Authors: J. Jay Kamp
“It seems you do.”
“You were the sixth Viscount Killiney,” she told him. “You died on Vancouver’s voyage in the Pacific Northwest in 1792.”
More silence from him. Apparently the charm had dried up, for he let out a little breath when he looked down at his bloodied knee, as if to say,
Yeah, right
.
“My friend tracked Killiney back to you,” she went on, watching him fuss with his turquoise ring. “We were hoping we’d learn more from the records at Swallowhill. Have you heard about Killiney before? Are there pictures of him?”
“Who’s this friend of yours when she’s at home?”
“
He
,” Ravenna corrected him. “David Hallett, he’s the Marquess of Wolvesfield in Devonshire, England. His ancestor was Christian Hallett, the man I married after Killiney died on Vancouver’s voyage. Christian was part of your family by marriage, and he—”
“Let me just get in here,” Paul said. “You’re tellin’ me I was
my own ancestor
in another life? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Sometimes reincarnation works that way. People’s souls get attached to a certain country, a climate, even a particular family or house. It’s not unheard of.”
“It is in Ireland.”
“No, really, it’s not—”
Looking her square in the face, he tightened his hand on her shoulder gently. “You know, I don’t mean to alarm you,” he said, “but Ireland’s mostly a Catholic country. You don’t hear much about reincarnation at Sunday Mass.”
Ravenna nodded. “So you’re Catholic, then.”
“No, but—”
“You’re Protestant?”
“Look, my spirituality’s got nothing to do with it, really. I might be a Buddhist, let’s say, but if I don’t remember what you remember—”
“So you don’t remember anything? Nothing at all?”
Slowly, Paul shook his head, dropping his eyes when he saw her disappointment. “No,” he said, “no, I think you believe in what you’re telling me, but I can’t believe in it, it doesn’t apply to
me
, to
my
life, even if I do resemble the guy. Can you see that? Can you understand what you’re asking of me?”
“All I want you to do is listen.”
“And indeed I have.”
“But you won’t consider that reincarnation might be real.”
“It might be real for you, but…”
And to his obvious relief, the train pulled slowly into the next station. Out the door and down a flight of stairs, he put his arm around her; she’d forgotten the cold outside, was glad for his shelter from the light rain, and matching his step, she pressed close and let a block or so go by in silence before continuing the argument he’d sought to escape.
“So you’re not religious at all?” she asked.
He wiped the hair out of his eyes. “I didn’t say that.”
“You said you weren’t Catholic or Protestant.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not a believer. It’s just that I don’t think a church and a priest are necessary for spirituality, at least not for everyone’s spirituality.”
“So you’re willing to allow there are different kinds of spirituality?”
“There’s no such thing as life after death, OK?” Paul’s eyes drilled into Ravenna’s. “Not for me, at least not in the sense you’re talking about. A guy has it hard enough livin’ the first time around. I mean, why
would
you want to do it all again?”
She leaned into him. “Now we’re getting to the real problem,” she said. “You’re not happy now, so why would you want to believe in something that might leave you unhappy again in the future?”
A street lamp buzzed above their heads and in its light, she saw that expression gaining strength in his pale features, that something wounded and unspeakably painful which shone too readily in his gaze. Dreading the way he’d brooded on the train, Ravenna shuddered, using the excuse to lean closer still against his warm, protective frame.
But he was talking again, his determined words breaking the quiet of the street. “It’s just that some people struggle
so much
. They deserve a bit of rest, y’know? I have t’believe they’re in a better place after all they’ve been through. Why would God put us through it if heaven’s not waitin’ at the end of it all?”
“To me, another chance to learn seems more interesting than heaven.”
He almost smiled. “You are a Buddhist, aren’t you? You’re not going to start chanting?”
“I’m not a Buddhist, I just…I’ve had some experiences I can’t explain any other way. I remember you playing the piano, and when I saw you in that bar, I—”
“Wait a minute, hold on.
Playing the piano?”
Suspicion flickered at the corners of his mouth, in his guarded eyes as he scrutinized her. “You’re saying this guy knew the piano?”
“What do you mean, he
knew
it? I thought you were familiar with your family history.”
“Yeah, but I…Just tell me about this fellah and the piano.”
She thought then about the diary, about all she’d read of Killiney’s music. “You played Mozart,” she said, “and Haydn, too, although I don’t remember that yet. There’s a piano at Wolvesfield, the house near Dartmouth where I lived, and you played that piano to seduce me. I crept up behind you when you played, and I remember the awful fight we had afterward. I remember crying when you died, when I knew I’d never see you again, and it’s an unbearable memory. It’s not the sort of thing people invent for fun.”
“So you’re tellin’ me you just spontaneously saw this? My ancestor, playing the piano in Devon?”
“I’d probably remember more if I were hypnotized.”
“And you think I’m him just because he’s my ancestor, because we’ve got the same face?”
“It’s not just your face, it’s everything about you, the way you walk, your smile, how you act around your friends.”
“But couldn’t I have inherited all that? Family traits and such?”
She slowed their pace as she considered his question. She thought of the first moment she’d seen him, when he’d come from the men’s room buttoning up his jeans, when he’d sat down among his friends scrounging for a light. His face was that face she’d been longing for, angular, bestubbled and loving, but how to explain the resonance she felt when she looked at him? That his was the face she’d mourned in the music room, crying at the window as the trees outside whipped in the storm?
She knew it completely. She couldn’t prove it.
“Our son’s name was Paul,” she said to him finally.
“Our son? So now you’re my ancestor, as well?”
“That was his name,” she said, ignoring his tone. “Doesn’t it mean anything, that you and Killiney’s son have the same name?”
“It’s a family name, that’s all it is.”
“But you came up to me in the bar,” she insisted. “You remembered me.”
“Might be a girl in America I’m remembering, somebody you remind me of. You’ll have t’do better than that.”
Ahead of them, between the framing of buildings, stood an ancient tower against the city-lightened clouds. As they gradually approached it, it became clear that this was Paul’s destination, and she knew from her travel books it was Christ Church Cathedral. It stood bleak and inanimate and strangely beautiful in the stillness of the city street, and he led her through its wrought-iron gates to a bench where he sat her down, acknowledged her frustration with a glance and a sigh.
“I don’t mean t’be upsetting you, I really don’t,” he said, “but you have t’try and understand—this is
Ireland
.”
“You could try to understand me, just a little.” She watched him take a seat beside her, not too close. “After all, I came all this way to find you.”
“And where did you come from, or am I ever going t’learn?”
Listening to his voice, all husky and smoothed by that satiny tone, she felt a warmth spread all through her body. He
was
Killiney. No one else could have that voice. “Protection Island, in Washington State,” she said. “I took a flight from Vancouver, actually.”
“And that’s where the guy died, yeah?”
“Look, I know how strange it all sounds, how you must feel about the whole thing, but can’t you just consider that maybe what I’ve said is true? That maybe you and I
have
been together, that maybe God and reincarnation can somehow coexist? I don’t know how, but—”
She stopped. His brows had abruptly slanted in a frown, and he didn’t seem to be listening anymore. His eyes looked like pieces of translucent ice, distant, emotionless, and when his gaze misted over with a fixated stare, she covered his hand with hers.
“Paul?”
He didn’t budge.
She should have been frightened then. Seeing that vacant expression on his face, his unblinking gaze, it occurred to her suddenly that she, too, felt strange: lightheaded and exhilarated all at once, as if she’d gotten up too fast and the ensuing confusion were somehow enjoyable.
Staring at his boots, wondering at their silver caps glimmering like beacons on a distant coast, Ravenna barely noticed when the edges of her vision began to blur. Paul’s eyes, now gazing at her with the utmost serenity, seemed the most impossible shade of blue, and she fell into them effortlessly, didn’t fight the dizziness, the airy, cool weightlessness that lifted her from heavy limbs.
She let herself be taken, surrendered herself until, cloaked in the pattern of dreams that received her, suddenly she knew no more.
There was a man on top of her.
Ravenna’s thoughts were still sluggish from sleep, but she knew the truth of it just the same. Where she lay upon cold winter turf, naked, her clothes strewn about in the frozen grass, her arms slipped across the heat of flesh, a silken form, another body molded to hers.
Muddled it all seemed, and yet she couldn’t deny the thick set of his masculine shoulders, the hair on his chest so feathery against her unclothed skin. Feeling the wetness of him between her thighs, that unfamiliar flush of heat and the tingling weakness coursing through her, Ravenna knew what they’d done, that he’d…that he and she had…
A knot rose quickly in her throat. Her mouth went dry. Only when several seconds had passed did she even think of identifying her lover, and when she had, though she wanted to believe it with all the strength of her lonely heart, still she didn’t trust her senses.
For when she lifted his ample, rugged chin, she found it was Paul entangled around her.
His breath came quietly. Not yet awake, he was heavy and pliable in her grasp, completely at her mercy. His limbs draped around her in an unconscious snuggling that somehow seemed childlike despite the brawn to his compact frame.
Oh my God
, she thought wildly. Between her legs, it was so…so intoxicating, that’s what he was. She could feel every inch of him, parts she’d never even seen in a magazine let alone touched in so intimate a way, and to hold him so close, to be able to tilt his head toward hers and almost kiss those sleeping lips, she could all but imagine how it would feel if they…
She forgot in a hurry when he started to stir.
Hesitant, bewildered, he lifted his head. His face was in shadow, and yet when he uncurled his limbs from hers, she sensed his terrible guilt.
He’s cheated on his wife, hasn’t he?
She could feel it in the frozen air between them, in the way he got to his feet in a rush.
Before she could apologize or reassure him in some friendlike way, she felt a swathe of fabric tossed over her body. A cloak of some kind, he’d thrown it down in a fit of remorse; she clutched it tight as he turned away, reached for his trousers slung over a bush.
Except they weren’t his trousers.
Ravenna glanced around her then. Gone was the churchyard, the high iron gates. Instead, there was a field, icy and dark in the winter night. She saw no buildings, no shimmer of Dublin’s lights in the sky. A few yards away, a stone wall decayed beneath brambles and brush, part of a ruin, or so it seemed in the dim moonlight. A dress lay on the grass beside her, and though it was too dark for details, she couldn’t miss the gown’s full skirts, the boning she felt along the waist of its bodice when she reached out to touch it.
Fingering the cloak then around her shoulders, slowly the shock of it began to register. These tall leather boots she saw all around them, the man’s white undergarments, the lady’s stockings, these were
eighteenth-century clothes
. Reaching for the nearest of several skirts, she tried madly to understand—had they been kidnapped? Stolen away from the churchyard to play somebody’s idea of a dress-up game?
Then she lifted her eyes toward Paul. The shirt he struggled to pull over his head wasn’t the one he’d worn in the bar. Rather, it was long and white, hung down to his knees over dark woolen pants. Catching the way she stared at him suddenly, Paul scowled. He turned away, and she understood why he might be angry. After all, he was dressing for
her
delusions,
her
admitted past-life fantasies, and how could he not blame her for this?
Knowing he did, feeling the strength of his cutting glare, Ravenna huddled beneath the cloak’s shelter…and that’s when she saw it. Shining in the moonlight, it was a little glass bottle, two inches in length and capped with gold. It lay on the grass next to her foot. With her attention distracted from Paul’s reproach, she sat up, lifted the vial with shaking fingers.
“What is it?” Paul asked.
“A perfume sample? I don’t know.” Yet as she examined it, she was struck by a feeling of déjà vu. A dark, oily residue lined the glass. Lifting it closer, she caught a whiff of something fishy, like a raft of kelp left baking in the sun.
Elizabeth
, she thought with a sense of familiarity.
Yes, something about Elizabeth, drinking it down, watching the smolder to Killiney’s eyes in leaning to meet his passionate kiss
.
In the midst of it, Paul walked away in disgust. He didn’t mutter a word to her, just ambled off in an angry saunter, leaving her to wonder,
Can it be true? Have you lost your mind?
Forcing down the whirl that threatened to consume her, she scooped up what was left of the clothes. She made herself figure out what garment went where. The pair of riding boots she understood, but it seemed there were two dresses, the second being more of a nightgown of sorts. She’d been stretched out upon it, and as she picked up the garment and pulled it over her head, she realized it had suffered in their coupling—the nightgown was damp all down the back of it.