Authors: J. Jay Kamp
Glancing into his boyish face, she let him know it. “Am I supposed to be frightened?” she asked, leveling her gaze, steady and confident even though she smelled the whiskey on his breath.
He doesn’t really mean anything he threatens
, she thought. His hair looked soft. His eyes, rampant with bitter devotion, were a strange and morbid comfort to her, and feeling her grief dissipate into wonder over the way he looked at her with such dependency, Ravenna ventured a step nearer. “Do you want me to be frightened? Would that turn you on?”
Christian swallowed. His face squished into an uncomfortable frown, and she could see she’d affected him deeply. He
did
need her. He’d been telling the truth, and it was more than he could bear, being toyed with so, even worse when she pressed closer.
“Beloved, you tempt the devil,” he whispered. “You know not what you do.”
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” she asked. “Do you really want me to go with you?”
Staring at her like a deer in headlights, considering the way she inched toward him without fear, he gulped one last time before turning away. “You make a mockery of my love,” he muttered, and shoving back the dresses to reach Ravenna’s shoes beneath, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Of your own volition, without
him
, yes, I want you in London.”
“You’ll promise not to drink, to be nice if I go?”
Solemnly, slowly, Christian nodded, but he turned his eyes to the clothes-press shelves. “You’ll be home for the wedding, I promise you that much. In one fashion or another, by then I’m sure it will all be over.”
For the most part, Christian kept his word. Ravenna put away Paul’s malachite ring in favor of the diamonds he’d bought her in Hatton Garden, and from that night on, he believed in her acquiescence completely. Every time a duchess or a celebrated actress inquired about those diamonds, Christian became that much easier to live with.
Even so, with the places he took her to show off that ring, Ravenna was still miserable. She’d agreed to it, so she tried to have an open mind, but from one social function to the next it was always the same: ten or twelve boring, aristocratic know-it-alls dressed up to the nines in ridiculous clothes, arguing about the same subjects night after night while they ate and drank and lounged about. One evening it was the situation in France. Another night they couldn’t stop talking about some poor marchioness whom someone had seen in the ugliest gown.
Ravenna sat quietly as she’d been told, listening to these comments and watching her husband trash this marchioness’s reputation.
What do they say about me behind my back?
She only knew that when it came time for dancing, she was relieved to escape such tedious conversation and put her hand in Christian’s—a testament to the awfulness of their hosts, not to mention Christian’s newfound courtesy. She didn’t dance well, but that hardly mattered. Christian didn’t say as many nasty things when he had her in his arms. All he worried about was keeping his distance—that and maintaining a look of indifference.
In the end, he couldn’t manage it. As they twirled around the floor, more than once she glimpsed a smile creeping into Christian’s cheeks. She even caught him looking at her, and the love she saw in that instant, shining in his almond-shaped eyes without obsession but with pride, with affection, it moved her.
But he broke the spell by admonishing her, for she’d missed a step. It was as if he’d hoped to draw her attention away from the fact that she’d responded, that they’d shared something in that furtive glance.
And by day, she was responding. Christian took her to coffee houses. He took her to clubs. He took her to meet people whom he said were his friends, but who never showed up. Christian
asked
her to do these things. He wasn’t particularly nice about it, but at least he gave her the chance to say no. Since it was better than having him go off with Richardson to gamble at Brooks’s until six in the morning, Ravenna went where he took her gladly and she didn’t complain, didn’t grumble.
With the money he “should have waged on ponies,” Christian took her shopping in the West End where he made her try on dress after dress until he’d settled on something that made her “somewhat resemble Emma Hamilton.” She was given to understand he viewed this as a compliment since, soon afterward and wearing the new dress as requested, she was shown off in St. James’s Park on the appropriate day at the fashionable hour.
Christian swaggered around the grounds until nearly sunset, and finally Ravenna could stand no more. She asked if they could go back to the house, so she might give her son his bath.
Christian drowned out her request with coughing. “Must you embarrass me?” He glanced around nervously, making sure no one had heard her admission. “Only commoners actually bathe their own children. Now perk up, will you? Queensberry’s on his way over to see us and he’ll lend us money if he likes the look of you.”
They stayed at Hallett House, at Charing Cross, because Christian hadn’t enough money to rent rooms. James’s terms for the lease were simple—that Ravenna must write to him every day to prove she’d not been mistreated in London. In return, she’d receive his letters in kind, in which James kept her informed as to how the marriage plans were progressing, what he’d so far accomplished with his treatise, and when he’d be meeting with the Royal Society. Sir Joseph Banks, the society’s president, was coming to Wolvesfield, and as soon as their visit was completed, James said, he’d come to London. He’d be with Ravenna in two weeks’ time, and he’d kill Christian if she suffered so much as a paper cut.
But Christian had been polite, enthusiastic and, for the most part, pleasant. Not himself at all, really, and on the Thursday following their visit with Lady Salisbury, Ravenna began to be suspicious of the way his behavior had shifted from kindness to an altogether different level.
That Thursday there was a terrible storm. The rain beat down on London for hours, pouring from the waterspouts and the rooftop gutters in thick, fluid ropes. From behind the saloon curtains, she watched as the hawkers and newspaper vendors scattered under the sound of spring thunder, but in the distance she still heard the bells of the postman as he trudged through the puddles and the carriage traffic. Regardless of the storm, he’d bring James’s letter. He always did.
With the baby only halfway through one of his meals, Ravenna cut short his suckling and rearranged herself sufficiently to be seen by the postman. Christian usually got the mail, but that day he’d been skulking around in the bedroom upstairs, complaining about the dreary weather.
So thinking he hadn’t heard the postman’s bells, she propped the baby over her shoulder and negotiated the many rooms between the saloon and the front door. The baby was quiet, so she moved slowly, doing her best to keep him still. She knew the postman would wait at the door. Indeed, she heard his knock, but there was only one more tennis court-sized room to go, and she walked softly, so as not to upset the baby.
When she got to the entryway, she saw the front door standing wide open. The postman wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Instead, Christian stood with his back to her. Near his foot, smeared with rain, was a letter, surely James’s, and yet he paid no mind to it at all. He had something in his hands—another letter. Fast filling up with smudges from the storm, that bit of paper captivated Christian’s attention entirely.
He bent over it for a long moment, reading. Rain soaked through his outstretched sleeves, stained his waistcoat with splashes of dark. Still he stood there, seemingly unable to move but for staring at the words, and under the sound of passing coaches spattering water on the sidewalk, Ravenna thought she heard him whispering,
Not now, not yet
…
As the piece of paper dampened and withered in his hands, she stepped toward him. She reached out to gently tap his shoulder, to ask what was wrong. Yet before she could touch him, Christian had stepped out into the storm.
As if in a daze, he walked away. He lifted his face to the cloud-ridden sky, to the pounding of the rain, and even though she called out his name, Christian heard nothing but his own thoughts. He stepped off the curb. His arms fell limp at his slender sides as he drifted into the carriage traffic. That piece of paper, crumpled now against his thigh, slipped out of his hands and into the waiting puddles of the street as he stepped before horses, before phaetons rushing home.
She just caught sight of his shirt sleeves between hackney coaches rattling past, until finally, still shouting at the top of her lungs, she watched helplessly as he disappeared down St. Martin’s Lane.
She couldn’t go after him. She had the baby in her arms. All she could do was retrieve James’s letter while out in the street, Christian’s square of paper met with carriage wheels and horses’ hooves.
* * *
He didn’t come back until two in the morning.
Awakened by an awful banging at the front door, Ravenna rushed downstairs to let him in. Surely he’d be drunk. Nasty and selfish, he’d probably yell at her, rave about being locked out in the rain instead of whatever really bothered him, and she couldn’t help wondering,
What was in that letter, Christian? What could possibly frighten you so badly?
Yet with every step, each crash of the heavy door against the stone casing, she became more frightened at the thought of what she might find outside on the doorstep. The thud of the timbers resounded through the house. Each booming echo was interspersed with a beat of silence until halfway down the staircase, she realized just what he was doing. He wasn’t beating his fists against the door. He was beating
himself
against it, and hard—hard enough to rattle the chandeliers.
Oh God
, she thought, taking the steps faster as a flash of blue glanced off the paintings beside her. Thunder, loud as cannon fire, shook the house. It made the banister tremble under her hand, but when the sound died away, in its wake there came something even worse, something that affected her more than she liked: her name, over and over again. Christian was wailing it, and as he threw himself full force against the door, the need in his voice made her break into a run.
She reached the door, unbolted the locks. Her hands were shaking as he pounded from the other side, for he’d obviously been wounded, had fought some duel and come staggering home, only to bleed to death in the street…She talked to him through the oak as she envisioned such things, fighting the ancient bolts and telling Christian to hold on, that she was hurrying, that she’d send for a doctor and everything would be fine.
When finally she threw back the door, she gasped. Christian stumbled, fell to his knees. In the dim lamp light, she could just see the rain running down his smooth cheeks. His waistcoat was ruined, but there was no blood on him. He wasn’t wounded. His linen sleeves were soaked, clinging to his slight arms, and his hair, usually powdered and always drawn back, now hung dripping and loose about his shoulders.
Looking up, his brows crushed together in a grimace. “God forsake me, but I love you,” he said, his breath coming fast. “Whatever I’ve done, I’ve done it for you.”
“Are you OK?” She bent down, offered him a timid hand.
He pushed it away. “Will you lay me to rest?”
“Christian, I don’t under—”
“
Will you lay me to rest?”
His teeth were clenched, and with every fiber of his miserable being, he beseeched her, narrowed his eyes upon hers.
Ravenna straightened. There was whiskey on his breath, she could smell it now. “You’re drunk,” she said as gently as she could. “You’re not making any sense, and I don’t know what you mean by—”
“Put me out of my misery, will you?” His words were slurred as his eyes tore into her. “Tell me that you…that you
love
me, Ravenna. Do you? Could you just once say the words?”
Hearing this impossible request, she couldn’t move, even when his wet hands slipped into hers, urged her with a desperate grip. “
Please
, Beloved,” he said to her softly.
She forgot about Nootka then, about everything he’d ever threatened. She saw only his needfulness, the pain welling up in his big gray eyes as slowly, with the caution and care of a nun, she reached down and helped him to get to his feet.
Shutting the door against the rain, she put her arm around his waist; she led him toward the stairs, not minding the way he staggered and swayed. “Everything’s going to be fine,” she whispered. “You’re all right now, and I’ve—”
“
Tell me
,” he said, staring as they walked together. “If you don’t, I’ll go to my grave without your words.”
She stopped at the foot of the stairs. He leaned against her heavily, demanding an answer by refusing to look away, but she ignored him and made certain once more she’d not missed any blood, that he was well and unharmed.
“Would a wound prove my love?” he asked, watching her examine him. “Is that what you want? He requires no weapon, but I could draw one in his stead. I could finish it and you’d suffer me no longer, just let me die hearing those words.”
“Who needs no weapon?” She steadied him, watched him swaying beside her. “Christian, what are you talking about?”
The storm flashed and thundered again, and beneath the skylight, Ravenna saw the struggle in his coltish face. “He’s coming for me,” he said, swallowing heavily. “He’s coming and I shall burn in hell.”
“It’s Lord Oliver, isn’t it?” She remembered that night in London, the Cork man’s admission he hated Christian. “Or Andrew Richardson, I know you owe him a lot of money.”
He shook his head forcefully. “No no no,
death himself
.” Tears spilled down his twisted face, lingered at the corners of his down-turned mouth. “I love you so, but God forgive what I have done.”
And leaning down heavily into her arms, he kissed her.
Ravenna didn’t move. His lips pressed clumsily into hers, and she stood stock still as his blundering tongue pushed over her own, hard and thoughtless for anything but easing his own insatiable, insufferable pain. Listening to the rain on the skylight above them, she endured it, but her heart ached at the seams for what she held back, that long ago lingering of Paul’s jovial presence, his Irish faith and Irish desire.