The Last Killiney (5 page)

There seemed only one sure way to find out.

She started reading.

Chapter Four

Wolvesfield House, Devonshire, 1790

What had Elizabeth done to deserve it?

After two years abroad, her so-called brother had come home for a stay in the country to irk her father; as if this weren’t enough—and believe that Lord Broughton could do enough for three brothers—he’d brought a guest with him, a certain Lord Killiney of Dublin, Ireland.

She first met him late one night upon her return from a hack in the fields. He was in the music room, and with no introduction nor warning of any kind, how could she have guessed him a peer? Behind the pianoforte, playing one of Haydn’s sonatas, he looked to her only a hired musician and therefore a servant. Her father was always bringing in starving composers.

Certainly, with his dark hair hanging free and his sleeves pushed to the elbow, he had no air of nobility about him. His wide, square jaw was littered with freckles. His appearance was perfectly ordinary in stature, like a bricklayer or a tenant farmer. He was unremarkable in every way, and as he played the pianoforte, he was even
sweating
.

And thinking him a servant, from the dining room doors Elizabeth called him. She asked him to stop, to abandon his sonata and come forthwith to stoke the fire. ’Twas nothing she wouldn’t have asked anyone to do, servant or not, and she didn’t think twice when she pulled up an armchair and laid down her gloves. After all, her concerns were far more consuming than the music of some starving composer. She had that dream to worry about, the one which had disturbed her for two days running and now seemed as foreboding as that night she’d first dreamt it: that her cousin, Lord Launceston—or Christian as she’d called him, for they’d grown up together—had died in America.

The forest had been dark where she’d seen him in this dream. Bent down on his knees, his clothes soaked with rainwater, Christian had worn a sailor’s breeches and these had been stained the dark russet colour of the cedar-bark soil. The wind had blown fiercely, had come in off the desolate ocean coast nearby; where the gale tore at Christian’s blond hair, the callused hand of a savage had appeared in her dream, and that hand had pushed Christian slowly and forcefully toward the forest floor.

Such an utterly foreign being, this savage. His dark skin had shone through cedar-bark clothing. His black hair, all gloss and length, had obscured his smudged features and tangled with the bit of shell he’d worn through the septum of his nose. Elizabeth couldn’t stop thinking about it—the gentle expression on the Indian’s face. ‘Twas as if the savage saw no sin in his assault. He hadn’t taken pleasure in it. He’d merely thrust an iron blade with an elaborately carved haft right into the base of Christian’s skull, and Christian had screamed.

With the memory of his dying voice, Elizabeth withdrew from her recollections. She shook a little. She glanced toward the door. For all the blood still tarnishing her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed how the sonata had stopped.

“Do you
mean
to take your time, or have you heard me?” she called, walking toward the music room doors.

When she saw the musician, she startled. He sat frozen in mid-reach for the highest notes of her father’s piano.
How odd
, she thought. Did he intend to mock her, to bring about her temper?

Then she caught sight of the musician’s eyes. Filled with a blatant temper of their own, they were not the eyes of a servant whatsoever, but alarming, dangerous, and by the blue of them, unquestionably Irish.

“Do you
mean
to make a fool of yourself?” he asked. “Or do you actually possess so much nerve as you pretend?”

Hearing his tone, Elizabeth was mortified. She might have asked him to cook up a nice squab with some tart, bring her a cup of chocolate and polish her boots! No less than a friend of James’s could incite such a feeling of smallness in her. This man was obviously the Irish viscount.

She thought of James and his taunting of her every action. He’d be laughing quietly now, had he witnessed her presumptuous blunder, and still while she thought these things Lord Killiney didn’t move. From behind the pianoforte, he glared at Elizabeth. His back was bent ever so slightly, as if he’d been caught in the act of bringing his hands down hard upon the keys.
He’s waiting for an answer
, she thought, and as she bit back the threads of indecision and found that nerve he’d spoken of, she told herself,
This is not James, he cannot humiliate you
.

“’Tis not nerve,” she said finally, “but cold that fuels my presumption, my lord.”

Killiney nodded, but still he didn’t move. “Cold can bring about the spirit, that’s true.” Those blue eyes remained locked upon hers, and for a moment he gazed at her, as if measuring her ability to meet his stare. “Shall we mend that nerve?” he asked in a whisper. “Shall we stoke the fire and tame you like a kitten curled before the hearth?”

“Shall I call my father down to teach you some manners?”

Killiney shrugged. “Any man would agree with me.”

Elizabeth shifted her foot uncertainly, and she lost some of her bravery then; she lowered her eyes, heard her own voice waver just a bit when she asked, “Agree with you about what, my lord?”

“That you are a wild thing, of course.”

“I am a lady!” Her gaze flew up, and she couldn’t help scolding him, nervous though she was. “I am the mistress of this estate and if you knew the ways of a gentleman, Sir, you’d retract your loose words and behave yourself.”

“You’re not,” he said simply.

“Not what?”

“A lady.” The faintest ebb of an Irish accent tinged his words as he regarded her carefully. “Ladies don’t ride the way you do, my sweet.”

Elizabeth’s heart began to race. Her hands worked their way into tight little fists, her thoughts tumbled anxiously, and still she couldn’t resist knowing the explanation for what he’d said. “And how would you know of the way I ride?”

Without stirring from his posed stance behind the pianoforte, Killiney’s gaze moved over her body. He might as well have performed some crude gesture simulating copulation; the effect was the same. He stared at the proof of her femininity, let his gaze ease down her quivering frame at a leisurely rate until she thought she would blush with embarrassment.

“Horse hair,” he said finally. “All down the front of you.”

And at last he moved, lowered his arms and let his hands touch the keys once more. He began to play, and as the dark waves of hair obscured his face from Elizabeth’s view, he picked up the melody precisely where he’d left it before their altercation had begun.

For a moment, perhaps two, she stood there. She wondered just how long she should embarrass herself in the absence of his attention until, suddenly, he spoke. “Do you like Joseph Haydn?” He didn’t divulge one glimmer of interest in hearing her answer, but kept on with his playing.

Even so, Elizabeth chanced a step into the room. “Mozart,” she said. “I prefer Mozart.”

“Ah, for her nerve the girl has musical tastes to match.”

“Do you mean to insult me again, my lord?”

“I mean that in England, there are few who know of our friend Herr Mozart. His music is not for the absentminded…or those who desire a fanciful, meaningless noise over which to spread their gossip.” He lifted his eyes from the instrument quickly. “And Lady Elizabeth does not gossip, unless it’s to quicken lies amid the horses’ ears, am I right?”

Smiling to himself, turning to his music in a seamless execution of melody and emotion, he said nothing more.

* * *

These were the first moments of their acquaintance.
Not the best of beginnings
, Elizabeth thought as she went upstairs,
but a beginning nonetheless
. After all, how many suitors had she knocking at her door? How many gentlemen?

Only Lord Launceston.

And Christian—or Launceston as everyone else called him—arrived the next night, hauteur already in place in preparation for their Irish guest. Elizabeth fairly cringed when she saw him. Trouble always came with Lord Launceston. How had he known of their gathering in the first place? For not only Killiney, but their friend Vancouver and his clerk, Mr Orchard, had come to dine, and Christian planted himself at Elizabeth’s side, stirring tempers with every subject arising.

“The Irish?” Christian frowned in disbelief at the comment Orchard had unwittingly made. “Do you seriously suggest our King release that rock to the keeping of such a doltish race?”

“Doltish?” Mr Orchard blinked. “My lord, my
mother
was Irish. And I believe, Sir, that the country would be better governed by its own people, doltish or otherwise.”

“I’ll wager the whole place would sink,” Christian muttered.

“Mr Orchard, why don’t you and I take a stroll?” Elizabeth rose from the table quickly, tossed Christian an angry glare. “I’m curious to hear of your adventures with Captain Cook,” she said, taking Orchard’s arm. “Would you mind if I asked you some questions about Indians?”

She
did
want to ask him about Indians, mind you. And Christian was being intolerably cross. Yet the actual reason for her withdrawal had more to do with Irish eyes, quietly watching from across the table. Blazing with some vestigial fire, Lord Killiney was shameless in his attention; it made Elizabeth more than uneasy, especially with everyone sitting around them.

So she led her charge—a meek, proper, mouse of a man—to the drawing room where she bade him sit.

“Sir, you’ve known many savages,” she said to Mr Orchard.

But as she explained her dream, described that native with his cedar-bark clothes, she found her thoughts wandering to the adjacent room. Lord Killiney’s eyes had sparkled wickedly; he’d laughed in response to her every jest, his attention following her every move, and when he’d smiled…who was he to flash her that grin? As if they’d shared a secret betwixt them, he’d imparted some sinful proposition, and had she accepted? There amongst the company, with nothing so much as an inadvertent glance, had she encouraged a man she knew nothing about?

She realized then Mr Orchard was staring. “Um,” she said sheepishly, “I was wondering if you’d met such savages.”

Mr Orchard nodded. “I knew such a boy.”

“Was he inclined to murder? Are the details such that you’d consider this an omen?” She clutched the folds of her dress in waiting. She knew Vancouver was on his way to America, would soon meet hundreds of coastal Indians in the course of his many-years voyage. “Because James and Killiney are going with you, Mr Orchard—to New Georgia, I mean, with you and Vancouver—and I fear I’ve dreamed some horrible prophecy. Mayhap Christian is merely a symbol.”

Orchard crossed his arms. “I don’t believe Indians are violent by nature.” He thought for a moment, then laughed to himself. “In many ways, they’re quite pleasant, really.”

“How so?” Elizabeth leaned forward in her seat, wondering if Killiney had ever seen an Indian.

The clerk smiled warmly. “They’re more inclined to be curious than violent. They like giving gifts.”

“And you’ve received gifts from coastal Indians?”

“Oh yes. Furs, wooden masks…and a strange, liquid substance meant to be sipped from a clam’s half shell.”

“What kind of liquid? An Indian wine?”

In the next room, she heard a chair pushed back. Dishes were clattered; the doors were thrown open, and she saw Clark, the footman, hurry past to help with the clearing up.

Orchard paused before he answered. “Not exactly a wine, although a taste will bring intoxication of a sort…or a trance.”

“So you’ve tasted this liquid?” Beyond their open door, she saw servants scurrying. “You fell into an Indian trance?”

“After my turn on deck, I did. And ‘twas the strangest dream I’ve had, for I found myself in a lady’s bedchamber the likes of which I’ve never seen.”

Elizabeth chewed on her lip. “Why is that?”

“Because it was filled with phenomenal things, wonders every bit as real as this room but against the laws of nature.”

Outside, Elizabeth’s father was laughing. In a casual saunter of Italian shoes, he was deep in conversation with Vancouver, and the whole party drew closer to the drawing room door until Elizabeth sat on the edge of her seat.

Still Orchard went on. “Instead of candles, this chamber was lit by the strangest lamp, and when I looked beneath its shade…
there was no flame
. Heat, yes, in a small white globe, but its light was as unflickering as the sun.”

Elizabeth peered into the corridor. “And this is why your dream was strange?”

“There was a box in this chamber—” Orchard looked, too, when Christian walked by, “—a black metal box, no bigger than a sailor’s sea-chest. It sat atop a commode by the bed, and it lit up the room as bright as daylight. Can you imagine that?”

James was framed by the doorway now, and at the sight of Killiney, strolling in a lumbering, peasantlike gait, Elizabeth glanced down.
Don’t look
, she thought.
The last thing you need is to fire that man’s hopes, and who knows where such attentions will lead?

“It was with pictures, my lady, that it lit up the room.” Mr Orchard seemed quite willing to go on despite Elizabeth’s obvious distraction. “The prettiest, most perfectly executed art I’ve ever seen, and there were pictures of men, pictures of women and their little children, houses and gardens, even pet dogs, all of them so lifelike I’d swear they lived inside that box.”

She bothered then with looking up. “They lived in the box? All of them together?”

“You don’t believe me,” Orchard said, “but you see, they moved, these pictures did. Exactly as if children
were
in the box. What’s more, they spoke, and not with English voices, either, but with something closer to the American accent.”

With Killiney’s boot steps fading in the distance, Elizabeth sighed. “So Americans lived in this box of yours?”

“Drink it yourself. You’ll believe me then.”