The Last Killiney

by J. Jay Kamp

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  From beneath the bed skirts, he grabbed her foot. Ravenna should have screamed then, when he used her for leverage, slid out from under the rope-strung mattress. Instead, as he came at her, she kicked him viciously. It did no good. All the fighting in the world wouldn’t have stopped him, for with alarming speed, Christian had climbed on top of her and, gloating at where she lay helpless beneath him, covered her mouth with a heavy hand.

  Senseless with fear, she held still. Sweat glistened above Christian’s lip. His hair was a mess, and when he leisurely settled his full weight over her, pinning her down, enjoying her panic, Ravenna knew she was in terrible trouble. With pupils the size of pinheads, Christian had obviously taken something.

  Then she was frightened. All the rules she’d known, all the tricks she’d used in manipulating him were thrown out the window, for with that fixated wildness in his stare, he’d turned into a complete stranger. Leaning over her, he glanced down between them, at where her breasts just touched his shirt. A smile twitched strangely at his mouth. “I wonder,” he asked, staring at her neckline, “what exactly did the Paddy do to arouse you? Did he use his hands? Should we try as much?”

  She fought to turn away, but he squeezed his fingers around her jaw, held her fast. “Oh, yes, but surely he courted you first.” And leaning down close, he took her mouth in a kiss.

  Filling her, devouring her with a reckless hunger, he forced her to endure the crush of his lips. Ravenna grabbed at his powdered hair and yanked with all the strength she had, but it didn’t help. He only moaned, and the wetness of him roved and deepened until abruptly, just as suddenly as he’d started, he pulled out of her mouth with a flourish.

  She struggled, gasped for breath. “Get off me,” she hissed.

  “What’s that you say?” He seized her waist, gave it a shake. “You want me to get you off, Beloved?”

  “You don’t even know what that means.”

  “I don’t?” Christian smiled. “Would you like me to demonstrate?”

  “You wish.” With his palm gliding up the front of her, she realized the door to Megan’s room was ajar. James was downstairs. She’d only have to scream to bring them both running, but as she took in a deep breath and filled her lungs, Christian’s hand came up to smother her.

  On instinct, she clawed at it. Fighting to get at him, she tore into his shirt, his skin, whatever she met in the midst of her panic, but Christian merely pushed her down harder, held her entire body in check with the force of his clammy, wine-smelling fingers. When he leaned down and buried his lips at her neck, she felt his tongue edge toward her collarbone, nearer her breasts, his free hand wandering until, feeling his fingers between her thighs, Ravenna’s mind went blank with fear. He’d unbuttoned his trousers, was starting to lift the hem of her chemise.

  With her hands unfettered, she lunged at him. She dug her fingernails into his eyes. When he weakened his hold, she gathered up her legs and, aiming for that which he intended to use against her, kicked him for all she was worth.

  Instantly, the battle ended. Making no sound other than a gasp, Christian rolled backwards and fell to the floor with knees together and eyes shut fast. Ravenna wasted no time in escaping. Before her baby woke up, before Megan wandered in to see what had happened, she had to get James and put a stop to this.

  Without lights and without thinking, she threw herself into the corridor and broke into a run. Hearing Christian scrambling after her, she raced downstairs and out to the greenhouse where, finding it empty, she turned and bolted back in the house. Even as she ran, she put all her strength into a cry for James. When the echo of it had subsided, she heard voices, and she hurried desperately toward the sound, burst through the great hall, dove through the doors standing open on the lawn toward James, his protection, his towering figure rushing to meet her.

  With the noise of a blade being pulled from its scabbard, she tumbled to the lawn at James’s feet.

  “Launceston!” James shouted.

  Sliding, Christian stopped at the great hall’s doors.

  Only then did Ravenna look up. Sarah stood a few yards away. Banks, Sidney, Farrough and Harlow were all clustered around James’s mare now held by the postilion, and as these guests watched in shock, Christian sauntered down the steps in a waver. Swaggering across the lawn, he showed no sign of slowing even when James lifted his sword.

  “If you’ve harmed her,” James said, extending the weapon, “you’ll pay for it in blood, do you understand me, Cousin?”

  Christian beamed drunkenly. “I’m so impressed.” And with a wave of his hand, he brushed off the sword. “Of course I understand you, but I think your guests might find it distasteful. After all, rapiers are so pathetically old-fashioned.”

  Bowing his head dangerously, James edged the sword closer still, but Christian went on, reveling in his braggart tone. “Oh, but I’ve forgotten,” he said, “it takes good breeding to recognize style…doesn’t it, James?”

  From the grass, Ravenna shook her head. Christian, please don’t say it, she thought, not here, not now.

  Yet James seemed to dismiss the remark. Keeping an eye on Christian’s swaying, he held out his free hand to help Ravenna. “What has he done, Love? If he’s raped you, he’s already dead.”

  Already dead…

  Christian gazed at her, waiting for the accusation to fall from her lips as it rightly should, but seeing him balanced against the point of that sword, Ravenna was struck by the strangest feeling.

  The mist had begun rolling in off the ocean. Ribbons of it crept over the lawn around them. One of the guests said something to James, but Ravenna ignored them in favor of this nagging familiarity in her thoughts, this urgency fighting for her attention in every detail, Christian’s royal blue frock coat, his delicate hand near the blade at his neck.

  David standing there, that’s what it was. David telling her about Christian’s death when he’d held a sword in his reverent grasp, that sword, Paul’s sword. In remembering his words, a chill swept up Ravenna’s spine. She could still see David tortured by his need to understand his ancestors, this very weapon in his trembling hands, and with Christian before her, she realized what it meant.

  This was the beginning of Christian’s death.

  Death…Memories fought their way to the surface, of Paul’s last gaze as the pinnace pushed off from Discovery’s side; of how only a few hours had brought the shock of his absence, one moment moving tenderly beside her in the safety of the crow’s nest, the next moment dead on the river’s bank. As confident and spiteful as Christian was in leaning against that four-foot rapier, as much drug-induced violence as she saw in his eyes, still he was alive. He was alive. The sweat on his cheek was warm, his intense gaze animated and alert, and these were things worth the price of any amount of suffering.

  “Ravenna, tell me,” James urged.

  And knowing destiny rode on her answer, she turned away from the image David had vested in her and looked up at James with solemn resolve. “He’s done nothing. Please, just put the sword away. I won’t mourn him or anyone else ever again.”

  “There’s nothing to mourn. If he’s raped you, he deserves to die.”

  “No,” she said, watching the way Christian’s features sharpened. “He’s my husband, and you can’t kill him for doing what he has the right to.”

  “I can and shall kill him.” And giving him a push, James forced him back with the tip of the sword. Blood trickled from Christian’s chin. It ran in the channel engraved along the steel, and yet it hardly mattered; quiet and unmoving where he stood pinned back by James’s anger, Christian didn’t appear to notice.

  Instead, his poise faltering, malice and flippancy slipping away, he ran a hand through the blond of his hair. He swayed against the sword’s point, and as he stared at Ravenna in obvious shock, she was sure she saw love in his eyes.

  Then he looked away, mumbling to himself.

  “What was that, Cousin?” James gl
anced at Ravenna. “If he’s threatened you again to ensure your protection, I’ll—”

  “I said I don’t deserve her,” Christian answered loudly.

  “You don’t deserve the dirt beneath her shoes.”

  “Listen to me.” Ravenna put her hands over James’s, under the rapier’s S-shaped guard. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him, remember? No matter what happened, you said you wouldn’t—”

  “He’ll answer for his crimes! He isn’t Paul, he isn’t worthy of your grief or your—”

  “James, this is murder.”

  “Leave him alone, Beloved.”

  Christian’s guilt-ridden eyes met hers, and she did see it then, that love she’d glimpsed before. For an instant, his attention lingered on her, his cherubic features drawn up in a wince. Then he swallowed, and with as much belligerence as he could muster, he said blatantly, for all to hear, “I doubt very much the marquess inherited from his real father the nerve to run me through.”

  She gasped as James abruptly withdrew the sword, then just as quickly brought it swooping across Christian’s face.

  Christian didn’t move. Blood oozed from the length of the sword’s trail across his cheek, but his expression of purpose was far more alarming.

  “What did you say?” James asked softly.

  Glancing at Ravenna, Christian raised his voice. “I said your real father. You know the one. I believe he was tall, dark, and—oh yes—wasn’t he Spanish?”

  James pushed nearer with the point of the sword, pressed it tight to Christian’s heart. “One more word before these people and you’ll meet God here and now, understand? I’ll run you through, I swear I will.”

  “Do you mean that?” Christian asked in a whisper. “For Ravenna’s sake, you’ll kill me now?”

  “I’ll do more than kill you.”

  “Christian, please just go back to London.”

  But Christian didn’t step back from the sword. “I’ll go,” he said, “but only if James will first tell these people about his real paternity. Is Sir Joseph aware of your secret heritage?”

  “You know I’ll destroy you if you so much as—”

  “James, why don’t you tell them how the third Lord Wolvesfield wouldn’t marry your mother? How he cocked up an actress and then forced your mother to raise Ravenna as her own?” Christian smiled a little. “Now expecting your mum to be faithful after that kind of abuse requires audacity, don't you think? Especially if you invite Don Juan into your home. Imagine my lord’s surprise when, nine months later, she bore him a mongrel, a dark-skinned Mexican brat?”

  “That’s enough!” Tilting the sword back, James gave Christian a tremendous shove. Christian staggered backwards, but that didn’t stop him from persevering with the story.

  “Why haven’t you told them, James? Why haven’t you told your wife? Well, wife-to-be, anyway. Are you afraid she won’t marry you, should she know the truth? That your father was a Spanish mestizo from Mérida, a swashbuckler, a mercenary, a common thief? Does Sarah not have a right to know the pedigree her children will suffer?” Christian implored the guests, giving Sarah a shaky nod.

  “Or will you deceive her to the very altar?” He turned back to James, leaned ever harder against the sword. “Shouldn’t she know that her future groom will not be Lord Wolvesfield at all, but James Escalante, the poor son of a half-breed adventurer? Because you see, Lord Wolvesfield’s not only lied about his blood, but he’s assumed a peerage which by right of succession is mine. Oh, the third lord did eventually marry James’s mother—on her death bed. Then he bribed the vicar to alter the parish records. Thus the title, the house, everything he calls his own should lawfully belong to me and he’s stolen it impenitently because he’s not a marquess’s son at all, he’s a lying, thieving, mongrel bast—”

  James lunged at Christian. Knowing what was about to happen, Ravenna got there first. She pushed against James, begged him to stop as she fought to cover Christian’s body, to keep the inevitable from happening around her.

  Yet James dropped the sword when, in the midst of the struggle, he shoved her aside. “Love, stay back,” he snarled. Turning to Christian, fists raised, he punched him squarely in the jaw, giving Ravenna an odd sense of relief in watching her husband fall to the grass.

  No one moved to collect the sword. Seeing her chance, she rushed to get it, to keep it from James as long as she could.

  “Are you going to kill me with fisticuffs or swordplay?” Christian frowned as she picked up the weapon. “Beloved, give the marquess his sword.”

  “Christian, I—”

  “Give him the sword!”

  But James had no intention of taking it. With his face contorted in unbridled rage, he circled Christian, his hands making fists again and again. “Get up,” he growled.

  Leaning back, Christian touched the blood at his mouth. His eyes were heavy with unspoken defiance as he attempted to pull himself up to his feet. But with his intoxication, he tottered in the effort until, grudgingly, James was forced to help.

  Christian waited then for the promise to be kept.

  “Kill the scoundrel,” said one of James’s guests.

  “Yes,” Christian said, “give Banks what he wants. After all, he wishes me dead as much as you do, with all those precarious secrets of yours buried with me safe and sound. One good thrust and everyone wins.”

  With his soft hair drifting in the morning breeze, his shoulders hunched ever so slightly, Christian seemed frail in the face of James’s leonine scrutiny, and yet he urged him. “Do you wait for the mood to strike you? Deliver me!”

  When this didn’t happen, he glanced at Ravenna. “Help me, Beloved. Indulge me this once and give him the sword.”

  Ravenna stepped back. His voice was so rational, so calm and needful of his own destruction, and now his words were laced with love? When he’d driven her so far in the midst of his torture, when he’d so nearly killed what affection she’d felt?

  But as she stood there miserably, feeding on the love she saw in his face, she heard James issue the final prophecy.

  “I won’t,” James said, giving Christian one last look before turning toward Ravenna. “Not in front of your wife, I won’t. You have until Wednesday to put your affairs in order, Cousin, and after that, God help you.”

  “NO!” Holding the sword out of his reach, Ravenna backed away. “James, you can’t do this.”

  Holding out a lean, brown hand, James stepped toward her. “Give it over, Love. There’s two days yet before he feels that blade, and doubtless he’ll disappear long before then.”

  He took another step. Ravenna’s heart hammered as she drew back further, but behind them, Christian’s expression had changed. As if he were struggling for air, for salvation, his eyes roved in a restless darting; his lips moved in a panic even as James raised his voice, tried to reason angrily with Ravenna. “He chose this destiny, not I. Can’t you see what will happen, should he take the estate? He leaves me no choice and he knows as much!”

  Ravenna clutched the sword tighter, tears spilling down as she stood her ground. “If you kill him, so help me, I’ll leave you here, James. I’ll drink the potion and go back without you.”

  Pain swept over James’s dark features. “Is that what you want?” Sharp voice, full of anger. “Because he’ll die regardless, but if your love for me runs as shallow as that—”

  “Of course it doesn’t. But how could I look at you the same way again? How can money be that important?”

  James shook his head bitterly, while beyond him, Christian was pacing now, gulping between stuttered words, “Not soon enough, it must be now, it has to be now…”

  James didn’t hear him. “He made you his protector at Nootka, didn’t he? Is that when he told you? Is that when the lying began? Because I could’ve killed him, if only you’d said to me one word.”

  Listening to him rage, Ravenna fingered Paul’s sword, that thing of sanctity David had worshipped. “Please,” she said, and heedle
ss of James’s fiery eyes, she approached him then, didn’t fight when he pried her hands from the weapon; instead, she moved closer until, standing so near she might have kissed him, she whispered softly beneath James’s chin, “no more death and I’ll never drink it. I won’t go back without you, I promise.”

  No sooner had she said it when, over his shoulder, she saw a flash, the muzzle of a pistol, Christian raising it to the back of James’s head. In a rush of fear, she shoved the sword in James’s hand. With one swift motion, he’d turned and thrust it hard through Christian.

  In Christian’s fragile hand, the pistol shook, dropped.

  He lingered there for a few seconds; tilting against the length of the blade, he glanced down, and where the scrolled steel disappeared inside him, blood began to spread. It turned the white of his waistcoat to scarlet. It seeped between his fingers where he clutched at the wound, and when he staggered backward, eyes cast desperately toward Ravenna, it drained from his face in a sudden, ghastly paling of his features.

  She tried to catch him, to ease him to the grass even as James followed through, pinning him down in a cloven sprawl. “Fetch the doctor!” she cried desperately.

  No one did. Sir Joseph Banks stood watching with his friends. Sarah clung to James. And with the sword extended unwaveringly before him, James stood righteously silent.

  Managing to get her hands beneath him, Ravenna propped Christian up in her arms. His pulse was strong. His eyes were open, but still Ravenna knew it was useless when James withdrew the sword from his body, for Christian didn’t struggle. His fingers stirred through the slickness of blood, his dull lashes fluttered, but he made no sound as the weapon came out.

  Instead, gray and wide, his eyes met Ravenna’s with rampant fear. “I’ll die, will I not?” His breath was weak where he shifted on her lap. “Is that not what your histories predicted?”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  Looking up at her, Christian cringed. “Dear God, how can you be so? After what I’ve done?”

  “Nothing you’ve done is worth this,” she said.

  “No, Beloved,” and moving his hand to touch hers, he gripped her tight, “you’ve no idea the unspeakable acts I’ve committed in your name. You can’t see what a back-stabbing, grievous coward I’ve been, but I’ve—”

  “Shhh,” she soothed. “Cowards don’t attack James.”

  “James is nothing.” As if bludgeoned by that nameless guilt, he clenched his teeth, went on stubbornly, “If you knew what lies in wait, you’d understand. You’d hate my very name and thank God for this day—”

  “Quiet now,” she urged him. “Lie still until the doctor comes.”

  But behind her, as James ordered the postilion to take the mare, to fetch the stable boys for Christian’s body, Ravenna heard Banks add with a shout, “And don’t bring the surgeon! We can’t have him recovering now, can we, Wolvesfield?”

  As the boy went running, Banks stooped to the grass. He picked up the pistol, and Ravenna wanted to punch him when she saw how his face simmered with pleasure in examining the weapon, in glancing at James. “What a stroke of luck,” Banks mused.

  With Sarah hovering at his side, James frowned.

  “Plainly self-defense,” Banks explained. “I tell you, by Friday you’ll be appending to your name the letters F.R.S. if I have anything to say about it, regardless of who your father was.”

  James’s eyes narrowed. “You’d make me a fellow? But you haven’t even read my treatise. And the voyage itself has been—”

  “Oh, I’ll read it…eventually. They’ll have to on Thursday when they elect you, and you’ve most definitely earned it. When this rascal kicks off, a great many of my mistakes go with him and I owe it to you, my friend. I owe it most humbly to you.”

  James studied Banks suspiciously, as if he didn’t believe what he’d said. “So I’ve spent nearly two years at sea and my treatise won’t even be read? I’m to be elected purely in payment for services rendered?”

  Banks gave a nervous laugh. “I merely meant that, as I’m so indebted to you, I see no reason to suffer you the usual formalities of—”

  “I hold no regard for what you meant. I am not your hired assassin, Mr. Banks. I am not.”

  James glared at Banks. On Ravenna’s lap, Christian groaned; he tore at the place where the sword had been, and seeing him suffer, she pulled at James’s hand. “He needs to be in the house where it’s warm. I won’t have him out here for Banks to—”

  “He’ll die where I say so!” James jerked his hand out of hers. “Had he gotten his way, I’d lie there in his place. Would you rather it were me?”

  That sudden anger to James’s voice, as if he hated her, made Ravenna suck in a breath with tears, but in her arms, Christian was writhing, moving his bloodied hand within the folds of his coat as if prompted by James’s words. “Here,” Christian said. “Look here, in my pocket.”

  His fingers closed around hers. Something was in his grasp, a small package, heavy and made wet by the wound. Even without looking at it, she knew by the feel what the package contained: As newly bought as the gun itself, a handful of bullets lay sealed and undisturbed within that paper wrapping.

  She passed it to James, watched his mouth open.

  “For my head, had you failed me,” Christian mumbled.

  James looked down at the bullets in his hand, then back at Ravenna. It was only then she saw the rampant emotion in James’s eyes, the anger sliding fast into doubt, as if he needed her reassurance, as if he were saying, How could I have known? What kind of idiot raises against me an unloaded gun?

  Banks chuckled. In a burst of anger, James tore his eyes from Ravenna’s and, removing his hand from around Sarah’s back, he put it forth to Banks viciously. “Give me the pistol.”

  “It’s not even loaded.” Banks smirked broadly. “You’ve just killed him for nothing so much as a trot with his—”

  “Give it to me! And I’ll thank you to leave this house without a word to anyone regarding what you’ve heard.”

  Banks squinted at James, toying with the pistol. “With such a tone, young man, why ever should I grant you that?”

  “Because Christian’s told me everything he knows about you, all of you,” Ravenna said over her shoulder. “Now give James the gun and get out of here, or I’ll start naming names.”

  She waited for Banks to react, but he didn’t. As if he’d heard nothing, the man kept his focus on James until finally, from Ravenna’s arms, Christian murmured faintly, “The Hadean Club, Beloved. Begin with the time Banks hired fifteen boys to fondle his—”

  Already Banks was walking toward the house.

  James didn’t wait for Banks’s friends to recover. Forbidding the stable boys to lay a hand on Banks’s carriage or assist the man’s servants in any way, he sent them instead to bring the surgeon and Reverend Wells while, with his own hands, James lifted Christian and carried him inside.

  Up the front steps and into the great hall, James didn’t pay any attention to the blood smearing his best coat. Sarah was quick to touch him at every turn, leading him by the arm, ushering him into the bedroom with her hand at James’s back, and when she’d smoothed out the blankets for him to lay Christian down upon, the maid whispered, “Did you think I’d an eye on your money, Jem? I’ve known forever, you’d no fear in tellin’ me.”

  Downstairs, Banks’s servants complained loudly as Mr. Scott roused them and sent them to packing. From Megan’s adjoining room, the baby began to cry. Megan herself scurried out in her bed gown to fetch the kettle and fresh linen, the housemaids ran about in haste, and all the while James stood in the corner, watched in silence as his future marchioness did the work of a common servant.

  Sarah knew well enough how Ravenna reacted to blood. While the maid put pressure on the wound, she patiently directed Ravenna to unbutton Christian’s high collar, to take off his cravat, his shirt and waistcoat. Ravenna tried to keep from fainting as she did these things. She lifted the soake
d fabric from Christian’s stomach. She kept her attention on the set of his thick, adolescent jaw, his soft brown brows, and holding his hand as it grew lax and cool in hers, she watched as Christian slipped away before her eyes.

  The housemaids removed the rest of his clothing. They wiped away the remaining blood, but Christian had lost consciousness by then. The air came in and out of him with the weakest of breaths. His powder-dusted hair made a mess on the pillow; his cheekbones looked white in the strengthening dawn, while his lips, full and opened the smallest bit, seemed like those of a sleeping child.

  Seeing it all unfold before her, it numbed Ravenna with a sense of truth, as if she knew the secret of the universe and the responsibility was too much, too awful. This is the end of it, she thought grimly, squeezing Christian’s fingers in hers. When he goes, there is no more, just days and days of living here and trailing desperately after James.

  The reverend arrived forty-five minutes later, but she sent him away. When the surgeon came shortly thereafter, she didn’t answer any of his questions, either. Instead, she stared blankly at the rabbit fur trimming of the cloak Megan had put around her shoulders and she barely noticed what the man did or even how long he worked. When he gathered his medical implements and went on his way, he left Christian in a swathe of stained linen, pale and fragile, the back of his hand cold in Ravenna’s.

  Soon the housemaids arrived to change the bedding, and she watched in quiet horror as they lifted Christian from the bloodied sheets. Like a doll without stuffing, that’s what he seemed, and she sunk even further into her shock until at last Megan took her from the room.

  They didn’t speak as Ravenna got dressed. The nurse had little Eli in one arm and seeing his face, those wide baby eyes, she felt an impossible distance between them. Everything is laid out for you, she thought, watching Megan lay him gently in his cradle. There’s no free will, but only destiny, that’s the real truth of it. Everything is fate and we’re all its prisoners.

  It seemed only a moment had passed and Megan was gone, a few moments more and James came in, bringing Shasta with him. He tried to persuade her to eat, to lie down, to come away with him while Christian slept, but she wouldn’t leave. She stood at the foot of Christian’s bed and stared at his lifeless face, thinking, This is the death you never saw, this is the way Paul looked on that river.

  Eventually she lay down next to him. She closed her eyes, thought thoughts of death, felt it settling heavier than the blanket covering Christian’s form until, finally, certain he still breathed, she dared to sleep. Then the riverbanks, the muskets, the silver watches and Indian longhouses, these things troubled her no more. Curled around Christian’s limp hand in hers, she fell under the weight of dream.