Authors: J. Jay Kamp
* * *
She was in her boat. In a heavy morning fog, pulling away from the government dock at Mitchell Bay, she found herself aiming for Stubbs Island without radar, going by the compass on her dash.
Suddenly, ahead and toward the edge of her visibility, she glimpsed the roll of a Dall’s porpoise where it broke the water’s glossy surface. She killed the motor. Her wake washed at the boat’s transom as she stepped outside onto the deck. Seconds later, a soft whoosh of breath cut through the stillness. He was circling her. The porpoise’s white sides rushed in a blur beneath the black water as he made two more turns around her boat and then, with a hurried blow, he dove down deep.
She knew she wouldn’t see him again. Still she waited, listened carefully. She heard only murrelets in reply.
And then, as dreams are apt to do, what happened next both confused her and seemed perfectly reasonable. Christian stepped out of the boat’s cabin. Dressed in the same blue frock and bloody waistcoat, his coltish face was vivid with health as beside her he yawned, stretched his arms to the sky.
How did you survive?
she thought frantically.
And where have you been all this time while I’ve grieved for you?
“So how do you sail this thing?” Christian grumbled, looking around at the fishing rods in their stainless holders. “Beloved, why must I perpetually end up at sea? Why does God insist upon tormenting me?”
At the sound of his voice, Ravenna woke up. The dark light of a rainstorm fell on the bed from the window above. Behind her, against her back, she felt Christian’s body move ever so slightly as Megan answered him from the next room. “You’re awake,” the girl said. She scampered to the bedside, choked back her surprise in staring at Christian. “Should I send for the doctor? Should I bring m’Lord Wolvesfield to—”
“Please,” Christian asked, “what is the day?”
“Why it’s Tuesday, m’lord. I’ll fetch Sarah.”
Hurrying toward the door, she shouted Sarah’s name in the corridor outside. Her calls faded into the depth of the house as carefully, so she didn’t disturb him where he lay against her, Ravenna turned to look at Christian.
Seeming slight where he sank in the mattress, he lay on his back. His chest rose and fell with strength. There was color in his face, however faint, and his eyes, although heavy with pain, followed everything she did with tranquil attention.
He was still alive
.
In disbelief, Ravenna dared to lift her hand and brush the hair from his forehead. “I dreamt of you,” she told him softly. “You were in my boat. We were in the future.”
“It’s Tuesday,” he whispered, gazing up at her.
“Yes, you’ve slept through almost two days, and I must’ve slept through at least half that—”
But raising his fingers gently to her lips, holding her enrapt with aching, unfulfillable eyes, he murmured to himself, as if she were a portrait and couldn’t hear his words, “You’re so beautiful…” He let his touch linger, his throat constricting in a miserable swallow, until at last he turned away.
Ravenna didn’t move. She felt his fingers slip from her lips, fall back on the pillow.
Then Sarah came.
With slippers loud on the hardwood floor, the maid approached the bedside and pulled back the coverlet from Christian’s stomach. He didn’t look at her when she removed his bandage. Inspecting the wound, Sarah replaced it carefully before laying the back of her hand to his cheek. “I’ve somethin’ for the pain, if you want it, m’lord.”
Staring languidly at the green and white stripes of her gingham dress, Christian didn’t answer.
“Yes,” Ravenna said, breaking the stillness.
Sarah nodded, and covering him again, she lifted a worried brow at Ravenna. “You all right?”
She shrugged; given all that had happened, she wasn’t sure of the answer herself.
“You’d best come down to the kitchen,” Sarah said, “let James have a look at you.”
Ravenna hesitated. When Christian shifted in the blankets beside her, glanced at Ravenna with a listless gaze, sternly Sarah put out her hand. “Come on, then,” she said.
“In a moment,” Ravenna heard herself say.
The maid sighed, but she didn’t argue. When she’d gone from the room, Ravenna felt the weight of her disapproval lifted from the air until there was left only Christian and her, familiar and alone with a thicket of silence between them.
For several seconds, they did nothing but stare at each other. Then, outside in the drizzle of rain, she heard the dull staccato of a horse being ridden fast into the stable yard. Hearing it, too, Christian blinked, and with his serenity faltering at the sound, he drew in a long breath. “Ask me,” he said, his voice trembling, his eyes dropping from hers.
Ravenna bit her lip, let her attention wander to the window, to the treetops swaying in the breeze outside, to anything other than the memory of what he’d done, for that’s what he meant.
Ask me why I tried to rape you
, he was saying.
Ask me the reason I wanted James to kill me
.
“Please,” Christian said, “I haven’t the courage to tell you unbidden.”
She thought then of how he’d kissed her in London, desperate and awkward and trying so hard, and in the carriage, how his hatred had shattered under her touch. She’d refused him, she’d teased him, and never once had she said those three little words, no matter how much he’d begged her. Now where he lay awaiting her blame, he expected her to deliver him the final blow. “I know why you did it,” she said.
With the smallest of movements, he shook his head. “You don’t. What I’ve done to you, it goes beyond what you know.”
“And what have you done?”
Licking his lips, his eyes drifted aimlessly, further still from meeting hers.
“Christian?” she asked.
“I’ve stolen nine months of your life,” he whispered. “I’ve nourished your grief with lies and basked in your company like a wolf among sheep and it’s wrong, Beloved. I’ve so mortally wronged you…
both of you
.”
There came then the sound of porcelain smashing to the floor downstairs. Ravenna shivered. Something terrible would leave his mouth, she could sense it, that nameless dread of his given form and substance to frighten her the way that he’d been frightened, ever since that night he’d left in a daze.
“Both of
who?”
she asked, barely breathing.
His heavy gaze moved across the room, and then suddenly his lips pursed. Shouting downstairs, somewhere in the basement kitchen. Ravenna heard it only faintly, but Christian’s eyes grew wide with fear. “He’s here.” Holding his head off the pillow, pupils darting, Christian listened as the shouting faded and the house quieted into the sound of the rain.
“Who is?”
His attention shifted toward the door, as if nothing existed but the mysterious danger he envisioned downstairs. “Do you love me, Ravenna?” He stared at the painted oak. “Do you care for me even a little?”
Smoothing back his flaxen hair, she pushed him gently down on the bed. “Nobody’s going to hurt you. It’s probably the surgeon come back to check on you, it’s been two days since he—”
“Please, Beloved,
do you love me?”
He looked at her then, imploring her, but she didn’t want to say it, not even if she’d felt it for a smattering of an instant when he’d lain in her arms, losing his life before her eyes. Still Christian waited, cowering in dread, until finally she summoned the courage to lie. “Yes,” she said. “Of course I love you. I know I shouldn’t, but—”
“Then go downstairs and tell him I’ve died a hideous and painful, rightful death,
please
, Beloved. Should you care for me at all, save me from him, save me from having to look on him again.”
“Whoever you think is out there won’t be able to get past James, and James won’t—”
“Don’t you see? He’ll send me to hell, he said as much. He’s come halfway round the world to deliver his vengeance and I can do naught to prevent it.”
With these words, she knew.
He was talking about the letter
. The fear in his face was exactly the same, missing the rainwater running down his cheeks and his waistcoat soaked from the storm but no more, he was just as he’d been in London that night, just as he’d been every night since in the midst of his madness.
He’s coming for me and I’ll burn in hell
.
For Christian, death himself was downstairs.
“The letter,” she said. “Who sent you the letter?”
Instantly his eyes shot back to hers. In a panic, he studied her, gauging, guessing, watching her every movement until, turning his head away on the pillow, he ripped his gaze from hers and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. “More than one, Beloved. God forsake me, he sent you three and I destroyed them all.”
Reaching for his fingers, she pulled his hand away from his eyes. “The letter was for me?”
Terror, absolute and cringing the corners of his pitiful expression, that’s what she saw while somewhere in the rooms below, urgent voices echoed through the house.
“The letter you left in the street was for
me?”
“Yes,” he said, swallowing hard.
Closer, clearer, downstairs the urgency grew into shouts, a woman’s voice hysterical and screaming for James.
Sarah’s voice
, she realized, and beside her, Christian convulsed at the sound, but Ravenna couldn’t relent now, not when she was so close to learning his secret.
“Who sent it?” she asked.
“Please, Beloved, understand that—”
“
Who is it that’s coming for you?”
“—That I couldn’t bear to lose you,” he whined. “How was I to tell you, after what I’ve done to you both? That he’ll kill me is
nothing
compared to the way you both shall look at me, and had James done his duty, I should never see it, God how I wished to never see this day.”
“Someone wants to kill you?”
Christian’s eyes rolled back in his head.
“It’s Richardson, isn’t it? He wants his money, he wrote to me for money, didn’t he?
Didn’t he?”
Ravenna shook him hard, trying to get some semblance of an answer, but he merely lay still beneath her hands, his eyes shut fast against her. “Christian, how can I hide you if you don’t tell me what’s happening?”
“There can be no hiding from the righteous.”
“Listen to me, whoever it is, I’ll go downstairs and pay them off, I’ll give them Launceston if I have to, just tell me who they are and what you did to them, all right? What did you do that made someone come to kill you?”
Silence downstairs. Slowly, Christian turned his head toward Ravenna and lifted those thick, brown lashes. “I deserted him,” he said, his lower lip quivering.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I listened to his fears and devotions for the length of a night, then I left him in that wretched, barbarous place to die like an animal.”
“Christian, I don’t know what you’re—”
“I viciously
betrayed
him, actually,” he went on, trembling heavily now. “He was too weak from his wounds to escape, so he made a diversion and sent
me
, trusted
me
to bring back James and the marines, but when you found me, Beloved…”
A dark dread stole over her heart. “
Vancouver’s
marines?”
“I had every good intention, before God, I swear I did, but had you known, had you recovered him, you’d have taken him in my place, you’d have left me to fester and rot with those Spaniards and married him without another thought.”
She couldn’t believe. She didn’t dare believe
.
But without seeing, drowning fast in the shock of what he’d said, she forced the question from her mouth. “
Paul’s alive?”
Another crash downstairs. Something heavy clattering to the floor, and then there came a desperate cry that tore into her soul, thick and tortured and breaking with pain, carried up the stairwell on a flood of emotion. She dropped Christian’s hand. She reeled from the sound, for that voice, familiar as her every dream, hurting her ears with tangible, unimaginable life, that voice calling her name was
his
.
“I’m sorry,” Christian whispered, sucking in the words with a fearful gasp. “I love you, Ravenna, please remember always how I loved you.”
Thrashing, someone clambering wildly up the stairs and before she could even think, she turned away from Christian’s plea; she listened while in a desperate scuffle, down the passageway footsteps raced, slid to a stop outside her door.
The handle turned. The door flew open.
And there was Sarah’s face, bright from running, her eyes a mixture of elation and worry. She stepped cautiously into the room, her hair loose and hanging thick about her cheeks, her hands held out toward Ravenna’s. “Come here,” she said, beckoning to her. “Give me your hand, let me get hold o’ you before I go tellin’ you—”
Again downstairs that voice came raging, battering the stillness, screaming her name.
In an instant, Ravenna had leapt from the bed and heedless of Sarah’s hold on her, she’d made for the door, fighting the maid, pushing against her even as Sarah urged her to reason. “You’re not fit to go rushin’ about, you’ll hurt yourself, you’re in no fettle for such a shock—”
But Ravenna broke past her, ran down the passageway and aimed for the staircase; nearer and deeper into the house, she rushed after that familiar voice, her heart bludgeoned by hope, so frightened she was that this was all a misunderstanding, a hallucination born of Christian’s madness until, clearing the final landing, Sarah’s pleadings yielded to James’s shout. “Do you wish her harm?” James demanded. “It’s too much for her, she’ll fold at the sight of you, she hasn’t the strength to—”
When she reached the corridor, James fell silent.
One of the marble busts in the passage had toppled to the floor. The servants, all of them, cowered in a huddle near the back stairs entrance while James, breathing heavily, stood in the great hall’s open doors not twenty feet away, his black hair come loose from its ribbon, his coat half off his broad shoulders, and bent over with straining arms he struggled to contain, fighting and alive with eyes so blue…