Chapter Nine
It was just getting light when Ravenna awoke.
Paul, she thought, for even though he’d slept between the uppermost blankets, he lay so close she could feel the heat of his body against hers. He still wore his trousers and even his socks, but despite all his care and the barrier between them, his face was only inches from hers.
Such an innocent face. His hair was messed across his brow. Tiny wrinkles edged the corners of his eyes. His freckles seemed darker and more numerous somehow beneath the whiskers now shadowing his jaw, and she wondered, what would he shave with? A straight razor? A knife?
Then she noticed his fingers, that his wedding band had disappeared. Better not mention it, she thought, nor that his turquoise ring was gone. In its place, on his little finger, was something similar—a malachite stone set with gold rather than silver. Admiring it, she touched the ring, his masculine hand where it lay on the pillow; he didn’t wake up, not even when she curled her fingers in his. Amazed at how hard he slept, she couldn’t resist smoothing his hair, touching the curious blond of his brow. There’s a chance now, she thought, a real chance to win you if we have to stay here, if we can’t get back.
It wasn’t long until she was jolted from her reverie. She heard movement upstairs. Someone was walking in the corridor, coming down the main staircase, and it wasn’t a woman’s walk at all, surely not Sarah’s. With the sound of muffled voices drawing nearer, Ravenna began to get nervous, even more so when someone threw open the great hall’s doors with a clatter and crossed the room with heavy boots.
Paul slept through the whole thing.
Not knowing what else to do, she shook him, tried to wake him up. All messed and ruffled and thoroughly confused, he lifted his head, half-opened his eyes.
“Someone’s coming,” she whispered, “and if he has black hair, he’s my brother James, OK? Act like Killiney…like a jerk or something.”
She jumped off the bed, slid under it as fast as she could. She pulled the bulk of the dress in behind her. When she saw those boots come through the door, she held her breath, tried not to move lest the rustle of silk give her away.
“You’re just waking up?” she heard a voice ask. The boots approached the bed, and she heard the sounds of Paul stirring among the sheets, felt the mattress move above her head. “You’ve forgotten our appointment,” the voice observed flatly.
She heard Paul say, “Oh, is that today?” with an uncertainty she prayed James wouldn’t question.
“Yes, today,” the voice replied. “Where’s your mind, anyway? As if I couldn’t guess. Mr. O’Brien! Come dress this man and be quick about it, please.”
She saw the boots stride out the door, saw Paul’s feet swung over the side of the bed as a pair of red shoes shuffled into the room. The instant James was gone, this servant, obviously O’Brien, began to apologize in the heaviest brogue for letting James in without warning his master.
His master wasn’t listening. “He’s gone,” Paul said, his voice husky from sleep as he peered under the bed.
Clutching the neckline of the shirt she’d been given and hoping its length covered everything else, Ravenna cowered beneath the mattress. “I know.”
“This guy here, he’s an Irishman.” He gestured toward the red-slippered feet. “He’s on our side.”
She nodded impatiently. She fingered the bundled-up dress beside her, tried to figure out how to get into it without coming out from under the bed. “Could you…,” and she looked toward those crimson shoes, hoping Paul would get the idea.
Thankfully he did. He straightened, asked the servant for a moment alone. “All right now,” he said, walking toward the window, “you can come out if you’ve a mind to. I’m looking at seagulls.”
Slipping out from under the bed, she only glanced at Paul long enough to assure herself he wasn’t cheating. She stepped into the dress, and as soon as she’d covered herself enough to feel comfortable, she muttered her consent for him to turn around. When he did, when she saw his outstretched arms and the flash of silver in the window’s light, she gasped in surprise.
Paul held a sword in both rugged hands.
David’s sword, she recognized it at once with a flush of foreboding. Heavy and double-edged, it shone with the color of the overcast sky just as it had when David had held it. The guard over the weapon’s hilt curled back in the same tremendous scroll. Its four-foot length seemed massive and cumbersome, and yet in Paul’s grasp it somehow looked right; as if her mind registered more than she saw.
She realized then she’d been mumbling to herself, transfixed by the blade, because Paul was staring at her. “David was right,” she said.
“He’s yer man the marquess? Right about what?”
“That this sword killed Christian, or will when he eventually fights his duel. David said it belonged to Killiney and it does.”
A strange expression came over Paul’s face. Even before she’d finished her sentence, she saw him lower the sword; emotion surged in his narrowed eyes, pain, apprehension, and before she could question this startling reaction, suddenly he turned. “So what should I do?” he asked, laying the weapon next to its scabbard, next to the clothes the servant had put there.
Picking up the frock coat, she urged him to put it on. “Go with James,” she told him softly. His movements were sluggish when he slipped on the coat, so she helped him, said, “Come on, he’s waiting and I wouldn’t keep him if I were you.”
Indeed, when she turned to the window, she saw Killiney’s stallion and another horse saddled and standing just inside the stable door. A servant was holding them, keeping their tack from the inclement weather. When the man lifted his eyes toward the house as if to greet someone, Ravenna jumped back.
James was out there.
Instantly, she forgot Paul’s sword. James was an impressive sight. Even if he’d not worn a two-cornered hat, he still would have towered over the servant beside him. Added to this was his intimidating appearance: James’s clothes were black. His boots were black. His hair was shiny and, just as Ravenna’s visions had shown her, gathered in a jet-black, businesslike queue. His skin was deeply tanned by the sun—a strange complexion for an English aristocrat—and he appeared so exotic in the light of the storm, so severe and concise, that Ravenna felt a jolt of fear when he turned and looked toward Killiney’s window.
She trembled behind the curtain. Knowing of their affair as James clearly did, he might have been hoping to catch her there, to charge her with wantonness. The last thing she wanted was to be questioned by an enormous disapproving brother.
By then Paul had finished dressing, was struggling with the linen draped at his neck. “What is this thing, anyway?” he asked, and it was all Ravenna could do to keep from reaching for his hands and taking up the linen herself.
“I think it’s called a cravat,” she said. “Tomorrow you can have your valet dress you, and then you won’t need to know what it’s called.”
“Why isn’t he doing it now?” Paul sniffed, nodded toward the door with a frown. “He’d probably be faster, and that fellah—James is it? I’ll be up to my oxters in trouble if he’s not the patient type.”
She couldn’t stand it then. She took up the cravat from him, began tucking the ends into his waistcoat. “You’re afraid of James? After fighting those hoodlums on the train by yourself?”
“Seven feet tall, shoulders a yard wide…He could snuff me just by lookin’ at me. And I’ve no doubt he will.”
“James wouldn’t fight, he’d use his sword.”
“And that’s supposed to comfort me, is it?”
Straightening his coat, she noticed its skirts were cut at the sides, probably to accommodate that ominous weapon. She glanced back at where it lay on the bed, remembering David’s description of the heavy fog in front of the house, of Christian dying in the dawn’s gray light. Following her gaze, Paul shook his head. “I’ll skewer myself if I pack that thing around.”
“Well, you??
?re going to have to get used to it,” she said, reaching for the scabbard. “You’re right handed, aren’t you? Then it goes on the left.” She offered him the belt, watched as he fumbled with putting it on. When he’d finished, had reluctantly resheathed the sword, she dared to slip her hands beneath his waistcoat and tug the whole affair a little more to one side.
Stepping back to look at him, she appraised her work. “All right,” she said, “are you missing anything or can you keep your appointment?”
“Hat,” Paul muttered. “It’s pouring outside.”
“And a coat, I think.” Going to the door, she called the servant and asked him to bring whatever was suitable. Paul fidgeted as they waited, ever glancing at the window, until at last O’Brien carried in a wide-brimmed hat and a woolen coat.
Paul didn’t put them on right away. Instead, rather sullenly, he lowered his eyes, turned the hat over with hesitant hands. “We’re never gonna get out of here, are we?”
There was that expression again, that aching in his eyes as if he’d have Ravenna know it, Fiona and Fiona, always Fiona. “If I could send you back, I would,” she said, watching his gaze deepen and stir. “Just try not to think about it for now, OK?”
“You really would, wouldn’t you? You’d send me back to her?”
“Of course I would,” she told him tenderly. “Now come on, James is waiting in the stable.”