The Last Killiney (31 page)

“Lord Killiney, Sir!”

Ravenna jumped. Turning beneath the warmth of Paul’s hand, she scanned the deck for Captain Vancouver. Instead, she saw only a handful of sailors straining to hoist the pinnace from the gallows; they were obviously having trouble, and in the midst of the fight, Mr. Whidbey turned a scowl toward Paul. “Mightn’t you lend a hand, Sir?” he called, and when Paul didn’t move, “I say, look alive, my lord! Do you need askin’ twice?”

Without even a parting glance, Paul disengaged himself from her arms. He hurried to Whidbey’s side, and as he helped the men raise the pinnace, Ravenna was left on her own at the railing, struggling to recover from what he’d just said.

Had he meant it? Was he teasing her? Or did he really plan on making love at last?

As she stood there worrying, shaking in her shoes, at least ten minutes passed before she realized Christian had disappeared.

That afternoon, Paul set up their tent at the easternmost end of Ravenna’s island, close to the beach where her house had been. While she dug into their supplies for dinner, Paul spent the evening with his shirt off, chopping driftwood, splitting it into manageable pieces, hauling it up from the beach to their tent.

When he’d finished, he put his shirt back on and took the plate Ravenna gave him. No kisses. No meaningful glances full of longing and need, just “Thank you, Honey” and “Not biscuit again?”

Because of this, she’d fallen into a sullen mood. Sitting before the fire with his back to the beach, Paul seemed a thousand times more attractive than he’d ever seemed before, and yet it hurt Ravenna to look at him. For all his advances, his lustful attention and wandering hands on deck that morning, he showed no such interest now. Instead, he was serene. He gazed at the fire for minutes on end. Though his words for her were soft, they lacked the note of invitation that had earlier been so blatant in his every glance, every brush of his muscular body against hers.

So she got up and went to her knapsack. She hunted through her things until she’d found a comb and a pair of scissors. Where he sat with his legs stretched out, Paul kept pushing the hair from his eyes; it was too long, he’d said. Though Ravenna had seen him toss it back a million times in the course of the voyage, now alone with him, wondering if his feelings had changed, the sight of this gesture sent a current of need through her body that she couldn’t explain. He seemed so dejected, his eyes so distant beneath that mane. She
had
to do something. She couldn’t just watch him for four more days.

“Hey, you,” she said. “If you want me to cut your hair, we’d better do it now before it gets dark.”

“You’re going to cut it all off, aren’t you?” Agreeable he was, without a hint of reluctance. He pulled himself up from the ground and, taking a seat on a nearby log, he fixed her with a stern look. “You know if you cut it too short, the lads’ll be teasin’ me for months.”

“Well, we’re only a few hundred miles from Nootka,” she said, starting in on the mess of his locks. “You won’t have to put up with them for long.” Mindful of the way her fingers brushed his neck, she combed through his hair, thoughts reckless with trying to figure him out.
He’s not angry
, she told herself.
So will he revert to his former charm? Sweep me into his arms now that I’m near?

He merely sat tranquilly under her hands, moving only to look up now and again. “This has been a really short year, hasn’t it?”

Ravenna wasn’t in the mood for small talk. Still, when he reached up to take a lock of her hair, she had to pay attention. He caressed the strand gently between his fingers. He lifted it to the fading light, and when the back of his hand brushed against her breast, Ravenna found herself leaning into his touch, barely listening as he spoke to her. “Your hair’s even longer than mine,” he said. “Guess when you’re workin’ an’ that, you don’t notice the time.”

“You must be the hardest working man on the ship.”

He caught her eye with a quizzical expression. “Are you trying t’tell me something?”

She pulled the comb through a difficult tangle and moved around to stand beside him. “Well,” she said, setting the comb down and picking up the scissors, “I’ve got James who takes better care of me than he does his own girlfriend. I’ve got Christian whose hands always stray to my rear whenever you’re not looking, and I’ve got a boat full of sailors who give me visual invitations on a daily basis in the hopes I’ll finally give up on you.”

There was a moment’s pause before Paul answered. “I’d no idea,” he said to her softly.

She tilted his chin in an effort to keep her work straight. He hadn’t shaved in two or three days. In her fingers, his jaw was rough and wonderfully, complaisantly supple, but she tried not to think about how tempting it felt, touching him in such a familiar fashion.
He’d no idea?
She didn’t believe that, not even for a second.

And many of those passed as she set to work in earnest, pulling the length of his hair taut, hacking it off at collar level. It fluttered over her hands in the breeze and fell away, victim of her doubts and misgivings.
He’s changed his mind
.
He’s trying to find a way to get out of this gracefully
. Bringing the length up short to his neck, evening up the ends, when finally she spoke, she couldn’t keep herself from raising the real issue. “So if you didn’t see everybody making passes at me, what have you been thinking about? Fiona I suppose?”

Paul glanced up with serious eyes. “You know better.”

“Do I?”

“You don’t honestly believe we’ve not made love because of the woman?”

“Do you want me to layer the top?” she asked, ignoring his tone. “Or do you want to leave it all one length?”

“Layer it, I guess; answer the question.”

She moved around to the front of him, and here she did her best to give his hair some twentieth-century shape. She cut his bangs long, below his pale brows. She layered the rest so it pushed back in a sloppy wave from his face, but all the while she was thinking about that long ago day, that one moment in Dublin when she’d seen Fiona with her own eyes.

Paul gazed at her steadily as she worked. His attention was unnerving, waiting as he was for her to answer.

“How should I know what goes on in your head?” she said at last. “If it’s not Fiona, then what is it? Why have we been together all this time and still nothing’s happened?”

“You’re telling me you’ve been wantin’ to get it done with a hundred and thirty-one randy men constantly within earshot?”

She pushed back the layers of his russet hair, arranged it tousled this way or that. He looked so much better with it short, as if cutting away the length revealed the essence of the man beneath.
He’s beautiful
, she thought, ruggedly gorgeous, and still he wasn’t hers, wasn’t beckoning her the way she’d always imagined, undressing her with strong and possessive hands.

“We could at least kiss or something,” she said. “James and Sarah kiss, I know they do, and Christian says they—”

Her fingers stopped in midstroke behind his ear. He was staring at her, and what she saw in his face made her heart turn over. Arresting, translucent, his eyes were wells of fathomless emotion. It was as if she’d awakened him, as if he’d been terribly hurt by something she’d said. His brows were tilted in a frown, and his lips, opened the smallest bit, seemed poised to speak, but he didn’t. Or couldn’t.

A wave of anxiety swept through her. “What is it?” she asked, and knowing by the needfulness and trust in his gaze that he wanted it, craved it, she smoothed back his ruffled hair. She let her hand stray behind his neck, and still Paul said nothing.

Then suddenly he moved, and Ravenna gasped when he leaned into her arm, rubbed his face all along her wrist and down into her open palm. His bangs fell across his furrowed brow. She felt the silver of his sailor’s earring against her fingertips, the firmness of his jaw, the brush of his lips as he closed his eyes tight, and while she stood there holding him, she saw complete abandonment in his expression. It frightened her. Or more correctly, it frightened her that she didn’t know what she’d done to bring about such a penitent reaction. He was submissive in every imaginable way as he waited, clasping her hand to his face, until she couldn’t remember when she hadn’t seen him so, couldn’t remember his flirtatiousness, his silliness of months past.

“Paul?” she asked softly.

“You smell good,” he whispered, his lips parted against her skin.

“What’s wrong with you tonight? What did I say?”

Slowly, with the reluctance of a child, he withdrew. He let go her hand. “You said we should kiss,” he murmured, and when he raised his eyes to hers, Ravenna saw pain in them, even as he tried to smile. “It’s just that,” and he paused, gathering his words, “It’s that I hadn’t really realized how it would hit me when the time actually came.”

“The time for what?”

There was a mist to his eyes when he answered. “For us to make love. For me to ruin the very thing I love about you.”

She wouldn’t have believed him if it weren’t for his deathly serious face. He looked away from her. He lifted his hand to the back of his neck, and she knew he wasn’t joking then; he reached behind his ear in a completely unconscious, anxious reaction, the way he always did when he was nervous.

Closing her fingers around his, she gently removed his hand. “You’re not going to ruin me.”

“Things will never be the same again,” he said. “I can’t ever go back and be what I was t’you the day we first met.”

“And that’s why you’ve waited?”

He looked down at her hand in his. With his other hand, in a gentle sweep he stroked his fingers down the length of hers, over the malachite ring he’d given her, and his words were soft, imploring when he spoke. “You’ve never had a lover, yeah?”

“I’ve hardly ever even kissed a man, let alone…” But even now she couldn’t say it. He was her friend, her protector, the object of her lust, but with his fingertips lightly tracing a path over her skin, she still couldn’t fathom it, that he might touch her like that everywhere.

He was watching her carefully. “Don’t you think I know that?” he whispered. “Don’t you think maybe this is why I’ve been waitin’, t’give us a chance to know one another?”

“We could’ve really known each other by now.”

“But how would we know each other? Always in the dark, in the crow’s nest or the bilges, and I could never say t’you one word while we were doin’ it? Maybe that’s all right for James an’ Sarah, but I’m Irish, I won’t be able t’keep my mouth shut. The last thing we need is for Vancouver to find out. He’s made it very clear what’ll happen if I’m caught with my trousers down.”

“So the reason you haven’t kissed me is because of Vancouver?”

His lips broke into a self-conscious smile. “I haven’t kissed you because once I got started, in New Zealand an’ that, I didn’t seem t’be able to stop. Now I’d never have gotten any work done that way, would I?”

“James gets his work done.”

The smile faded from Paul’s face, and he looked down at her hand again, gave it a squeeze. “Yeah, well, James has a few years to make up for.”

“So do I.”

“Look, when those two first made love in London,” he said, “I was still gettin’ over my wife, you know that. James an’ Sarah didn’t spend their first night with the lads listening outside their door. It just seemed best for everyone if you and I didn’t become intimate right away. I think it even did me some good to be without a woman’s touch for a while, just to be, you know,
me
. I’ve never done that before.”

“And now?”

“Now?” He took in a deep breath, expelled it slowly as he gazed at her, his eyes filling up with that same dire surrender. “Now we’re both ready. And now everything has to change.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

He glanced at the fire before answering, unsure of himself, his fingers moving unconsciously in hers. “Because maybe…maybe when it comes right down to it, I’m scared of messin’ things up with you.”

“With me? But why?” She took her hand out of his. She pushed back his bangs, ran her fingers through his silky-soft hair. “Paul, you couldn’t mess things up with me if you wanted to. You don’t have anything to be scared about.”

“But if we’re livin’ as man and wife, it’s only a matter of time before it all wears off. The spell will be broken. And then I’ll just be
that guy
, the one who takes out the trash or whatever.”

“But I’m not Fiona.”

He only squared his jaw, shaking his head as he looked away.

“So this is it?” she asked. “This is why you haven’t made a pass at me?”

“Ravenna, there’s so much I want t’say to you.”

“Then say it.”

“OK then, do you really want t’know how much I love you?”

A shock went through her, to hear those words. Staring at him with her heart beginning to pound, she could make no answer, but he went on earnestly. “That you’re scared,” he said, reaching for her sleeve, “and indeed, even now you’re scared, it means
so much
to me. I’ve only t’look at you and I can see it in your face that you love me, and I
never
saw as much in Fiona’s face, not ever. Not even when we were kids, but you, you’ve always looked at me like that. Even the very first night we spent together, at Wolvesfield when you were fussin’ over that nightgown, all embarrassed about what we’d done—”

“You liked that?”

“You were so worried about what I thought of you. Course I loved it. I loved t’see you wriggle, just like you’re doing now.”

“I’m not wriggling.”

He looked at her as if he knew better. And to demonstrate, he lifted his hands to her hips and pulled her forward, wrapping himself around her until she was encircled by his strong, warm arms. He pressed his face against her belly, and through her shirt, Ravenna felt the roughness of his whiskers, the firm, hard line to his jaw.

“You are,” he said, pulling her closer, nearer between his parted knees. “Flirting an’ that comes easy to me, but to you…it’s a very powerful thing, especially when you seem t’think I should be like those guys on the ship, that I should be wantin’ t’get it done the minute we’re alone.”