The Last Killiney (9 page)

Then she realized he’d asked her a question. “I’m sorry,” she offered, shaking herself out of her transfixed condition. “What did you say?”

He almost smiled when he averted his gaze. “I said, do you want to go to Dublin tomorrow? To Swallowhill? Find out who’s filling Killiney’s shoes?”

For a split second, she heard warning bells—this man, this
stranger
, wanted to take her on an overnight trip? She’d known him for barely an afternoon. It wouldn’t be the smartest thing, and yet she remembered Alia’s words:
Everything happens for a reason, Ravenna.

* * *

Their hotel outside Dublin was not much to look at. It sported a gorgeous sea-facing view, but more important was its location in Dalkey: On the same stretch of road, taking up a large portion of what Ravenna’s map called Sorrento Point, Swallowhill loomed above their accommodations.

Surrounded by modern houses, Killiney’s former residence seemed the last remnant of a bygone Ireland, a fortress complete with all the trimmings. Perched above the Irish Sea at the edge of a rocky precipice, ancient towers of undressed stone rose from the water’s edge. The battlements and arrow loops, along with the height at which the few, small windows stood against the timeworn walls, revealed the extreme age of the fortification, for it wasn’t a nineteenth-century romantic reproduction. It certainly wasn’t Sleeping Beauty’s castle at Disneyland. Swallowhill was the pristine home of the ghosts of Killiney’s ancestors.

Gazing up at its towers, shielding her eyes from the constant drizzle, Ravenna nudged her travel escort. “I thought this was a house? You said this was a house.”

“I said nothing of the sort, my dear.”

But while they talked amongst themselves, a young woman came down the road just then. With her pert, businesslike gait, she approached where they stood together, gaping at the castle, and it didn’t take long for Ravenna to see the look of irritation on the woman’s pretty face.

David stepped back to let her pass. Ravenna dared to meet her eyes as the woman skirted them and, with a toss of her golden hair, carried herself right up to the gates of Swallowhill.

It was all Ravenna could do to keep from shouting after her. “Ma’am—,” and she scurried to where the woman stood, key in lock, eyes moving over Ravenna as if she were a beggar, “Ma’am, I was wondering if you could possibly—”

“If it’s directions you want,” the woman said, pointing back up the road, “the hotel will help you, I’m quite sure.”

“No, but thank you, we’d like to talk with you about your castle,” she explained. “Do you have a minute? Can we buy you a cup of coffee?”

The woman’s perfect features crumpled in a scowl. “Americans, are you? Well, my house isn’t open for tours. Go up to Malahide if that’s what you want.”

“Look,” David said, “could we possibly talk to your husband?”

“No you couldn’t.” And with a final, cold and beautiful glare, she let herself in and disappeared.

Ravenna turned to David beside her. “This isn’t bad luck,” she said, squinting in the rain. “This is happening for a reason we just don’t understand yet.”

* * *

Back at the hotel, Ravenna went to her room to get warm, to curl up under the heavy blankets. When David came knocking ten minutes later, he’d been down to the front desk where he’d learned the name of their fair-haired friend.

“Well, what is it?” Ravenna asked, pulling the blankets up under her chin. “Lady Launceston, I suppose?”

“No, not Launceston. Henley, as it turns out.” David settled back on his elbow beside her. “Fiona Henley. Her husband runs some sort of charity downtown. Maybe we can catch him there tomorrow without the help of his charming wife.”

“She
was
charming, wasn’t she?” Ravenna smiled, thinking of the woman’s impolite manners. “She had such a sunny disposition about her, that’s what I liked.”

“Some people don’t know any better.” Leaning closer, David covered her hand with his. “Listen, I know that I tired you out yesterday, what with your transpolar flight and all, so I’ll let you sleep early. Then we’ll go up to Dublin tomorrow and find this chap Henley.”

“You’re going to bed already?”

With the sudden flame to his eyes, she realized at once what she’d implied; she hadn’t meant to, really she hadn’t, and yet when David’s gaze lowered to her shape beneath the covers, she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Do you want me to stay, Ravenna?”

He is handsome
, she told herself. There was something undeniably attractive about him, and he was certainly more her type than any boat mechanic or logger’s son.
He’s nobility, for heaven’s sake!
Yet even as she struggled to come up with an answer, that awkward, dreaded moment came: His eyes locked hopefully on her lips.

The last time she’d been kissed, at least by anyone other than her grandmother, it’d been in a gymnasium with disco music and strobe lights for ambiance. She hadn’t been kissed—really kissed—since high school in Port Angeles. She doubted she even remembered how to do it. Worse still, she knew she shouldn’t
have
to remember, that worrying about it should be the furthest thing from her mind in meeting his eyes, in giving in to a flushed, uncontrollable need, one that she should be feeling right now.
Why didn’t she feel it?

But while she pondered whether she felt flushed or not, David’s hand pulled the blankets from under her tightly set chin. His gray eyes narrowed with obvious desire. He leaned closer still, and—

He stopped.

“What is it?” She touched his arm. “David? If it seems like I’ve never—”

“You don’t want to do this.”

Ravenna considered his declaration, tried to think of words to negate his fears. “It’s just that…I’m not used to this kind of attention, that’s all.” She dared to slide her fingers up his shirt sleeve, over his slender, muscular shoulder.
What had her cousin told her? That she needed to get out of her hermit hole?
“I’ve never had a boyfriend, David. Never. Not even a one-night stand.”

“All the more reason to leave you alone.” Pulling out from under her hand, he stood up, headed for the door in somewhat of a suspicious rush.

“But it’s only a kiss. How could you possibly—”

“I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong.” Turning the lock, he glanced at her over his shoulder and far away, behind his mask of subtle wanting, she caught again that glimpse of Christian, his dejection, his suffocating dependence upon her,
as if she were his only love, the only answer to his destiny
.

But before the vision could really take hold, he left.

“David, please come back,” she called as the lock clicked into place behind him. “Stay and talk about this.”

From the hallway, she barely heard his answer. “I don’t think you know what you want, Elizabeth.”

Chapter Six

Of course, he was right. Where she lay on the bed thinking about it, she realized the truth—that she’d been so flattered by his attention, she’d overlooked her own uneasiness and ignored that veil of Christian between them. What
did
she want? She wanted this Christian guy to go away; she wanted David to lose that shadow of needing and be the man she’d dreamt of, to make her feel the way Killiney had made her feel.

Or did she?
Listen to your insides
, she told herself.

It was only a moment more and she was putting on her shoes, pulling on her coat, trying to shake Christian’s image from her mind as she went downstairs and out into the rain, heading for Swallowhill in a daze. She had no idea what she’d do once she got there. She only knew what she wanted—at last, what
she
wanted!—to be away from David to think.

* * *

When she arrived at its gates, she could see Swallowhill was empty. The rooms were dark. No porch light shone above the front steps, and gazing up at the mullioned windows, the ancient stone battlements, she pictured Killiney coming home, his coachman sheltering him with a broad, black cape as they rushed inside from the Irish weather.

Yet while she dreamed in the cold, she heard footsteps approaching. An old man appeared beneath the sodium light. Walking his little dog, the man waited patiently as the terrier inspected this and that; closer they came, starting and stopping, until Ravenna crouched down in anticipation of petting the terrier, for how could she not? She missed her dog Nick. Surely the old man didn’t mind, for he smiled when Ravenna met his eye.

Not like Mrs. Henley at all
, she thought, and then,
What harm could it do if I asked?

So she did. She asked what he knew about Swallowhill.

“That place there?” The man waved a hand at the castle door. “Not much, I’m afraid. See a young woman go out the door every mornin’, guess that’s Henley’s wife. She studies economics and he helps the poor. What a match, eh?”

“So they don’t work together at this charity?” she asked. “If I went there tomorrow, I could speak to Mr. Henley alone?”

“Can now, so far as I know,” he said, looking back down the road behind him. “He’s at the pub, you see. I just came from there myself. In fer the one, y’know.”

“Right now? He’s there?”

“It’s just a short walk,” he said, and turning her shoulders, he pointed her back toward the way he’d just come. “Follow this road ’til it reaches the beach, then look to your right. You’ll find it up on the hillside, yeah?”

She found the pub above the beach soon enough, except it wasn’t a pub, but a fancy hotel. A short climb up the drive, and she was asking which way to the bar. If she’d thought about it first, she could have guessed on her own, for Peter Gabriel’s
So
album drifted down the hallway.

The music filled her ears as she followed the passageway back to the lounge where, taking off her coat, she began to scan the crowd. Men were standing about in clusters, arguing their viewpoints. Couples were dancing. The place was a fracas of Irish laughter, Irish faces, and how would she find Mr. Henley in this? Should she ask one of the men whose attention she’d attracted in her deliberate survey of the smoke-filled room?

“That’s a thick bunch at the bar, there.” One of those men had approached her rather boldly and now lingered at her side with his best pick-up charm. “Can I get you what you need?” he asked. “I know yer man, Sean there, who’s pullin’ the pints. I could get you one, if you like.”

Ravenna gazed at her suitor, taking in his blue eyes, his Dublin tone and curly, carrot-colored hair. Should she ask? Or would her question begin a flirtatious conversation from which she’d never extract herself?

“I’m waiting for a friend,” she said.

“You could have a pint while you wait, then?”

Noticing another door on the opposite side of the room, she waved away the stranger with a quiet apology.

“Whatever suits you,” the stranger mumbled.

For in that doorway there stood a young man, no older than thirty, whose russet-brown hair made her senses reel.

Miss you, love you, you don’t know how much
…

How familiar, that gait of his, the way he carried himself as he crossed the room. It was as if he knew everyone, yet took no one for granted. He buttoned up the last button of his faded jeans as he joined his friends at a table near the door, and his expression was one of beguiling innocence. He’d been in the men’s room. His friends railed at him for his deliberate act of laziness, coming out of the toilet with his trousers still open, but he only seemed to revel in their scolding; he grinned when the girl at his table slapped his hand—such attention from a woman delighted him, Ravenna could see it.

She watched as he took the unlit cigarette from the girl’s mouth and proceeded to fumble with it, searching behind the Guinnesses for a light. It was then Ravenna noticed the true nature of his mood, for in the act of lighting that smoke, his grin faded into weariness. His friends went on with their discussion around him. Still, he didn’t notice. He seemed to have tuned out their words completely as he played with the smoldering end of his smoke, and despite the dark, neglected hair in his eyes, she could easily see the painful blue of his listless gaze…
the blue she knew so well, blue like china, like the color of the ocean after a storm, and how many days had he lost to the sea?

His face was haggard, shadowed with whiskers. His hands were sore, but when he laid them on her, looking at her with such reverence and need, they hardly mattered, those cuts and blisters. With his grin barely concealed, he brushed against her deliberately while the sailors worked around them. His touch lingered at her waist, her hips, and making certain the captain was well below decks, he whispered in her ear with the most loving voice she’d ever heard: He’d die without her, did she know as much?

His tired laughter rang out over the music, and the sound brought her back immediately. Velvet, Irish laughter. As she stood there in the midst of the crowd, watching him whisper in his friend’s ear, she felt a wave of warmth wash over her. Just looking at him made the visions struggle at the doors of her subconscious. What would happen if she approached him? Would her knees shake? Would her words garble? Would she ever get over that mischievous grin?

It was all she could do to take a seat, across the room and near to him. Folding her coat over a chair, she tried not to stare at him. The last thing she wanted was to attract his attention, and turning her back to him, shaking badly, she sat down to eavesdrop on him and his friends.

“Yeah, you think I’ve not seen you finishing off my pint,” he was saying. “Thought you’d get away with it, did you? Takin’ advantage of an innocent man—”

“I reckon you owe me fer last Friday night,” his friend said gruffly. “Cost me more than a pint fer the petrol to Portlaoise.”

“Didn’t ask you to come to Portlaoise,” the man replied.

“So you just called t’hear the sound of m’voice, then?”

“That’s right,” the man said. “I rang you up for directions. I’ve no idea why you came for me. I’ve never asked you t’save my arse from the woman in me life.”