Authors: J. Jay Kamp
Wiping the streaks from under her eyes, she tried to understand. “Why do you want this? Why do you even care what happens with him?”
That warmth to his gaze nearly flickered out then, like a flame guttered in the face of a storm, so that she wished she hadn’t asked.
“Because as much as I hate him,” and he paused, his jaw shifting again, “As much as I’d like t’beat the bleedin’ life out of him, I’m scared to death of what James says you’ve been like around here.”
It was James then, familiar and constant with that usual love to his deep, dark eyes, who finally made Ravenna give in. Seeing him there, she knew suddenly how he’d stood by and watched her all those months, helpless to stop her from letting Christian wear her down steady and sure. Where he leaned so still against the wall, James said nothing, of course. He watched her cower in Paul’s embrace, and with his gaze so heavy and quietly painful, James moved his mouth the slightest bit, as if he wanted to form the words but wouldn’t,
Do as he asks, Love, do what is best for all of us here
.
And knowing she’d do whatever James told her, at last Ravenna stepped back from Paul and turned toward Megan’s terrified face.
* * *
They followed the wet nurse, the four of them, and James explained that he’d long since sent for the surgeon in Dartmouth. When they’d first found Christian awake and alive, he’d done it then, but it wouldn’t help; Christian couldn’t survive. The surgeon has said so when he’d first packed the wound.
They talked amongst themselves in climbing the stairs, but Ravenna didn’t join them, couldn’t discuss Christian as if he were a horse about to be put down. She stared at Paul’s boots on the steps before her, the same boots he’d worn when Vancouver had forced him into the pinnace. With Sarah at her side, holding her up, all Ravenna could think of was that moment at Nootka when Christian had first laid down Paul’s watch, when he’d described so faithfully the way Paul’s skull had been stabbed right through with an Indian blade.
Let Christian die
, she thought.
Let him commit hari-kari and martyr himself, he can choke on his own blood for all I care
.
Yet when she reached the bedroom door, burning with these thoughts, unable to forgive, Ravenna gasped despite herself. No matter what she’d expected to feel in that moment, her anger absolutely couldn’t prepare her for the sight of what Christian looked like then.
He lay on the floor before the clothes-press, face-down and naked. The cabinet’s door stood open above him. Ravenna’s dresses and pointed silk shoes were strewn all around in a random mess, while her wedding ring lay just inches away from Christian’s slender, outstretched hand. His head was turned, so she couldn’t see his delicate features, just the blond of his hair, the bandage at his waist soaked through with red. Worst of all, permeating the carpet and running the length of the dusty floorboards, she saw Christian’s dark and thickening blood.
Sarah took hold of Ravenna with a gasp.
Pulling away from her, stepping around Paul in utter silence, Ravenna approached Christian’s unmoving form. She knelt down beside him and took his wrist. Warmth there, the hair on his arm soft beneath her touch, but…
There was nothing. No movement, no breath stirring through his lungs, just an unnatural stillness to his graceful bones.
She heard Paul’s boots behind her, but her thoughts were confused and swelling fast with the memory of Christian’s final words, how he’d cringed at the sound of Paul’s voice downstairs, the way he’d implored her with pitiful eyes to understand, to forgive.
Please remember always how I loved you
, he’d said, as if he’d already died, as if he’d chosen his end and knew he’d never say those words again.
Gently, she set down his lifeless arm. With a shaking hand, she pushed back the hair from his face. His jaw was slack. His blond head tilted at a ghastly angle. His eyes were shut, and as she ran her fingers mindlessly over his smooth temple and the end of his boyish nose, lost in the shock of it, at last she felt Paul’s hands come around her from behind.
“I’m all right,” she whispered as he leaned against her.
“You’re not,” she heard him say.
But as she stared senselessly at Christian, her thoughts shrouding over with languid pain, she noticed a shimmer of gold on the carpet, just beyond his reach, half buried beneath the silk of a dress.
The cap of the Indian potion’s vial, that’s what it was.
He’d taken the potion
.
David, I write this for you. As you’ll learn from my papers, history didn’t quite work out the way you told me. Paul isn’t dead, and I don’t pretend to understand the connection between your time and ours to know why your book says he should be. We’ve opted to keep him out of sight, but beyond that, I don’t know what we’ll do. Lie low for a while. Sort through Christian’s mess of an estate while pondering the ramifications of letting Paul’s survival out of the bag.
Which brings me to the reason I’ve left you these papers. You could prevent all of this. For Paul and me, for Christian and the tragic, selfish mistake he’s made, but most of all for you, to save yourself, because I know you’ll open James’s safe a month after I disappear and you’ll read my account of what’s happened here. David, come back and stay with us. Come back and tell me during those long, dismal months that Paul isn’t dead. Lay to rest that awful memory of Christian’s death you carry in your heart and
be
him, set his life to rights the way he never could.
Or remain in the future, it’s up to you. Perhaps Christian didn’t take your life. Maybe the transfer wasn’t complete. Or maybe, and I’ll never know for certain, just maybe the potion doesn’t work the other way.
Whatever you do—and Paul and I beg you this with the utmost gravity—
don’t let Killiney and Elizabeth drink the potion
. James will only hold them down until they drink it again. Paul brought enough of it from Nootka to send them back a dozen times, and you can tell them this, if you see them. And I’m sure you’ll see them, if you haven’t already, once you read these papers.
Tell them for us that we hope they didn’t run into Fintan on the way home from Christ Church Cathedral, and that we thank them for giving us their lives. They can have ours, with pleasure. Paul says the woman deserves no better fate than to be mastered over by an eighteenth-century rake.
You’re welcome to her, Killiney.
Ravenna Hallett
Wolvesfield
19 July, 1793
The End
###
J. Jay Kamp began The Ravenna Evans Series in 1992 after meeting her then-favorite author, Anne Rice, at a book signing. Inspired to write a novel herself, she combined her own childhood in the Pacific Northwest with her memories of a past life in 1790s England to create the world in which she wanted to live, a world where reincarnation, time travel and fate are all inextricably entwined. Along with her three furry children (cats), she now splits her time between her Washington State home and her family’s vacation cabin near Port McNeill, British Columbia, where she is currently brainstorming ideas for her next book.
All titles in The Ravenna Evans Series:
The Last Killiney
The Wager
The Bayman’s Bride
Nonfiction:
The Singer’s Wife: The Reincarnation of Mary Carter
* * *
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