by J. Jay Kamp
* * *
When she saw Paul the next morning, she knew immediately his feelings hadn’t changed. There seemed something added, deeper and more stirring, when he looked at her across the breakfast table. The awareness of what he’d said hung in the air between them, and when he passed the butter, it was with an affable, lopsided grin that sent Ravenna’s heart skittering.
Staring at the hair on the backs of his hands and finding it inexplicably enticing, she was glad for the distraction when the servants came in to stoke the fire. They seemed to think the dining room was a strange place for breakfast. When Ravenna asked about it, Sarah was quick to explain how the bedroom was the more usual location for the morning meal. If they wanted to be correct, they should take their breakfast while the various servants came to receive their daily instructions.
Sarah then told Ravenna she’d been given orders of her own. James, still not out of bed, had charged Ravenna with fitting out the entire household in mourning black. Ravenna had no idea how to do this, but Sarah, having been informed by James of her mistress’s true identity, had already taken care of the assignment. Ravenna had only to see James in his bedroom and tell him as much.
So walking up the stairs and down the long, central passage, Ravenna called his name. She didn’t know where she might find him, but soon James responded with a muffled shout that led her into a dark-paneled bedroom where amid a wilderness of sheets and blankets, the new marquess lay sideways across his bed.
Wrapped in the length of a linen nightshirt, there was something of a smile on James’s lips when she came in. He invited her to pull up a chair, and as she did, Ravenna gazed at the tangles in his straight black hair, at his smoothly sculpted face which, against the white of the bed sheets around him, seemed impossibly dark.
“These are our father’s chambers,” James said, glancing around. “I couldn’t sleep in my own bed last night, thinking of what I’ve felt in these rooms. It seemed fitting to sleep here.”
“David thought so, too,” she said. When James seemed confused, she explained, “Your descendant, the twelfth marquess. He took this room when his father died, just the way you have.”
“And what year was this?”
“1991.” Ravenna leaned forward in her chair, put out her hand toward James cautiously. “I’m Ravenna, if Paul didn’t already tell you.”
“You mean in that drunken fit he was in the night before I left for London?” James’s smile broadened as he shook Ravenna’s hand. “Yes, he told me.”
“So you really do believe we’re not Elizabeth and Killiney?”
“As long as he marries you, if you both continue behaving as you have, him with warmth and you with intellect, I’ll believe anything.”
For a moment James gazed at her, and she found herself thinking of Killiney. That selfish tone she remembered from her vision, the pain of his insults…she couldn’t imagine Paul talking like that. “He wasn’t a very nice person, was he?”
“Killiney?” James shrugged. “Not reliably.”
“So you like Paul better?”
James hesitated before he answered. “Your Paul has a kindness and honesty about him which Killiney could only dream of. Would that I’d never met Killiney himself, there might seem no difference, but I know the man far too well.”
“They’re the same on the outside but not on the inside.”
“The same but for the accent, yes.”
“And what about my accent? Don’t I sound different?”
He tilted his head. “Now that I’m paying attention, yes.”
“That’s because I’m American.”
“And how is that? Didn’t you say your home was Nootka? It’s a Spanish possession, so shouldn’t you speak Spanish the way Paul does?”
“Things are different in 1991.”
James’s brow furrowed slightly; one could almost see the questions popping up in his head as he considered her statement carefully. “Then the Spanish will lose their claim on the land?”
“I don’t think I should tell you,” she answered.
Averting his eyes, James laughed to himself. “What could I do with such information? I’m not going to take over the world, you know.”
“I know.”
“So tell me.”
She shook her head. “Nope, I can’t. It just doesn’t seem like a smart idea, handing out history as if it were—”
“Ravenna,” and sitting up in bed, he leaned toward her, dipping his head slightly as he regarded her with a sobering expression, “if you really are from the future, there’s never been a better time to prove it, yes? With Vancouver’s voyage coming up, and with me leaving…”
Ravenna stifled her grin. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you might know things that could help my studies. What you take for granted in the everyday world could be very important to the Royal Society, not to mention Vancouver.”
He’s bartering with me, she realized. He’s going to get me on the voyage!
“For instance,” he went on, “let’s say we’ve entered Juan de Fuca’s Strait. Before us lies a dangerous passage, and Vancouver has ordered the yawl and crew ahead for soundings. The procedure’s slow, darkness is falling—”
“You’re asking if I’d let the ship run aground?”
“If you’d call this historical interference, then you’d best tell me now.”
“And what makes you think I’d know how deep the water is?”
“You’ve described the reefs of these North Pacific coasts. One only considers such things with experience, and although I expect it’s unreasonable to assume you have a memory to match mine, I’d hope you’d remember at least something of these waters you call your home.”
She raised a brow. “Something, yes, but I don’t think you know what you’re asking of me.”
“Do you think I’d lash you to the bow to shout directions to the helm?” Laughter sharpened his high, chiseled cheekbones. “No, if you’ll only tell us something of these waters in the appropriate moments of need, I’m sure Vancouver would find you invaluable, even if he needed your assistance only once. The fact that you know something of the native peoples I’ll write about for the Royal Society, that would unquestionably be of value to me.”
“You really believe I’m from the future, don’t you?”
“Wasn’t that your intention?”
“Yes, but it’s a lot to ask. Here I’m exactly like your sister and yet I’m planning the voyage with you. That must feel pretty strange, I’d think.”
James squinted ever so slightly. “No—,” and she felt his appraisal of her features, “—no, believe me when I say you’re nothing like Elizabeth. There’s a substance to you which she couldn’t even comprehend, let alone simulate.”
“But will Vancouver believe it? Can he be convinced, too?”
Turning to the commode beside his bed, James opened the top drawer, took out a sheet of cream-colored paper. “It’ll be difficult,” he said, putting the sheet before her, “but Vancouver will be forced to own as I have that the advantages of your presence far outweigh the chance we’ll be found out.”
“And how do we do that?”
James took out a bottle of ink and a pen. “Draw me some charts to put before the man. Mark down every last damnable thing that might be important to the voyage,” he said, “including soundings, if you remember as much.”
“I can only give you that for the waters around my island. Oh, and my parents’ house, too. And it won’t be exact.”
“These are places Vancouver will sail?”
She nodded, wondering how good her memory was.
“Then this will have to do.”