting as much, and in the light of his unsuspecting comment, she worried for the first time she’d made the wrong decision in insisting Paul go.

  “Nobody’s claiming me,” she said in a low voice. “I’m not a possession, and if I were…” She pulled her arm out from under his grasp in a blatant move to assert herself, “If I were a possession, I’d be Killiney’s, wouldn’t I?”

  And feeling secure in her ability to deal with him, knowing she’d have to for the length of the voyage, she left Christian standing there. She went below decks, fervently hoping David’s history had been wrong.