* * *
When she came to, pandemonium surrounded her. The boatswain was shouting at the top of his lungs; sailors were chattering, paying no attention to the boatswain’s demands; Vancouver was arguing violently with James, whose deep-timbred tone rose above the seamen’s voices in a string of raging, brutal threats.
Through it all, she heard a soft Irish accent counting in a litany of desperation while a fist pumped hard into her sternum. “…Thirteen…fourteen…fifteen. Breathe—”
She felt the frantic pressure of Paul’s lips against hers, the sudden force of his breath pushed into her, and reflexively she sucked it in. Her fingers scratched for purchase on the deck. In a fit of coughing, trying to inhale, she choked on the water in her lungs, and when she opened her eyes, Paul’s counting stopped.
Where he knelt over her, his lips, stained dark with cold, were near to hers. His hair was slicked back, and the lines in his haggard, frightened face were running with rain, with salt water when he stroked her forehead thoughtlessly and calmed her into a settled breathing.
She tried to sit up, but Paul didn’t let her. He curled his arm around her back. Lifting her quickly, he handed her into James’s embrace, and she was swung around, dripping, carried toward the companionway even as Paul staggered off with fists clenched.
Disoriented as she was, she twisted in James’s grip. She tried to see Paul’s face among the sailors, catch a glimpse of him approaching Vancouver, but she saw nothing but the ship closing over her head, heard nothing but Sarah’s urgent whisper, “In the cabin, Jem. We’re gettin’ her out o’ those wet clothes first.”
“I’ll kill him,” James growled.
“You won’t,” Sarah told him, and with the maid’s hands firmly clasping her arms, Ravenna was lowered to the floor of her cabin and hastily undressed.
She felt them tugging at her. Still, they seemed far away, so insensible she was at that moment. Above her on deck, she heard the scuffling of sailors’ feet and the occasional thump of something hitting the planks. Fearing the worst, she called out Paul’s name, but her own voice seemed a distant sound. James and Sarah ignored her completely in the midst of their panic, and as her consciousness darkened and strengthened again, she wondered if she’d called out at all.
Once Sarah had freed her of sopping clothes, the maid pulled a chemise over her head before helping James to wrap her up snugly. In her dazed condition, Ravenna found it difficult to focus her eyes; when James noticed this, he took her hand. “Love, I need you to try and stay alert,” he said, squeezing her fingers. “Just keep your eyes open ’til I come back, all right?”
Yes, she wanted to say, go to Paul, bring Paul, but her thoughts quickly muddled when James told Sarah to hurry and light the galley stove.
As the two of them left, she tried not to shake so fiercely, tried to concentrate as James had asked her to do. The sound of the commotion on deck had gained momentum, and now as she listened, the trouble came closer and louder above her head with the pounding of bare feet and officers’ boots. Shouting—no, cheering—resounded through the planking until she thought she heard the thunderous timbre of Vancouver’s voice.
Paul, she thought, but as she sucked in his name on an anxious breath, there cut through the din a thickened, crumpling thud of a noise. The ship’s lumber shook. Then, but for the ordinary creaks of sailors’ walking, all fell quiet and she heard nothing more.
When James returned and bent over her, he took her blanket and all to the galley. He didn’t say anything, but she knew what had happened. She could see every swing of Paul’s fist, every vindictive glare he’d given Vancouver, all of it in James’s expression.
Still, before the galley fire, in the cramped space there between kegs and barrels, her thoughts drifted. The air began to warm. James held her close. As he stroked her shoulders with absentminded affection, she clung to him, soothed by the depth of his voice. Something about England he was talking about, Wolvesfield and the smell of a summer garden in the rain, his mare Magazan whom he’d brought from Spain and now bitterly missed…
“Do you miss your home in the future, Ravenna? Will you not miss me, once you’ve gone back?”
Drowsy now, finally stilled of shivering, she looked up into his wide-set eyes. “Paul doesn’t want to go back,” she said.
He frowned, regarded her carefully. “So you’ll stay here with me? Even if he finds the potion?”
When she nodded, he gazed at her for a long moment. His hand strayed from her shoulder, slipped down her back in a trail of warmth. Without even thinking, she snuggled closer.
“Good,” he said finally. Cradling her head, he pulled her tight beneath his chin.
Somewhere above decks a drum beat a slow roll.