The Last Killiney

by J. Jay Kamp

  * * *

  That afternoon, Paul set up their tent at the easternmost end of Ravenna’s island, close to the beach where her house had been. While she dug into their supplies for dinner, Paul spent the evening with his shirt off, chopping driftwood, splitting it into manageable pieces, hauling it up from the beach to their tent.

  When he’d finished, he put his shirt back on and took the plate Ravenna gave him. No kisses. No meaningful glances full of longing and need, just “Thank you, Honey” and “Not biscuit again?”

  Because of this, she’d fallen into a sullen mood. Sitting before the fire with his back to the beach, Paul seemed a thousand times more attractive than he’d ever seemed before, and yet it hurt Ravenna to look at him. For all his advances, his lustful attention and wandering hands on deck that morning, he showed no such interest now. Instead, he was serene. He gazed at the fire for minutes on end. Though his words for her were soft, they lacked the note of invitation that had earlier been so blatant in his every glance, every brush of his muscular body against hers.

  So she got up and went to her knapsack. She hunted through her things until she’d found a comb and a pair of scissors. Where he sat with his legs stretched out, Paul kept pushing the hair from his eyes; it was too long, he’d said. Though Ravenna had seen him toss it back a million times in the course of the voyage, now alone with him, wondering if his feelings had changed, the sight of this gesture sent a current of need through her body that she couldn’t explain. He seemed so dejected, his eyes so distant beneath that mane. She had to do something. She couldn’t just watch him for four more days.

  “Hey, you,” she said. “If you want me to cut your hair, we’d better do it now before it gets dark.”

  “You’re going to cut it all off, aren’t you?” Agreeable he was, without a hint of reluctance. He pulled himself up from the ground and, taking a seat on a nearby log, he fixed her with a stern look. “You know if you cut it too short, the lads’ll be teasin’ me for months.”

  “Well, we’re only a few hundred miles from Nootka,” she said, starting in on the mess of his locks. “You won’t have to put up with them for long.” Mindful of the way her fingers brushed his neck, she combed through his hair, thoughts reckless with trying to figure him out. He’s not angry, she told herself. So will he revert to his former charm? Sweep me into his arms now that I’m near?

  He merely sat tranquilly under her hands, moving only to look up now and again. “This has been a really short year, hasn’t it?”

  Ravenna wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Still, when he reached up to take a lock of her hair, she had to pay attention. He caressed the strand gently between his fingers. He lifted it to the fading light, and when the back of his hand brushed against her breast, Ravenna found herself leaning into his touch, barely listening as he spoke to her. “Your hair’s even longer than mine,” he said. “Guess when you’re workin’ an’ that, you don’t notice the time.”

  “You must be the hardest working man on the ship.”

  He caught her eye with a quizzical expression. “Are you trying t’tell me something?”

  She pulled the comb through a difficult tangle and moved around to stand beside him. “Well,” she said, setting the comb down and picking up the scissors, “I’ve got James who takes better care of me than he does his own girlfriend. I’ve got Christian whose hands always stray to my rear whenever you’re not looking, and I’ve got a boat full of sailors who give me visual invitations on a daily basis in the hopes I’ll finally give up on you.”

  There was a moment’s pause before Paul answered. “I’d no idea,” he said to her softly.

  She tilted his chin in an effort to keep her work straight. He hadn’t shaved in two or three days. In her fingers, his jaw was rough and wonderfully, complaisantly supple, but she tried not to think about how tempting it felt, touching him in such a familiar fashion. He’d no idea? She didn’t believe that, not even for a second.

  And many of those passed as she set to work in earnest, pulling the length of his hair taut, hacking it off at collar level. It fluttered over her hands in the breeze and fell away, victim of her doubts and misgivings. He’s changed his mind. He’s trying to find a way to get out of this gracefully. Bringing the length up short to his neck, evening up the ends, when finally she spoke, she couldn’t keep herself from raising the real issue. “So if you didn’t see everybody making passes at me, what have you been thinking about? Fiona I suppose?”

  Paul glanced up with serious eyes. “You know better.”

  “Do I?”

  “You don’t honestly believe we’ve not made love because of the woman?”

  “Do you want me to layer the top?” she asked, ignoring his tone. “Or do you want to leave it all one length?”

  “Layer it, I guess; answer the question.”

  She moved around to the front of him, and here she did her best to give his hair some twentieth-century shape. She cut his bangs long, below his pale brows. She layered the rest so it pushed back in a sloppy wave from his face, but all the while she was thinking about that long ago day, that one moment in Dublin when she’d seen Fiona with her own eyes.

  Paul gazed at her steadily as she worked. His attention was unnerving, waiting as he was for her to answer.

  “How should I know what goes on in your head?” she said at last. “If it’s not Fiona, then what is it? Why have we been together all this time and still nothing’s happened?”

  “You’re telling me you’ve been wantin’ to get it done with a hundred and thirty-one randy men constantly within earshot?”

  She pushed back the layers of his russet hair, arranged it tousled this way or that. He looked so much better with it short, as if cutting away the length revealed the essence of the man beneath. He’s beautiful, she thought, ruggedly gorgeous, and still he wasn’t hers, wasn’t beckoning her the way she’d always imagined, undressing her with strong and possessive hands.

  “We could at least kiss or something,” she said. “James and Sarah kiss, I know they do, and Christian says they—”

  Her fingers stopped in midstroke behind his ear. He was staring at her, and what she saw in his face made her heart turn over. Arresting, translucent, his eyes were wells of fathomless emotion. It was as if she’d awakened him, as if he’d been terribly hurt by something she’d said. His brows were tilted in a frown, and his lips, opened the smallest bit, seemed poised to speak, but he didn’t. Or couldn’t.

  A wave of anxiety swept through her. “What is it?” she asked, and knowing by the needfulness and trust in his gaze that he wanted it, craved it, she smoothed back his ruffled hair. She let her hand stray behind his neck, and still Paul said nothing.

  Then suddenly he moved, and Ravenna gasped when he leaned into her arm, rubbed his face all along her wrist and down into her open palm. His bangs fell across his furrowed brow. She felt the silver of his sailor’s earring against her fingertips, the firmness of his jaw, the brush of his lips as he closed his eyes tight, and while she stood there holding him, she saw complete abandonment in his expression. It frightened her. Or more correctly, it frightened her that she didn’t know what she’d done to bring about such a penitent reaction. He was submissive in every imaginable way as he waited, clasping her hand to his face, until she couldn’t remember when she hadn’t seen him so, couldn’t remember his flirtatiousness, his silliness of months past.

  “Paul?” she asked softly.

  “You smell good,” he whispered, his lips parted against her skin.

  “What’s wrong with you tonight? What did I say?”

  Slowly, with the reluctance of a child, he withdrew. He let go her hand. “You said we should kiss,” he murmured, and when he raised his eyes to hers, Ravenna saw pain in them, even as he tried to smile. “It’s just that,” and he paused, gathering his words, “It’s that I hadn’t really realized how it would hit me when the time actually came.”

  “The time for what?”

  There was
a mist to his eyes when he answered. “For us to make love. For me to ruin the very thing I love about you.”

  She wouldn’t have believed him if it weren’t for his deathly serious face. He looked away from her. He lifted his hand to the back of his neck, and she knew he wasn’t joking then; he reached behind his ear in a completely unconscious, anxious reaction, the way he always did when he was nervous.

  Closing her fingers around his, she gently removed his hand. “You’re not going to ruin me.”

  “Things will never be the same again,” he said. “I can’t ever go back and be what I was t’you the day we first met.”

  “And that’s why you’ve waited?”

  He looked down at her hand in his. With his other hand, in a gentle sweep he stroked his fingers down the length of hers, over the malachite ring he’d given her, and his words were soft, imploring when he spoke. “You’ve never had a lover, yeah?”

  “I’ve hardly ever even kissed a man, let alone…” But even now she couldn’t say it. He was her friend, her protector, the object of her lust, but with his fingertips lightly tracing a path over her skin, she still couldn’t fathom it, that he might touch her like that everywhere.

  He was watching her carefully. “Don’t you think I know that?” he whispered. “Don’t you think maybe this is why I’ve been waitin’, t’give us a chance to know one another?”

  “We could’ve really known each other by now.”

  “But how would we know each other? Always in the dark, in the crow’s nest or the bilges, and I could never say t’you one word while we were doin’ it? Maybe that’s all right for James an’ Sarah, but I’m Irish, I won’t be able t’keep my mouth shut. The last thing we need is for Vancouver to find out. He’s made it very clear what’ll happen if I’m caught with my trousers down.”

  “So the reason you haven’t kissed me is because of Vancouver?”

  His lips broke into a self-conscious smile. “I haven’t kissed you because once I got started, in New Zealand an’ that, I didn’t seem t’be able to stop. Now I’d never have gotten any work done that way, would I?”

  “James gets his work done.”

  The smile faded from Paul’s face, and he looked down at her hand again, gave it a squeeze. “Yeah, well, James has a few years to make up for.”

  “So do I.”

  “Look, when those two first made love in London,” he said, “I was still gettin’ over my wife, you know that. James an’ Sarah didn’t spend their first night with the lads listening outside their door. It just seemed best for everyone if you and I didn’t become intimate right away. I think it even did me some good to be without a woman’s touch for a while, just to be, you know, me. I’ve never done that before.”

  “And now?”

  “Now?” He took in a deep breath, expelled it slowly as he gazed at her, his eyes filling up with that same dire surrender. “Now we’re both ready. And now everything has to change.”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  He glanced at the fire before answering, unsure of himself, his fingers moving unconsciously in hers. “Because maybe…maybe when it comes right down to it, I’m scared of messin’ things up with you.”

  “With me? But why?” She took her hand out of his. She pushed back his bangs, ran her fingers through his silky-soft hair. “Paul, you couldn’t mess things up with me if you wanted to. You don’t have anything to be scared about.”

  “But if we’re livin’ as man and wife, it’s only a matter of time before it all wears off. The spell will be broken. And then I’ll just be that guy, the one who takes out the trash or whatever.”

  “But I’m not Fiona.”

  He only squared his jaw, shaking his head as he looked away.

  “So this is it?” she asked. “This is why you haven’t made a pass at me?”

  “Ravenna, there’s so much I want t’say to you.”

  “Then say it.”

  “OK then, do you really want t’know how much I love you?”

  A shock went through her, to hear those words. Staring at him with her heart beginning to pound, she could make no answer, but he went on earnestly. “That you’re scared,” he said, reaching for her sleeve, “and indeed, even now you’re scared, it means so much to me. I’ve only t’look at you and I can see it in your face that you love me, and I never saw as much in Fiona’s face, not ever. Not even when we were kids, but you, you’ve always looked at me like that. Even the very first night we spent together, at Wolvesfield when you were fussin’ over that nightgown, all embarrassed about what we’d done—”

  “You liked that?”

  “You were so worried about what I thought of you. Course I loved it. I loved t’see you wriggle, just like you’re doing now.”

  “I’m not wriggling.”

  He looked at her as if he knew better. And to demonstrate, he lifted his hands to her hips and pulled her forward, wrapping himself around her until she was encircled by his strong, warm arms. He pressed his face against her belly, and through her shirt, Ravenna felt the roughness of his whiskers, the firm, hard line to his jaw.

  “You are,” he said, pulling her closer, nearer between his parted knees. “Flirting an’ that comes easy to me, but to you…it’s a very powerful thing, especially when you seem t’think I should be like those guys on the ship, that I should be wantin’ t’get it done the minute we’re alone.”

  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.”