The River of No Return (21 page)

A
t three forty-five Julia was waiting upstairs in the Yellow Saloon, where callers were usually received. She alternated sitting with pacing back and forth in front of the windows, looking for the first sign of the carriage. Would they come? He’d said they would, but that had been in the wake of him kissing her. Perhaps he had gone away and thought better of it. After all, she had stolen away to meet him, she had recklessly kissed him back . . . when they were supposed to be planning how to save her reputation. How stood her reputation now? Julia closed her eyes. The world was very small, and it was easy to trip over things, easy to close doors forever. Easy to trap yourself.

That was why she hadn’t wanted him to say anything afterward. She hadn’t wanted the kiss to resolve immediately into debts, duties . . . or awkward explanations of why he couldn’t, why he wouldn’t. She had just wanted him to be silent. Just wanted the kiss to be a kiss, a floating moment in time without repercussions.

Instead, he’d spoken. “I am not free.” It was strange, but his saying that had made the notion of freedom seem suddenly sordid. It had made her feel like he was perfectly free and it was she who was tainted, guilty, unfree. And perhaps now he did finally believe that she was no better than her reputation. A loose woman.

Well. Best not to borrow trouble from earlier today, either. Julia sighed and turned her mind to more immediate problems. If he did come, it was important that the plan should work, and she wasn’t sure strategic snobbery and appeals to propriety would do the trick. Eamon was currently obsessed with the lacquered box and much less interested in Julia than he had been. He might already be willing to let her go. Or he might be enraged by the pomposity of his neighbors and refuse.

She heard a sound and went to the window. She couldn’t yet see the carriage, but she could hear the horses’ hooves and the wheels on the gravel. She turned and looked somewhat wildly around the room. Soon Nicholas would be here, in this room. The man she had kissed in the rain. Desire had held her in its hand today, and she had yielded, as a ripe peach yields to the teeth. She wanted to be back with him in the woods, she wanted to feel his rough cheek against hers, his hair tangling in her hands, his hot kisses on her throat.

Julia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her temper had always been her besetting sin. Now she knew that anger and desire were drawn from the same well. He had gripped her strongly, kissed her harshly, and she had met him with equal strength. Then he’d made her angry, and her anger had felt good, as good as the passion.

The sound of the approaching carriage grew louder and Julia opened her eyes. For a moment she simply stared, and then she laughed; an ostentatious red-bodied coach was bowling out from under the trees, a gilded coat of arms on its doors. The coachman was in full Blackdown livery, and he was driving a perfectly matched four of chestnuts. It was all very splendid, and utterly ridiculous for an afternoon visit among near neighbors. She laughed again as the coachman deftly avoided the bump in the drive. But her laughter died in her throat as the horses swept the coach up in front of the house, and she was biting her lip by the time the coachman climbed down, opened the door, and lowered the step with a flourish.

Clare’s foot emerged first, clad in a satin shoe, and then the rest of her, her gloved hand grasping the coachman’s for support, her calm face tilted to look up at the house. She wore an elaborately ruched chocolate-brown spencer over a dress of rust-red net, its deep hem richly embroidered in browns and blues and golds. Her red turban sported a glorious dark blue ostrich feather affixed with a golden brooch. She looked so magnificent as to appear slightly theatrical, which Julia knew to be the goal.

Next to emerge was a tall, older man with a full head of wild white hair. This had to be Count Lebedev. He stood beside Clare and looked at the house with a slight sneer, one hand on his hip, the other clasping his black beaver hat, which Julia could see had a garish red lining.

Finally, after what seemed like a year, Blackdown climbed out of the coach. He was a few inches shorter than the Russian but dressed identically, in a blue superfine coat with bright buttons, buff pantaloons, and tasseled Hessian boots. The men’s snowy cravats were even tied in the same stiff and intricate oriental style.

She reached out and put her hand against the glass, covering the party of visitors with her fingers for just a moment. She let her hand drop, and the three callers reappeared. As if he sensed her, Nick turned his head and looked straight up at her window. She held her chin high. He nodded to her curtly.

The trio paused together and gazed at the house, rather like three generals surveying a battlefield, Clare with unruffled certitude, the Russian with contempt, and the marquess with impassive determination. Without speaking to one another, they moved toward the door and out of Julia’s line of sight. She now simply had to wait, and hope that Eamon would receive his guests in the Yellow Saloon.

* * *

Pringle tried to turn them away at the door, as he had been instructed. But his obedience to his master was suitably overawed by the sight of Nicholas Falcott, returned so gloriously and miraculously from the war. The young marquess was sadly weathered by his years spent in the hot sun, but he was so finely dressed, and his elegant Russian friend was a true dandy, Pringle could tell. After some debate, he agreed that the earl might be persuaded into receiving his guests.

Five minutes later he returned. The earl would see them in the Blue Drawing Room. “Which is in and of itself a miracle, my lords and lady. But not Miss Julia. He orders that she must wait upstairs. She will not be permitted to join you.”

“Where is Miss Julia?” Clare put her hand on Pringle’s arm. “She is expecting us.”

“In the Yellow Saloon, my lady.”

“Does she yet know that she is not to come downstairs?” Clare asked.

The butler shook his head.

“Then I shall go up to her,” Clare said, all brisk efficiency. “You may explain to the earl that I insisted upon seeing my old friend and would not take no for an answer. I’ll then bring her down to the Blue Drawing Room. I shall simply tell his lordship that I couldn’t bear not to see her.” She turned to Nick and Arkady. “Good luck, gentlemen. I’ll be down with Julia in a trice.” She caught up her skirt in one hand and ran lightly up the stairs.

Pringle led the men across the entrance hall, but after only a few steps Arkady held up his hand. “Hush.” He cocked his head, as if listening. “Do you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

Arkady mouthed the word so that Pringle could not hear: “Time.”

Nick concentrated. Perhaps he did feel a little tremor, a tiny sensation. But nothing definite. He raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Arkady nodded.

“Give us a moment please, Pringle?” Nick looked to the butler, who stepped discreetly away.

“That is time play?” Nick whispered. “But it’s so faint. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Yes.” Arkady looked all around the room. “Someone is thinking of playing with time. They have not yet done it, but they are making the surface of the river ripple with the power of their feelings.” Arkady paused again, wrinkling his nose as if at a bad smell. “But as you say, it doesn’t feel right. Something is very strange here.”

“So what do we do?”

“Keep your eyes and ears open. Someone here is dangling their fingers in the river. Perhaps we will discover who it is. Perhaps this so-reclusive earl is of interest after all.”

Arkady strode toward Pringle, and with a flourish the butler pulled open the huge mahogany double doors that led to the formal rooms of Castle Dar. “The Marquess of Blackdown. Count Lebedev of St. Petersburg.” Pringle sang their names into the echoing, dark vastness of the Blue Drawing Room.

* * *

Where were they? Julia paced the Yellow Saloon, tamping down the desire to go in search of them. She had half a mind to freeze time and go downstairs to see what was going on, but then she heard a light step running up the stair. Julia opened the door just as Clare reached it. Julia cried out at the sight of the familiar face, and Clare hugged her.

“Oh, poor Julia!” Clare pulled away, gripping Julia’s shoulders. “Nick told me what you have been suffering. I did not realize the gossip was so cruel, but that is no excuse for my negligence. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Please, it is nothing. I am just so glad to see you, and to see that you believe in me.” Julia hugged Clare again. “Where are the others?”

“There is a fly in the ointment. They are downstairs with your cousin in the Blue Drawing Room.”

“But we never use that room. It is a silk-lined barn. The servants probably haven’t dusted it in a month.”

“Nevertheless, that is where the gentlemen are. Your cousin did not want you to be informed of our visit.”

Anger bit Julia, hard. “He is a toad,” she said, spitting the word out. “He makes me his prisoner, allows the gossip to grow—and only for his own perverse pleasure in seeing me suffer.”

Julia barely heard Clare’s words of condolence and continued apology. She wanted nothing more than to stop time. She could do it. She could feel the desire to do it building at the base of her skull. She could march downstairs and into the Blue Drawing Room, drop her deepest curtsey to Lord Blackdown and his Russian friend, who would be standing like two statues. She could pull her arm back. . . .

But if the men awoke to find Eamon with a painful handprint on his cheek, where a moment ago there had been none? Eamon was stupid, but it wouldn’t take him long to realize what she could do.

With a powerful effort Julia quelled her rage. And inspiration struck. “The priest’s hole,” she said slowly, remembering the secret closet on the landing built during the Dissolution to hide not a priest, but an abbess. It contained spy holes overlooking the Blue Dining Room from high in its east hall. She jumped to her feet, pulling Clare up with her. “If Eamon wants to pose as the evil guardian and pretend that we are all trapped in a ‘horrid’ novel, then let us play along!”

Clare laughed. “Last time we played in the priest’s hole, I had agreed to be a queen held for ransom in a tower. You and Bella were to rescue me.”

“It wasn’t a tower,” Julia said. “Please, Clare. You were locked in the hold of a pirate ship.”

“Was I? I spent the time reading by candlelight, I’m afraid. As I recall, I believe I spent a full hour in that closet, waiting to be sprung free.”

“Ah, yes. Indeed. That can be explained. You see, you agreed to be the queen, so long as we didn’t distract you from your reading, but the game relied upon Nick agreeing to be the pirate. Once we had you in place, we went to convince him. His refusal destroyed all our pleasure in the game and so . . .”

“You abandoned me there.”

“Yes,” Julia said, laughing, “I’m afraid so.”

Clare stood and brushed her skirts smooth. “Shall we complete the scene today, but with some of the parts transposed? I believe you will find that Nick is now eager to play.”

A few short moments later, Clare, Julia, and a candle were ensconced in the priest’s hole. Each woman had her eye pressed to one of the peepholes in the wall.

At first it was hard to see anything in the drawing room, for the heavy blinds were drawn against the daylight, and only a few candles burned here and there. As their eyes adjusted, figures slowly emerged out of the gloom. The gentlemen must only recently have entered the room, for they were still standing, showing their profiles to the peepholes. Eamon was dressed in rusty black, and he cut a disgraceful figure compared to the others. His fingers were ink stained, and Julia could see that his neck cloth, tied in the simplest of knots, was also smudged with ink. The men were clearly in some sort of standoff, for none of them spoke, and Nick and Arkady each wore an expression of outraged shock.

“Eamon has not wasted any time in offending them,” Julia whispered. “Look how vexed they seem.” Clare nodded, without taking her eye from her hole.

Eamon had taken up his belligerent stance, the one that made him look like an affronted piglet. His head was thrust so far forward that it looked as if it must topple off his shoulders. His feet were planted primly but firmly, the toes pointing at ten and two o’clock. His hands flexed and unflexed at his sides, and he was slowly changing color, from a rather repellent shade of poultice pink to a far more alarming shade of red. The Russian, who stood with one booted foot placed elegantly forward, was clearly fascinated, for he slowly lifted his quizzing glass to his eye and surveyed Eamon up and down. He then sneered so broadly that the women could see the curl of his lip.

Finally Nick broke the silence. “I
beg
your pardon?”

“The woman.” Eamon spat the words out. “Where is she? Pringle said there would be three of you. Two roosters and a hen. Two boars and a sow. Two dogs and a bitch. Where is the damned bitch?” His voice rose. “Is she spying on me? Have you sent her to find my secrets?”

Clare clutched Julia’s hand and looked at her, eyes huge in the candlelight.

“I told you so,” Julia mouthed.

“But he is unspeakable, Julia. Unspeakable.” Clare’s whisper was urgent. “We must get you away.”

Julia pressed her friend’s hand as they both turned back to their peepholes.

“If you had friends,” Nick was saying, his voice as calm as the earl’s was loud, “I would ask you to name your seconds. No one speaks of my sister in that fashion. However, since you have no friends, and since you are clearly ignorant of the dignities and responsibilities that come with your new title, I shall merely request that you alter your tone with me, sir.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I await your apology.”

Eamon stood goggling at him, his mouth forming soundless words.

“This man.” The Russian gestured at Eamon with a disgusted flick of the wrist. “He is a snorting wild boar. In Russia, we kill this animal like vermin, and yet here he stands, an earl.”

“He has been an earl for but a few weeks, Count Lebedev,” Nick said, speaking to his friend as if Eamon were nothing more than an interesting exhibit, and not a living man growing more enraged with every passing second. “You see, he was never intended to inherit. The old earl lost his son, and this cousin crawled out from under a rock somewhere. We must endure him.”