The Last Killiney
Page 93
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Soon James had to go downstairs and entertain Sir Joseph Banks. From the door, he asked Ravenna if she’d packed anything to wear in her hurry, or would she borrow a dress of Sarah’s?
But she didn’t feel up to company. She was far too exhausted, not to mention disheveled from her five-day carriage ride, but still she felt compelled to support James’s bid for fellowship in the Royal Society. She put on Sarah’s dress. She dug up some shoes. She slipped Christian’s diamonds, along with the vial of Indian potion, into a boot at the back of her clothes-press. When at last she was somewhat presentable, when the baby was fed and everything done, Ravenna permitted herself one small luxury. “I’m yours,” she whispered, pushing Paul’s malachite ring on her finger. “No matter what happens, no matter what comes.”
With Paul’s image stifling her thoughts, she went down to meet James’s guests. They had supper in the dining room, sea trout and roast beef, while Banks completely dominated the discussion. On Sarah’s suggestion, they withdrew to the drawing room after their meal, and when the subject came around to cedar trees, Ravenna knew enough about nurse logs and temperate forests to keep Banks talking for several hours.
By the time the clock struck half-past four, she could barely keep her eyes open. That Salzburg man had deepened the wounds in her battered heart and now she found herself drifting from Banks’s opinions about Pacific foliage, instead stared mutely at the Turkish carpet in remembering Paul’s freckles, his pale, blond brows and the way he’d said tree instead of three.
Picturing it all with unmerciful accuracy, finally she couldn’t bear it any longer. Banks and the others were chatting about maples, and as they trooped off to view some botanical specimen in the greenhouse by candlelight, nobody noticed when she took James aside and, standing on tiptoe, kissed his cheek.
“Good luck,” she said.
“You’re going to bed?” James’s head tipped forward slightly. “Love, you know I’d break this off, but I’d—”
“No,” she told him, slipping her arms around his waist. “Don’t worry about me, just…do your thing.”
“Do your thing?” A bemused smile touched James’s lips, and she nearly drowned in his dark gaze when he raised an eyebrow, regarded her skeptically. “A twentieth-century turn of phrase? You invent them, don’t you? Tell me the truth.”
Hearing that long-missed warmth to his voice, she wished he would break it off with Banks, that he’d sit down and hold her in the quiet of her room while she poured out her soul to him, told him of her grief, of Christian’s threats…
Rather than suggest it, she shook her head. “I’ll see you tonight,” she said, and turning toward the door, she was about to make a beeline for bed sheets and comfort when suddenly he stopped her.
Scooping her up in his immense brown hands, he led her forward until she found herself exactly where she wanted to be, nestled to his six-foot-four frame. “I’ve missed you,” he said into her hair. Holding her close, he stood there for a moment, sheltering her, his chest a wall of buff-colored silk that seemed to her comfort personified, and when he drew back—she almost didn’t let him—she felt the tingling heat of his lips pressed in a kiss against her cheek.
Breathing in the intimacy of it, his face so close to hers, his musky scent filling her senses and his broad, tall shoulder looming above her, it was enough to make her vow she’d never leave his side again.
A second more, and she had no choice. Sarah was calling him. In response, he ducked out the door in a hurry, and she sighed; not out of weariness but with joy, relief, for walking upstairs without a candle, past Megan’s adjoining room where the wet nurse slept with her infant son, she felt a surge of hope.
As dawn began to gray the night, she slipped out of her dress and into a chemise, trembling with the thought of what James had done. “At least I know he still loves me,” she mused, getting under the covers. “At least I have that.”
“But of course I still love you,” a voice answered back. “’Til death do us part, just as we promised.”
Her heart nearly stopped at the sound. She lay as still as she possibly could, like a frightened fawn, for she knew that voice all too well.
Christian was under her bed.