The River of No Return (20 page)

“What do you mean, a dramatic little body?” Nick sat up straight and swiveled to face his sister.

“Oh, nothing. But when Julia was younger, she and Bella were forever brewing up mischief of one kind or another. You must remember, Nickin. She was always over here, underfoot. They did terrible things.”

Nick did have a vague memory of his little sister and her friend charging up and down the staircases, yodeling like beagles, but he had hardly been interested in girls three years his junior. “How terrible could two little girls be?”

Clare laughed incredulously. “I will not even deign to answer that question. Except to remind you of the time, a few years before Papa’s death, when they let the pigs into the kitchen garden. Arabella did not care for carrots and they thought to ruin the year’s crop.”

A memory floated back to him of little Bella at teatime, the rest of the family feasting on her favorite cake while she sat weeping, with nothing but a big carrot on her plate. “Julia was behind that prank?”

“Oh, I don’t know whose idea it was, but she was certainly caught red-handed alongside Bella, exhorting the pigs to root up the gardeners’ hard work. Of course the poor animals were simply running wild all over the garden, trying to escape two screaming girls.”

“Papa must have been enraged.”

“I’m surprised they both survived into adulthood,” Clare said. “When they were discovered in their mischief-making, Bella lied or cried like any normal girl, but Julia stood like a queen and took her punishment. If she felt the accusation was just, she condescended to apologize for her actions. But if she felt the accusation was unfair, the scorn in her eye was withering. If she hadn’t been such a loving child, and so obviously in need of mothering, I believe Mother would have come to fear her.” Clare sighed. “I hate to think of someone of her spirit suffering confinement and perhaps . . . worse.” She turned an anxious face to Nick. “You don’t think there is any truth in the gossip? That she is his . . . ?”

“No.” Nick stood and paced the room. “No. The girl I met today was no one’s mistress, willing or unwilling. But she was anxious about her own safety, and she did agree that she should come to us at Blackdown. Apparently she cannot get away from this cousin of hers. He seems to have some hold over her. It’s enough to drive me mad with worry for her.”

Clare looked at him thoughtfully, her lips pursed. “Hmm,” she said.

“Hmm what?”

“Just hmm.”

Nick twitched his cuffs into place. He had never been able to hide anything from the all-seeing older-sisterly powers of Clare. Of course that went two ways, and therefore he knew exactly what she was thinking when she said
hmm
. And she was perfectly right. This morning Julia had plucked his heart like it was nothing more than a strawberry hiding under a leaf. He loved her. He, Nick Davenant, né Nicholas Falcott. Or was it Falcott né Davenant? In any case, there it was. He was in love with a woman two hundred years in his past.

Not that he was going to admit his feelings to Clare, or indeed to anyone. So he scowled. “May we please concentrate on how to get Julia from there to here?”

Then, from across the room, Nick and Clare heard a delicate cough, and the Russian rose up from a leather armchair that faced the fire. “If I may offer my services?” The paternal benevolence of his smile encompassed them both.

“For God’s sake, Lebedev. Don’t you know it is rude to eavesdrop?”

“I beg your pardon.” Arkady examined his fingernails. “But I was happily dozing in this chair when you two barged in and began your so interesting conversation.”

“Clare, I apologize for the count. If anyone is a barbarian, it is he.”

Clare turned sparklingly to Arkady. “If you would care to join us, Count Lebedev? I’m sure your suggestions will be most welcome.”

“I thank you.” He bowed, shooting Nick a triumphant glance, then strolled across the room. “The problems of your neighbors are tiresome. I came here to fry, how to say it, bigger fish?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “I am desolate to learn that you find our society tedious and our problems beneath your interest.”

Arkady brushed past Nick. “May I?” He indicated Nick’s old seat beside Clare, and Clare nodded. Arkady disposed himself gracefully and looked from one sibling to the other. “The rank of marquess, it is higher than the rank of earl, am I wrong?”

“So what?” Nick crossed his arms over his chest.

“This phrase, ‘so what,’” Arkady said. “It does not sound quite correct.” He looked darkly at Nick.

“I don’t give a rat’s arse,” Nick said. “You understand me perfectly. I repeat: so what?”

Clare laughed. “Calm yourself, Nick, and do exert yourself to speak like a gentleman. The count is only trying to help, and you are behaving like a bear.”

Arkady spread his hands. “You have been forgetting yourself for three years, Lord Blackdown. Your sister said you have changed. You admire Godwin and his wife Mary . . . Mary . . .”

“Wollstonecraft.” Nick ground the name out.

“Ah, yes. You have been keeping company, perhaps, with revolutionaries? And, shall we say, enlightened women? Such exciting thoughts they think, these men and women who dream about the future. But please recall: What is in the brain of a normal aristocrat? He goes to a dinner party. Is he thinking that the women are the equals of the men? Does he want to end the slavery? No. He worries: Who is sitting below me at the table? To that man, he shows only his nostrils. Who is sitting above me? To that man, he smiles and smiles.”

“Please,” Nick said. “Get to your point.”

Arkady inclined his head. “If your English aristocracy is anything like our Russian aristocracy, your neighbor the earl will welcome you, the marquess, with bows and scrapes. He thought you were dead. That made him the highest aristocrat in miles and miles. Down he looked upon everyone. But now you have returned. He will not like it, but he must look up to you. I predict that he will accept a visit from you and your sister.”

“Of course.” Clare pivoted on the couch. She was practically in Arkady’s lap. “You are right. We shall wear our finest apparel, stink of ambergris and disapproval, and stay only fifteen minutes. We shall suggest to him that if he does not stop trampling on his cousin’s reputation, society will shun him.”

“If I may be permitted to join you?” Arkady smiled at Clare. “I have much interest in this Castle Dar. I have heard, oh, many tales about it. It has a very interesting atmosphere. Almost . . . timeless?” Arkady caught Nick’s eye over Clare’s head and gave him a meaningful look.

Nick had to admit it was a plan. It did not involve riding up to Castle Dar on a fiery white stallion, fighting the earl with a broadsword, and then carrying Julia away into the sunset. But then again, it would probably work. And if Arkady got to hunt Ofan on the side, that was fine, too. “Yes,” he said. “We go tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why not this afternoon?” Clare asked.

Nick thought of Julia, and the possibility of a meeting up by the woods tomorrow morning. Once she was at Blackdown, he would never see her alone; she would always be with Clare, stitching or some other nonsense. “I have said tomorrow afternoon; it is decided.”

Clare regarded him coolly, then turned to Arkady. “Do you know, Count, I think he is in danger of falling in love with our imperiled Miss Percy.”

Arkady crossed his arms. “I think you are right.” He, too, favored Nick with a long, serious look. “And I don’t like it.”

Nick slammed out of the room.

J
ulia on her horse. Julia dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, curled up by the fire in the Vermont house. Julia bent back over his arm. . . . Nick flipped over, pulling a pillow onto his head. It was three in the morning and he was wracked by lust. His body and soul were on fire with it.

Yesterday on the hillside the marquess had managed to gain the upper hand, and his idea was simple. Marry her. Settle down and raise little marquesses. The marquess was living in a comedy. Nick Davenant was tied to the Guild and therefore he was living in a tragedy. But this scene, in which the hero is tormented by desire, was the same in both scripts.

It was the thought of her waist. Of how it had felt in his hands when he had lifted her into the saddle. How she might strain upward to kiss him, if she were to kiss him. How his hands might drift down from her waist . . .

Good grief.

She is a gentlewoman, he told himself. A lady. Bred to save her virginity and even her kisses until marriage.

Even her kisses, Nick, he told himself from under the pillow. You can’t kiss her if she comes to meet you in the morning. You shouldn’t even hold her hand. Those are the rules and you know them through and through.

“Through and through,” he said out loud. “Shoe and glue. Brew and blue. Tutu.”

He groaned. The last time he had tried the rhyming game it had ended with his thinking of Julia. Way back in the twenty-first century, when the thought of Julia used to calm him down. Now she inflamed him.

She probably thought he was marriage material. Maybe she even wanted to tempt his kisses. That was how it worked. A kiss and then a proposal. A girl in her position expected to get married, to dutifully offer up her virginity on her wedding night, to have children and be a respected lady. Getting herself married off to the boy next door might seem like the perfect happy ending to her. Goddamn it, it
was
the perfect happy ending.

Nick groaned again as the wedding-night scenario unrolled its luxurious details, like Cleopatra out of a carpet.

He would stay home tomorrow morning. He would stay home tomorrow morning. He would stay home. . . .

* * *

Morning found him walking toward the woods, rain dripping from his curly-brimmed beaver hat and from the capes of his greatcoat. Gore-Tex, he thought to himself. Wicking fabric. He had high-tech rain gear in his hall closet in Vermont. Yet here he was, dressed in clothes that smelled when they got wet. Wool and linen and leather and fur and cotton. Animals and vegetables. Natural dyes. Hand stitching. He breathed the clean air in through his mouth. The rain tasted pure on his tongue. Perhaps Julia would stay home and solve his problem for him. She hadn’t said she would come. She certainly shouldn’t come. If she was a good girl, a lady . . .

She wasn’t a good girl or a lady. She was Julia.

She would come.

He looked up, almost expecting to see her up at the edge of the wood, waiting for him. But the line of trees, black in the rain, cut blankly across the horizon like a wall.

* * *

Julia hung back under the boughs, watching him come toward her. He looked severe in his hat and greatcoat, and he was walking with deliberate purpose, as if striding across the field to a duel. Or perhaps he was coming to tell her that he now believed the rumors.

She took a step or two back into the trees. She wasn’t sure she could bear to hear those recriminations on his lips. There was still time to turn around and walk away. But he was making short work of the distance. She saw him look up and wondered whether he’d seen her. She was wearing her red cloak, for she had no black one. But if he did see her he gave no sign and simply marched inexorably forward.

* * *

God, he was a fool. No fool like an old fool. He was only supposed to be a few years her senior, and if you counted by birth year, that was true enough. But in another way he was nearly twelve years older, and in yet another way he was unfathomably older—so old, in fact, that he shouldn’t even have been born yet. Yet, in spite of it all, here he was, squelching through the fields like some pastoral swain off to meet his shepherdess. Fortunately she wasn’t there, and he was later than he had been yesterday. Maybe she had some sense. It would be good if one of them did. In spite of the cold rain wilting his cravat and spotting his boots, in spite of the knowledge that he was a damned idiot, and in spite of the fact that he was clearly stomping up the high road to supreme folly, he burned for her.

“Damn.” He cursed aloud. Then he looked up again, and there she was, her red cape like an ensign against the black bark of the trees, her face lifted to the rain. She was so beautiful that he stopped in his tracks. Then he couldn’t help it. He frowned, but he stepped forward, and his hand was reaching out for hers.

* * *

She could sense his foul mood as he came closer, and perversely, it drew her out of the trees. She put her chin up, and her hood fell back. She didn’t replace it. The cool rain on her face felt good. She didn’t know why he was coming toward her looking so ferocious, but if he thought he could scare her he could think again. Then he looked up and his eyes fastened on hers and his frown deepened. But he closed the space between them in a few short strides and his hand in its brown glove reached for hers. “Julia,” he said, and his voice was rough.

She put her black-gloved hand in his and curtsied, her back straight. “My lord.”

He looked down at her, holding her hand lightly in his. Now that he was close she could tell that he was angry with himself and not with her. He said nothing.

“You are thinking you should not have come,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You invited me. It was for me to accept or decline. If you had not come, and I had, you would have been breaking every rule of good society.”

He smiled grimly. “By inviting you I broke every rule of good society, and you know it.”

“Yes, I do know it,” she said. They stood for a moment, looking at their entwined hands, his brown fingers holding her black. She could feel the banked energy in his fingers, even as they held hers as gently as a bone china teacup. She lifted her eyes. She intended to say that she knew he was here only to make plans, but instead she said, “I am glad you came. I—”

* * *

Suddenly he was kissing her. Perhaps he could not have helped it. Her rain-wet mouth, her red cloak, the dark trees, the smell of the earth, and most of all her dark eyes looking so candidly into his, those eyes that had haunted him for centuries . . . Before she could finish what she was saying, he gathered her into his arms, his lips found hers.

At first it felt innocent, if only because of the cool rainwater on their faces. Her lips, fresh with rain, trembled beneath his like the leaves trembling above their heads. Her nose tucked perfectly against his, and he pulled her still more tightly against him. Even through their layers of wet clothing he thought he could feel her heart fluttering, but perhaps it was his own heart, or simply his own blood singing in his ears.

Then he pulled back, just a little. Her sweet breath washed warm over his face, and nothing was innocent anymore. They were back among the trees, and she was up against the smooth trunk of an ancient beech, her arms around his neck as he kissed her open mouth and reached into the opening of her cloak and around to pull her narrow waist closer to him. His hat was knocked from his head; her dark hair was half spilling down her shoulders. He kissed her face, her closed eyes, her chin, and down her neck. She cried his name, and it sounded so perfect on her lips—Nicholas. “Say that again,” he breathed in her ear, feeling her shiver and arch more firmly against him. “Nicholas,” she whispered. He flicked his tongue lightly around her ear, and she swayed and seemed to lose her balance. He caught her delicious bottom in his hands and brought her gasping against his thighs. She pulled his head down for another kiss.

Then, as if by mutual agreement, it slowly began to end. Perhaps it was the change in the light as the rain stopped. Or perhaps it was that there were only two choices, and one of them was unthinkable. In any case, like sleepers slowly waking, they pulled clingingly apart until they stood facing each other again, her black-gloved hand in his brown-gloved hand, gazing down together at their fingers.

“Julia.”

She didn’t look up but pulled her hand from his. “Say nothing.”

“How do you know what I would say?”

She brushed her hands down her cloak, and it fell closed again across her black dress. “I just do not want you to say anything.” She looked up. “Let it be.”

“I am not free,” he said.

The shock came to her eyes immediately, and he stumbled to explain. “I don’t mean—”

She held her hand up and turned away. “I asked you to say nothing.”

Nick reached for her and managed to capture the edge of her cloak. She looked back over her shoulder. “Yes?”

“You are right. You asked me to be silent and I was not able to keep from trying to explain. For that I apologize.”

“I accept your apology.”

“I do not, however, apologize for kissing you, Julia. That, I had to do. I don’t regret it.”

She wheeled and faced him fully, twitching her cloak from his fingers. “If you had apologized for that, Nicholas Falcott,” she said, “you would at this moment be sporting a black eye.”

That
made all his desire come surging back. “You are gallant, Julia,” he said roughly. “A champion. I fully intend to kiss you again one day.”

“Oh, do you?”

“Yes, I’m afraid I do.”

She stared at him for a moment, and when she spoke her voice was low and vibrant. “The road to hell is paved with such intentions, my lord. It will be a cold day in that place when you kiss me again.” She turned and stalked away.

“Wait,” he called. “I must inform you of another matter.”

She stopped without turning. “Yes?”

“I am sorry to detain you, but I thought you should be warned. My sister and I have devised a plan for your release from Castle Dar. Clare, my friend Count Lebedev, and I will be arriving this afternoon at four to confront your cousin. We intend to be disgustingly imperious. I shall be the grand marquess, and Clare shall be the outraged lady of virtue. Lebedev will fill in as necessary. The intention is to shame your cousin into releasing you.”

She turned her head and showed him one haughty eye. “Thank you, my lord,” she said, stiffly formal. “I shall be ready.” She snapped her head back around and walked away, her red cloak brilliant against the wet green leaves.

Nick watched her go, half expecting her to turn again, but of course she did not. When she disappeared around a bend in the dripping tunnel of trees, he retrieved his hat from the ground and absentmindedly brushed its pile into place before jamming it on his head. Well, he’d gone ahead and kissed her. Because it was the only thing to do. Because rules are made to be broken.

There was a rustle in the tree above him, then something fell, ricocheting off his hat. He watched as the small missile bounced once and came to rest near his toe. Nick bent and picked it up. It was a perfect little acorn, still with its jaunty cap. One of last season’s. It must have held on until this spring rain knocked it down. It was like Julia. Small, brown, and lovely. Filled with a compact, passionate promise. He tucked it in his pocket.

He set off toward home, kicking at the ground and cursing the dragoon whose raised saber had sent him crashing into the twenty-first century. He doubly cursed the Guild, which had first made it impossible for him to return and now made it impossible for him to stay. If, instead of jumping, he had somehow survived the war and returned home, he might at this moment be safely buckled to Julia, well on the way to the smug, fat contentment that was his birthright. Instead he had been hurled forward, out of Julia’s life, and then back into her life like a bloody bolt from the blue. He had just this moment bruised her pride, if not her heart, and he might well have destroyed his own chances for happiness into the bargain.

He kicked a clod of mud and cursed when it proved to be a cowpat. “I hate myself,” he muttered, hopping on one foot while trying to wipe the toe of his boot on the grass. “Sometimes I just hate myself.”