Authors: J. Jay Kamp
Paul’s eyes came around and sharpened on hers. “So I’m supposed to sacrifice you in order t’make amends with this guy?”
“All I’m doing is following history. James will have to let me marry Christian. History says he does.”
“And where’s the sense in me gettin’ on that ship if you’re left behind?”
“You’d be able to drink the potion when you found it.”
Paul’s brows furrowed. “You want me t’just abandon you? You’ve no wish yourself of getting back?”
“Calm down,” she said, and she did touch him then, she laid her hand upon his knee. “You’ll send what’s left of it home with James.”
“Oh, so four years is better, is it? Mind you, I’ll be fightin’ Indians and drinkin’ the stuff alone while you’re living the life of a battered woman.”
“If I can’t get on the ship, I don’t see what else we can do,” she insisted. “If James throws you out, he’ll certainly see to it that you and I are separated. Even after he’s at sea, we’d still have to hide, because his servants would chase me if I ran away with you. That is, unless…unless we got married. I’d do it if you would, but I know you won’t.”
His lip tightened again. “No I wouldn’t.”
“So you have to go without me.”
“And if he comes waltzing in here with sword in hand? Then what’ll we do, apart from run?”
“You’ll run. You’ll go back to Ireland and wait,” she said, moving her feet nearer the hearth. “I’ll stay here and try to persuade him to bring back the potion.”
“And you think he’ll bring it back? There must be something we can do, hire our own ship, change the future with the diary, whatever, but we can’t just sit here.”
Ravenna frowned. “What do you mean by change the future?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking,” he said, and leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “Suppose we wrote in the diary ourselves, sent a message warning ourselves what would happen? We could be messin’ with the future from right here, right now. We could buy us some time t’think this through.”
She remembered when she’d first seen the diary. She’d had at least twenty-four hours until she’d sat with Paul at Christ Church Cathedral. That was twenty-four hours in which she could’ve wondered what it meant, that a two hundred-year-old book could contain a message written in her own hand.
“But what would we say?” she asked. “We can’t really change anything. We can’t stop Killiney and Elizabeth from drinking.”
“Not as such, but we can memorize the stuff that’s going t’happen so we can predict the future and James’ll believe us.”
“James might still believe us.”
“But he can’t tell me when I’m supposed to die, can he?”
Again, there flashed that unspoken grief, and Ravenna tried for his sake to remember what she’d heard about Killiney’s death. On a river, somewhere on Vancouver Island, that’s all she recalled, and if they wrote in the diary and warned themselves, she doubted they’d be able to learn much more. It seemed David had known only what he’d read in the book. Vancouver probably hadn’t written a word about Killiney in his published journals, and she told Paul this. “Nobody knows where Killiney died; you’ll just have to rely on your wits to save you.”
“Then I haven’t got a chance.”
“Of course you have. All you have to do is act like Paul Henley, right up until the time you’re attacked or you get the potion, whichever comes first.”
“You mean act like Killiney.”
Ravenna shook her head. “I’ve changed my mind. It’s you who dies in that history book now.”
“Well then, that’s it, isn’t it?”
“No,” she said, “listen, if you follow your instincts and make the same choices, you’ll follow the same destiny. That will get us to the potion. You just have to make the ending a little different, that’s all you have to do.”
“And how do you suggest I do that?”
“When the attack comes, you should do exactly the opposite of whatever your gut instinct tells you to. If you don’t do what Paul Henley would do, you’ll live.”
“And what if it doesn’t work out?” Paul’s jaw tensed as he regarded her anxiously. “Can’t we hire bodyguards, you know, a couple of big, surly-looking fellahs to follow me around?”
“James will protect you.”
“Yeah, but who’s gonna guard me from James?” Turning away, he fixed his gaze on the crackling flames. “You see I reckon none of this matters anyway. He’s only gonna come back and have an even bigger row with me for still bein’ in the house.”
“Well, what do you think we should do?”
Paul considered for a moment, scratched the stubble on his chin. “What about hiring our own ship, like I said?”
“You mean a private vessel? With a captain and crew to run it?” she asked. “That sounds like money.”
“There’d be none of this charting and exploring Vancouver’s got in mind. We could be there in only a few months.”
“Yes, but if you used up Killiney’s money to hire a ship and then something went wrong, we’d be in worse shape than we’re in now,” she pointed out. “I don’t think it’s worth it. Like you said, we don’t even know if the potion will work.”
The fire popped and flared noisily. Paul leaned back on his elbows, stretched his legs across the carpet. “We’d be poor, wouldn’t we?”
“Worse than poor, or at least I would be.” She thought of all the historical movies she’d seen, Jane Austen chick flicks and Merchant Ivory films. “Women can only do what they want if they’re rich or beautiful,” she said with a sigh. “If I went off to America with you and I came back penniless and unmarried to boot, I’d be like a leper.”
By the way he looked at her, Ravenna thought for an instant that Paul might actually say she
was
beautiful. His eyes wandered comfortably over her face. “You’d be like those peasant women I saw in town, herding geese through the streets, wearin’ rags, and all on account of me rushing t’get home.”
“I don’t think James would let it get that far.”
“Yeah, but judging by the way I’m goin’, it seems I would.” Turning toward her a little, his knees just touched the edge of her dress as he gazed at her, fingers fidgeting with the carpet. “I’ve no idea how to be looking after you, have I? It never crosses my mind something could happen to you as well, I’m so busy worrying about myself and the woman.”
“You wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
He arched a brow. “I’d like t’think I wouldn’t, but you know, sometimes I’m a stubborn, self-serving bastard. Fiona, she’s what’s important, and sometimes I find myself protecting that at any price.”
“But I don’t understand, what are you protecting?” She asked this innocently, but then she realized its implications, what he’d taken it to mean. What
was
he protecting? A love that didn’t exist? A woman who seemed more than capable of looking after herself? “Why do you want to go back to her, Paul?” She watched him carefully, saw that fearful cast darken his features. “If she wants a divorce, why don’t you give it to her?”
It took a moment before he answered. “Because maybe, maybe without her, I don’t…” He faltered, struggling with the words, “Because—by myself—I don’t amount t’much, not really.”
“So you’re protecting
you
from losing her.”
“You have to understand, we grew up together. I’ve never known anything but Fiona. I mean, even when we were kids, I was putty in her hands, y’know?”
“So you can’t live without her?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “no I can’t, actually. She can see things about me that…that I haven’t even begun to realize, about what I’m doin’, the mistakes I’m makin’—”
“She sees you need a divorce, doesn’t she?”
Paul turned away. “In fact, there she’s wrong.”
“Are you sure?” Ravenna couldn’t help it, she touched his arm. “You’re in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, you know that, don’t you? Don’t you think you’d be happier if you let her go?”
“
No
.” After a few seconds, he glanced at her sheepishly. “Well, look at me,” he said. “I’m a mess, yeah? A couple of weeks without her and I can hardly function, for God’s sake.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you except how much you think you need her,” she told him. “I don’t believe you miss her half as much as you want to. What you miss is the idea of her, and according to your own story, that idea hasn’t been there for—”
He sat up abruptly, and Ravenna realized she’d hit too close to the mark. She let him alone for a moment. She’d gone too far, taken advantage of his trusting her, and he’d let her know as much in scowling at the fire.
His longish hair curled loosely on his shoulder and she found herself staring at it, thinking of how wounded he was by the truth. “You’re right,” she said finally. “I’d forgotten how happy you were in Dublin.” Of course, she didn’t think he’d been happy at all. She remembered his listless gaze in the bar before they’d spoken, before he’d left the table of his preoccupied friends. He’d been struggling with the pain of it even then, but she didn’t point this out. She let it go for his sake. They had enough to worry about as it was, and his wife wouldn’t be born for two hundred years.
“So what about Swallowhill?” she asked. “If you end up having to go back to Dublin, do you think Killiney has relatives? I seem to remember something about a niece.”
“You really believe Fiona’s the bad guy?”
Stubbornly, he couldn’t let the argument go.
“Paul, I didn’t say she was bad—”
“You think I’m paying for her courses and puttin’ up with her boyfriend an’ that because she’s a terrible person? What you don’t see is that
I’m
the bad guy. I’m late for dinner nearly every night. I’m completely hopeless with money, and I’m always making a fool out of m’self in public, so you see, I’m the problem, I’m the one you should be blaming. She’s only doin’ the best she can.”
“You’re covering for her,” Ravenna whispered. “You’re making excuses for what she’s done to you.”
“You don’t know the first thing about me.”
“I know you’re sensitive and you need someone who’ll appreciate that, not someone who’ll put you down for it.”
He paused. Whether it was because she’d surprised him with this flattery or angered him, she couldn’t tell, but Paul’s voice nonetheless was gruff when he answered, “Sometimes I need a good puttin’ down.”
“And that’s why you want to go home?”
“I want t’go home because I don’t want to stay here in fantasyland forever,” he said, staring at her with determination. “I mean, did it ever dawn on you that this might be a bit harder for me?”
“Paul, I know how you feel, I really do.”
“Yeah, it’s easy for you t’say that, isn’t it? You’ve not just had everything you believe in turned upside down. It’d be as if God had stepped out in front of you and offered to prove t’you that reincarnation didn’t exist. How would you feel?”
“I know it’s hard for you to be here, I do,” she said, “but you are here. You have to deal with that. It’s going to be a long time before you get home, if you ever do get home. For all we know, maybe you’re not even supposed to.”
Flash of rage, pain in the lines of his wearied face. “What kind of awful thing is that t’be telling me?”
“It’s just something you should think about,” she said. “Maybe Killiney is supposed to be there. Maybe the visions he had of your wife were precognitive, and they’ll fall in—”
“Oh, you’d really appreciate that, wouldn’t you? If I swallowed what you’re saying and just went along quietly?” He struggled to his feet, so roughly he messed up the carpet beneath his boots. “There’s no reason for me to even consider what you’re tellin’ me. You don’t know Fiona and you don’t know me.”
That twisted growl was meant to hurt her, his eyes like lightning, blazing and cold, but Ravenna didn’t move under his stare. “What will you do if I’m right?” she asked. “Kill yourself because you can’t live without her?”
He took a step backward, clumsy, careless. “I might,” he said, his lips thinned with anger. “Of course, I know I’d upset your plans. But hey, like you said—deal with it.”
* * *
With that, he turned and walked out the door.
He was only gone a moment before she heard the carriage outside, the jingling of harnesses and rumbling of wheels in the stable yard darkness. When the shouting began, she recognized James’s voice instantly, bellowing over the chatter of half a dozen servants who’d gathered to take the horses away.
Thinking of Paul and the argument they’d had, suddenly she was set to worrying. Paul was in no mood to see James now. What would he do if James were to confront him? Would Paul back down? Would he get himself killed after all?
She couldn’t even imagine the scenario, so she hurried through the hall to the dimly-lit passageway where James was just coming into the house. She expected to be yelled at then. James’s pace was no-nonsense brisk. He’d probably learned from the servants how Paul had refused to leave the premises, and now there’d be a fight, a duel,
a murder
.
Yet when Ravenna met his stare, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw: James’s face was a stern mask, almost an expression of disapproval, but those eyes, black and brimming with pain, gave away everything.
His father had died, she knew it immediately.
When he slowed a few yards away, she didn’t know how to handle him. His gaze shifted to the candles in the wall sconces. He reached for his brow, rubbed with a languor that went straight to her heart, and she couldn’t help whispering, “James, I’m so sorry…”
But before she could say another word, he’d pulled her up close with such a swiftness she didn’t have time to resist.
Held fast to that towering frame, it took her a moment to gather her wits. “I know how painful this must be for you,” she said into his waistcoat, “but I—”
“If you hadn’t warned me…” With his chin resting over her head, his words were a warmth in her hair as he continued, “We had two days together before he died…two days because of you.”
“You were with him?” she asked.
Loosening his hold, James stepped back with a terse nod.
Ravenna gazed up at him, thinking of how strange this all was. Unlike Elizabeth, she’d never had a brother, let alone one who hugged the way this one did. His sudden affection had completely disarmed her, and as she stood there before him, feeling the heat of his grip at her shoulder, she found herself fumbling for what to say next.