The River of No Return (18 page)

T
he next morning Nick was down at the stables at dawn. He’d left orders for a hunter to be saddled, and he was delighted when he saw that it was Boatswain who was waiting for him in the yard, a groom by his shoulder. When he heard Nick’s step he looked up and tossed his head, whickering and stepping to the side. The groom held him firm. “He has missed you, my lord.”

Nick took the reins and stroked the stallion’s neck. He let that spicy scent of horse and leather fill his nose. “How are you, old man?” He reached into his pocket and fished out a carrot. Boatswain took it daintily from his master’s palm. Nick turned to thank the groom, but Boatswain would not tolerate the shift of attention from himself and blew snot all over Nick’s hand. Nick accepted the cloth the groom handed him and looked Boatswain in the eye, seeing the horsey amusement there. “I’d forgotten about you and your tricks.”

Boatswain snickered, pleased with himself.

“He’s sixteen now, my lord, but at heart he’ll always be a colt.”

“I hope so. Thank you for readying him for me.”

Nick mounted. He hadn’t been on horseback in years, and it felt good, though he knew he would suffer for it later. “Now then, Boatswain,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do, and more to the point, what I can do.”

They set out at a canter, and Nick relaxed into the easy gait. Boatswain was older and heavier; Nick could feel the difference in the horse’s stride. It was a cold, overcast morning, not as sparkling as yesterday. He urged his mount on, his heartbeat quickening as he thought of the mysterious woman in black. He wanted to be at the pathway into the trees when she appeared. A dalliance
would be the perfect thing to smooth the transition back into this time. The perfect thing to keep him from drowning. Boatswain picked up his pace, breaking into a gallop, and Nick’s body shifted to accommodate.

“Like riding a bicycle,” Arkady had said about women. But Nick was as anxious as a fifteen-year-old; what would she be like? He had left for Spain when he was twenty, and before that he had sown his wild oats among the demimonde and willing serving wenches. And for years now his lovers had been twenty-first-century women.

Boatswain was flagging, and Nick let him slow to a walk. Why was he even thinking about this woman at all? He couldn’t actually sleep with another man’s mistress; it would be ungentlemanly in the extreme. And if she wasn’t Darchester’s mistress, she was another man’s wife, or a virgin, at which point ill manners tipped into villainy.

In the end, he convinced himself that he wasn’t riding out to see the mysterious woman in black. He was riding his estate, getting to know his horse again, and if he happened to meet a neighbor, so much the better. Nevertheless, when he reached the path that led back into the trees, he dismounted and let Boatswain graze while he leaned against a tree and . . . if he was being honest with himself, he was waiting. But he wasn’t being honest with himself. So he wasn’t waiting. He was resting.

* * *

Marigold was calmer this morning and accepted her carrot with dignity. She only capered a little as they cantered down the drive, and she picked her way along the woodland path quietly. But before the trees gave way to fields, the horse pricked her ears. A bright whinny sounded from somewhere up ahead, and Marigold answered, breaking into a trot.

Julia pulled her back and stopped. Someone was up ahead, there where the path entered Blackdown land. Perhaps it was the Falcotts’ new steward, Mr. Jemison. Or were the Falcotts themselves back from London? Julia hoped so, fervently. Perhaps she could wangle an invitation to stay, and that would prove to the village that she was still worthy of their friendship. Otherwise . . .

Julia frowned up into the oak leaves above her head, tears pressing against her eyes. Otherwise she would have to leave Castle Dar, leave Stoke Canon, and go . . . where? To Scotland, to her mother’s family? She didn’t even know how to find them.

But leave she must, unless something miraculous were to happen, and soon. That had been patently obvious yesterday when she had ridden through Stoke Canon, hoping to stop and talk to people, hoping to let them know that she was still Julia Percy.

Instead, she had received only a few distant hellos, and no offers of conversation. She had kept her pride down the length of the High Street, greeting averted faces as if they were the smiling neighbors she had known all her life. But the minute she was out in the fields again she had set Marigold’s face for home and let her gallop all the way.

Once back in Castle Dar, Julia had packed two bandboxes with a change of clothes and her jewelry, then unpacked them again; the servants would discover what she was planning if she left luggage sitting about. Meanwhile, let the townspeople indulge themselves in an orgy of recriminations, old and new. “‘And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet!’” Julia spoke the words into the mirror. The sentence began bravely enough, but by the end she was weeping. How could she shake the dust of this house from her feet when she felt that she was crumbling away to join it? She knew no dust in the world but this dust.

So this morning she was riding, not away, but around, trying to collect her thoughts and make a plan.

The horse up ahead whinnied again, and Julia gave Marigold her head. She held her own head high and her spine straight. Whoever it was that waited there, Julia Percy was ready.

He was standing in the same place, the same big bay stallion beside him. His hair, which had been fair, was several shades darker. She would never describe him as all elbows now. He was taller by a head and broader in the beam. Instead of crying he was leaning at his ease against a tree. He had a lazy, distant look in his eye and he was almost, but not quite, smiling.

She had the distinct impression that he was waiting for
her
. She didn’t think she liked it.

So she reined Marigold in, stared right back at him, and asked the bluntest question she could think of. “Are you not dead?”

She had the satisfaction of knocking that knowing look from his face. His eyes flew wide.

Then she saw him recognize her, and it was her turn to be disconcerted. It was the strangest thing. He recognized her, and his whole face, even his body, transformed. His mouth lost its smile, but the skin around his eyes crinkled, and his eyes themselves lost that weary, faraway look. “Julia,” he said.

His voice was different. Deeper, a man’s voice. His accent was strange, too. Flattened here and there. Like the accent of someone who has returned home after years abroad. Which was, after all, nothing but the truth. He had gone to Spain. But had he returned from Spain, or the land of the dead? They had mourned him for dead. Now here he stood, fully alive, his recognition of her making his eyes change from rainy blue-gray to a warmer, darker, more disturbing color. A feeling rather than a color. Her horse shifted beneath her. She was holding the reins too tightly as she looked down at the miraculously returned Lord Blackdown. She forced herself to relax. “My lord,” she said, inclining her head. “Welcome home.”

* * *

It was Julia Percy. Nick didn’t recognize her for a moment, but then there she was. His heart began pounding. The girl who had seen him through so much. He took a step forward, his mouth opening to say God knows what, when she spoke.

“Are you not dead?”

He was stunned for a second, simply by seeing her, and by the shock of her question. Impossible to explain that he was returned from an unimaginable future. So he said her name. “Julia.” It felt wonderful, speaking it out loud after so many years, the way the tip of his tongue only lightly touched his palate, once, in the middle of the word.

He stepped forward and held both hands up to help her dismount. She put her gloved hands in his and leapt down lightly. She stood just to his shoulder, her hair the color of walnut liqueur.

“You are grown,” he said, ridiculously.

“And you have come back from the dead. I believe you have more to explain than I.”

“You’re right,” he said. “It is a tale. But first please allow me to offer you condolences on the death of your grandfather. He was a good man.”

“Thank you, my lord. It is a great loss. He mourned your death, you know. We all did.”

Nick twisted his ring on his finger. “It is rather awkward, to have been mourned, and then to return. Not that I complain. There is a comfort in knowing that people mourned you. But the monument in the churchyard—” He stopped. He was blathering.

Silence fell, except that the birds were deafening and each shifting move the horses made pointed out that he had no idea what to say to her. What was considered polite conversation between a young woman and a man? His mind was blank. “Boatswain’s still alive, too,” he said, and then wished he could swallow his tongue.

“So I see.” She turned to her black mare. “This is Marigold.”

He reached out his hand, and the mare nuzzled his fingers. “She’s beautiful.”

The animal snorted and stomped her hoof, tossing her head in Boatswain’s direction.

“She is an incorrigible flirt,” Julia said.

“I fear Boatswain is not very chivalrous.” Nick felt ashamed for his horse. The old stallion was quietly munching the long grass, twitching his ears at Marigold, but showing no interest.

Marigold put her nose in the air, whickered, and pawed the ground.

“Enough,” Julia told her, and reached into her pocket for a carrot. “He doesn’t like you. Sometimes we must face life’s disappointments head-on.”

“Shall we ride together a while, Miss Percy?” Nick found himself reaching out and taking her gloved hand again. He hadn’t encountered that frustrating but entirely thrilling sensation of holding a woman’s hand through a layer of thin leather in so long, he had forgotten entirely about it. It really was scandalously erotic, the way you could feel the heat of a woman’s hand through her glove.

“I shall be missed at home.” Julia glanced down at their joined hands. “My cousin, the new earl . . .”

Her cousin. Julia was still living at Castle Dar.

Nick went cold.

So Julia was the mistress. She was the woman the villagers had been talking about. They all thought she was sleeping with her cousin.

Julia searched his face and understood. “Ah, I see you’ve heard the gossip.” She drew her hand away and took a step back.

“I have and I don’t believe it. No one who knows you would believe it.”

She put her chin up. “You know me not at all. And those who are gossiping have known me my entire life.”

But she had been with him all along, all through the years. “We . . . we were children together!”

“Hardly, my lord. You avoided Bella and me like the pox.”

“Be that as it may, I believe I know you, and I know you are not his mistress.”

“No. I am not.” She looked him in the eye.

She reminded him of modern women. The way she stood so confidently, the way she met his eye like an equal, the way she spoke unblushingly of the sex she was not having with her cousin. But her situation was clearly taking a toll on her courage. He could tell by the way she clenched and unclenched her left fist.

Nick glanced up for a moment into the trees, wondering what to say next. He savored the cold air in his lungs. Then he looked down again at the woman standing before him. She was proud. And she was quietly desperate.

Last time they had met here, they had both been children. He had been the desperate one that day, the younger one, despite their ages, and somehow she had calmed him, soothed him. He had then carried her with him through the years as a misty memory.

Now her eyes were deep, storm-tossed. She needed him.

He bowed. “I am at your service,” he said. “Tell me how to help you.”

A smile broke across her face, and Nick realized that until this moment he had been seeing a pale shadow of Julia Percy, dimmed by her own defensive courage. Glad color rushed to her cheeks and she burst into speech. “Thank you, my lord. It has been the worst of times . . .”

Her voice washed over him. He was here again, where he never thought to be, and Julia Percy was alive. She was struggling against the ridiculous strictures of her age, but it was
her
. Nick watched her face as she spoke: her dark hair and eyes, her vivid face. . . .

God! The river was dragging at him full force, and he had to fight his way back. She was still speaking, and he held on to her voice until it broke through and made sense.

“. . . but Eamon is difficult. He does not allow me to go abroad into society, and I have not been able to convince him that I need a chaperone to maintain my reputation.”

“I don’t understand; he doesn’t let you out? Is he mad?”

“I believe he is.”

“Why has Clare not asked you to stay at Blackdown?”

“Clare is at Blackdown!” She frowned. “I thought her gone to London with Bella and your mother.”

“She helped them settle in London but she prefers the country. She has been at Blackdown since just after your grandfather’s death. I am shocked to learn that she has not contacted you.”

That open face shut its doors again—slammed them, rather. “Oh.” She put her hand on her horse’s pommel. “She has heard the gossip. She believes it.”

“No. I am sure she has not, would not.” Nick put his hand over hers. “Do not go riding off just yet, Julia.”

She whispered, and he knew it was because if she spoke any more loudly she would either shout or cry. “Of course she believes it, Nick—my lord. I rode into the village yesterday. I saw their faces. What they believe of me, of my mother—”

“They!” Nick scoffed. “Give Stoke Canon a man, a woman, and a slightly irregular situation, and it will serve you a steaming bowl of scandal broth before an hour has passed. They will sing a different tune once you are at Blackdown. As for Clare, she is not such a ninnyhammer, but if she is, then she must simply change her mind. In any case, I am taking you back to Blackdown right now. I will not have you return to Castle Dar.”

He was amazed to see her sad eyes glint with humor. “So speaks the great marquess.”