The Last Killiney
Page 83
* * *
In the lonely days following his departure, Ravenna was by herself most of the time. James was busy, for the Royal Society’s president, Sir Joseph Banks, was eager to visit him at Wolvesfield to discuss Vancouver’s voyage at length.
Thus James spent every available moment in preparation for Banks’s arrival. He had the servants take down the huge bed in Paul’s old room. The tapestries were removed and a desk brought in, which James sat behind for hours at a stretch in pouring over the data he’d collected on the voyage. Quiet was the rule of the house. The only sound breaking the stillness without reprimand was the crying of Ravenna’s son.
And when the baby cried, when his little face looked too much like Paul to bear, she usually went down to the converted library to offer James any help she could. It was the only way she could spend time with him. By sorting his notes and helping him organize the artistic traditions he’d observed among the Indians, Ravenna hoped to distract herself from her ever-present death and gloom.
Yet whenever James paused to jot down a note, in the absence of his questions, Ravenna found herself drifting right back to Paul. Did you really die on that riverbank? she wondered. Or did you live long enough to suffer, as Christian said his friends did?
For if he’d managed to survive, if his attackers had captured him solely for the purpose of fixing their guns, Paul might have been taken to their summer village. With Paul’s strong arms and streetwise ways, he might have eventually overpowered his captors. He might have escaped.
So rather than suffer a hideous death during the festivities of a potlatch, Paul might have wandered the forest for months through the ceaseless, biting rain of autumn, hungry and cold and fast losing strength, hoping to find Nootka before the bears found him. He might have trudged along the coastal cliffs until sickness took him, desperate to catch sight of a fur-trading ship. He might have huddled between the dry roots of a cedar, watching the rain drip from the branches as the light left his eyes and the ravens closed in.
She shivered as she pictured such things, and James always noticed. Soon he began asking her to take a break, to go for a ride on Killiney’s stallion or pick out some furniture from the order book left by the local cabinetmaker—anything to alleviate the woeful look James said was on her face.
So after two years of being confined to a ship, always within arm’s reach of someone, now Ravenna spent her days in loneliness. She took to leaving her son with the nurse, setting out along the cliffs with Khali, letting him run until he himself chose to stop. Losing her macabre thoughts in the wind, she sometimes stayed out until long after dark. She knew the wet nurse would care for the baby. She knew that Sarah, having hired herself a tutor to give her the manners of a marchioness, would be as engrossed in her studies as James was in his. She knew it would be just Khali and herself, day after day after miserable day.
By the time Christian came home, she was close to drowning. She was desperate for a change of some kind, the company of another tortured soul, anything other than the endless hours she’d suffered and shared with no one; the sight of Christian, after so much useless whispering to the dark, seemed a comfort somehow.
When he stalked into the bedroom and slammed the door, Ravenna was fascinated. Something about him had changed. He was scolding her about the fact she hadn’t heard his carriage pull up, that he’d had to ask Scott if his countess were at home, but there was an anxiety beneath his angry words she hadn’t heard before, at least not since Nootka.
“And where were you?” he asked, removing his gloves with a series of sudden, brutal movements. “Daydreaming, I expect? I hope you’ve gorged yourself, because you shan’t have time for him in London, at least not while I’m with you.”
“London?” The movement of his hands distracted her, too quick and graceless for Christian Hallett. His sullen eyes, his jealous reference to Paul as he tossed down his gloves, these things stirred something in her as she watched him stupidly. He’s desperate, she realized, but desperate about what?
“You will go to London,” he continued haughtily, “and you’ll wear the diamond ring I bought you and smile prettily at Lady Salisbury’s assembly next week out of gratitude for my understanding and my boundless self-control. You’ll do as I kindly ask because I miss your company, and as the truth, that should be enough to persuade you in leaving him behind.”
“But the wedding, I can’t leave until—”
“I can’t wait until June, he might…I might grow impatient with you by then. You wouldn’t want to suffer a lapse in my chastity? Now pack,” and taking her roughly by the arm, he dragged her toward the clothes-press, “or my good nature may fail me here and now.”
Yet even under his forceful grip, she didn’t believe his threats. When he opened the cabinet door, she managed to pull out of his hands, realizing as she did that somehow she didn’t mind his roughness. He hadn’t hurt her. And she had only to look into that well of needing in the gray of his eyes to know he wouldn’t.
She couldn’t pin it down, this blunt, familiar feeling. The idea made her sick, and yet as Christian stood there, she knew it was true: She’d missed him. Within those few moments he’d been in the room, her bereavement had lifted. Not entirely, but enough to find interest in what he’d say next, what manner of manipulation he’d attempt in getting her to do as he wished. She could tell just by looking at him, by the way he’d forced her toward the clothes-press, that she had the upper hand now.
Glancing into his boyish face, she let him know it. “Am I supposed to be frightened?” she asked, leveling her gaze, steady and confident even though she smelled the whiskey on his breath. He doesn’t really mean anything he threatens, she thought. His hair looked soft. His eyes, rampant with bitter devotion, were a strange and morbid comfort to her, and feeling her grief dissipate into wonder over the way he looked at her with such dependency, Ravenna ventured a step nearer. “Do you want me to be frightened? Would that turn you on?”
Christian swallowed. His face squished into an uncomfortable frown, and she could see she’d affected him deeply. He did need her. He’d been telling the truth, and it was more than he could bear, being toyed with so, even worse when she pressed closer.
“Beloved, you tempt the devil,” he whispered. “You know not what you do.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” she asked. “Do you really want me to go with you?”
Staring at her like a deer in headlights, considering the way she inched toward him without fear, he gulped one last time before turning away. “You make a mockery of my love,” he muttered, and shoving back the dresses to reach Ravenna’s shoes beneath, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Of your own volition, without him, yes, I want you in London.”
“You’ll promise not to drink, to be nice if I go?”
Solemnly, slowly, Christian nodded, but he turned his eyes to the clothes-press shelves. “You’ll be home for the wedding, I promise you that much. In one fashion or another, by then I’m sure it will all be over.”