The River of No Return

by Bee Ridgway

  “Yes, yes,” Arkady said, leaning forward. “It was so in Russia at that time, with the dairymaids and their tight bodices.”

  “Are you of my time, then?”

  “Yes.” Arkady sharpened his focus on Nick. “And of your class as well, Lord Blackdown.”

  Nick started. No one had used that title or that name since the butcher, in the Guild hospital. Now Arkady used them with, if not exactly respect, then some sort of acknowledgment. Nick coughed. “What . . . what am I to call you, then?”

  “Are you asking me my name? The name to which I was born?”

  Impatience pricked him. “I know that’s against Guild etiquette. But for God’s sake, Arkady, I’m sitting here in London waiting for the Guild to send me back to my time. I’m breaking cardinal rules every way I turn. I’m simply asking you to tell me whatever it is that I need to survive this escapade. Perhaps your blessed birth name is one of those things.”

  Arkady blew a smoke ring. Nick watched it rise tremblingly and then dissipate. He puffed on his own cigar but performed no smoky tricks. He was in no mood for them. Arkady took another puff, then spoke, the smoke boiling out with his words. “You were allowed to keep your signet ring when you jumped.”

  “Yes.” Nick glanced at his hand.

  “I too. I kept my ring.” Arkady held his hand out to display his ruby ring. The jewel was huge and looked like a wound on Arkady’s bony hand. “The Guild chose us early on.”

  “But how could they know?”

  “We are aristocrats. Power likes power. The Guild is always happy to welcome a leader.”

  “But I gave up my title. My land. My name.”

  “Yes, yes.” Arkady waved his hand and the ruby glinted like an eye. “In your mind, yes, you became the simple man of the people, the commoner Nick Davenant. But the Guild has always known. You are Blackdown. The Guild let you believe it was forgotten. But the Guild did not forget.”

  Nick had been happy to be allowed to keep his ring. Was he still? “And you? What manner of aristocrat are you? How noble, Arkady? Are you a prince? A czar?”

  “I am Count Lebedev.”

  Nick nodded his head in the old gesture of respect between equals. “Lebedev.”

  Arkady smiled thinly. “Nice to meet you, too, Blackdown. But do you think I believe in this thing, this aristocracy? I know the future. I am not the fool. I am merely happy to be the count when it is good for the Guild. And you will be happy to be the marquess.”

  “If you say so.” These old titles, these old gestures—Nick felt a little dizzy.

  “I say so. I know it. You will have to struggle against how much you are happy to be the marquess. In fact, he will try to eat you up, this marquess who waits for you in the past. You will have to fight him. I will help you in that struggle.” Arkady spread his hands. “I am coming with you. Back to 1815.”

  “You’re coming too?”

  “Yes.” Arkady leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Does that please you?”

  “I’m not exactly pleased with anything having to do with this mess.”

  “Such friendliness. But you will be glad, I assure you. In the meantime, Nicholas Falcott, Marquess of Blackdown, we must accustom you again to your old names and your old personality.”

  Arkady had said those names—names that had once been his—three times in a minute. In this room, no less; the same room where Nick had spent his last night in London before leaving for Spain. Before breaking his mother’s heart. Before destroying his patrimony. Before ruining his sisters’ lives. Before damning his own sorry soul to hell at Badajoz.

  Arkady’s voice was tender when he spoke again. “Shall we return to the more pleasant topic of the lovely dairymaid?”

  “The dairymaid. Yes.” Nick took a deep breath, let it out, and packed his bad feelings away for another day. “She was lovely. Buxom. She came in, set the pails down, and drew the scarf from her bosom. Her bodice was low-cut, but the scarf hid everything, you understand.”

  “Yes, I do understand.”

  “She took it off, and her breasts rose up plump. One nipple peeked over the edge of her bodice. She used her scarf to wipe her face and stood fanning herself with her hand for a moment in the cool of the creamery. Her cheeks were flushed, and then as she bent to scratch her ankle, her breasts simply seemed to spill out. I was only about a foot away, crouched at that level. The world turned upside down. I was flooded with sensation. It seemed mostly to be in my head, a rushing of blood, or something like that.”

  “Did you do anything?” Arkady puffed his cigar.

  “No. Of course not. I was ten.”

  “But I, I would have taken the opportunity. I would have said, ‘Now is my chance to become more educated.’”

  Nick took a sip of his brandy and eyed the lanky Russian. His head was thrown back and he was blowing smoke rings again, clearly lost in his own fantasy. “Remind me why we are even discussing this?”

  Arkady rolled his head to one side to look dreamily at Nick. “I am trying to describe to you the feeling. You do not know what it is. Like a little boy who does not know what it is to desire a woman. Then suddenly you do know what it is. Forever afterward you know. At first you cannot control this feeling; it is—how do you say it nowadays—the boss of you. It arrives when it arrives. But soon you learn how to control it. You can make the feeling come and you can make it go. You are the boss of it. Do you see?”

  “So it feels like desire? Someone near me is shifting time and I think, ‘That’s lovely. I want to have sex.’”

  “No. Deliberately you misunderstand me. It feels like . . . like you almost trip and think, ‘Oh! I am falling.’ But then you do not fall. Or you are drinking and you think, ‘Oh! If I drink more the room will spin.’ But you do not drink more and then it does not spin. Do you see?”

  Nick drew on his cigar and didn’t answer. Sex, drinking, falling. He was beginning to suspect that this old Russian had led a far more interesting life than he had.

  Arkady tried again. “Do you remember the feeling the moment you jumped in time?”

  “Yes.” Nick recalled Jem Jemison fighting near him. Catching his glance. The bloody gravel under his fingers as he scrabbled for purchase. He recalled the cold intent in the Frenchman’s eyes, and then the terrifying, blind sensation of being yanked forward, as if by a team of wild horses. “It was like I was being pulled forward uncontrollably, and at great speed.”

  “Yes. This is the feeling I describe, only much, much smaller. Softer, this feeling. Someone near you is playing with time. You feel it; it is like a little pull in your belly. A little rushing in your ears. That time you jumped, it was a big pull, a big rush. You were saving your own life. You think it was an accident, a strange trick that takes you from the battlefield to the future. No, it was you. It was your gift, something inside you that was saving you. But you had no control over this thing, this gift. You were unaware. Much like a boy when he dreams of a woman, and when he wakes he finds that—”

  Nick held up a hand. “Please, Arkady. Is it possible to continue this conversation without constantly referring to sex?”

  “But why? Sex is related to everything. It is the most powerful human drive.”

  Nick sighed.

  Arkady pointed at Nick with his cigar. “Your years in America have ruined you. You are prudish, like a priest. Remember your old self, Blackdown. Would he have said to me, ‘I will not talk with you about women’? ‘I am embarrassed to talk with you about women’? No. He would have said, ‘Arkady, we are friends. Let us drink brandy and smoke cigars and talk about women.’”

  “But we aren’t talking about women. We are talking about freezing time. I am still not entirely sure what dairymaids have got to do with it.”

  Arkady unfolded himself from his armchair and stood glaring at Nick from his beanpole height. “Our skill—it is sensuous. It is warm. Making time stop at your will, it is like caressing a beautiful woman. Caressing her and feeling her surren
der.”

  Nick slumped back in his chair. “Fine,” he said. “I am merely the student here.” He could not believe this man was Alice Gacoki’s husband. But across the few days that he had lived with them, he had learned that in private Alice was a very different woman from the cool and collected Alderwoman he knew. They wouldn’t let Nick out into London—“You must still abide by Guild rules as far as possible”—and so they ate at home together. Alice was an inspired cook, reciting English poetry or singing in Kikuyu as she moved around the kitchen, unless—and Nick couldn’t bear to be in the kitchen at these times—she was listening to The Archers on the old-fashioned radio that sat like a cat, humpbacked and purring, on a sunny windowsill. She was a mean poker player and she liked her drink. She flirted constantly with her randy husband, while he, for his part, worshipped his beautiful, powerful wife. But Nick now also understood why Arkady was so seldom to be seen at official events, and was silent and mysterious when he did attend. The man was incorrigible.

  Arkady stood beside Nick’s chair. “Close your eyes this time, Blackdown,” he said. “I am going to stop time. Try again to feel it.”

  Nick closed his eyes. The room was silent except for the crackle of the fire. They had been through this again and again already this afternoon. Each time Nick missed it, and between one second and the next Arkady would seem, as if by magic, to have flown across the room, or moved Nick’s cigar, or built up the fire to a roar. Now Nick didn’t even try. He let his mind drift back to that voluptuous dairymaid, and the thing he hadn’t told Arkady. When she bent down, she had seen Nick gawping at her. Instead of screeching, or hiding her breasts, she had simply smiled. “Hello,” she said. Then she straightened again and carefully rearranged her fichu, taking her time. Whether she knew that she was tormenting him with her exquisite beauty, or whether she thought of him as an innocent child, Nick could not tell. But the replacement of the scarf became the fuel for years of dreams. She had taken her sweet, sweet time tucking the fabric in, arranging it, making it perfect. The process was infinitely more erotic even than when she had taken it off, for now Nick knew she knew he was watching. Then, with a twitch of her skirts, she was gone, and Nick was left alone, a very different boy than he had been when he scampered in to find a good hiding place.

  “Nick?”

  Nick opened his eyes with a heavy sigh. “What’s different?” He looked around the room.

  “Look at the fire.”

  Nick looked. It was as still as a photograph.

  “Stand up, Nick. You are in a moment of stopped time with me.”

  Nick slowly got to his feet. All around him the room was entirely motionless. The clock wasn’t ticking. The curtains, which had been moving in a slight breeze, were frozen. Outside the window the traffic went by as usual, but in this space, time was not only stopped, it didn’t seem even to exist. Arkady was beaming at Nick with triumph and something like teacherly pride. “How did it feel? Tell me.”

  Then Nick was laughing, so hard he had to sit down again. “Arkady, you devil. I was thinking about sex.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  For three days Julia had stayed inside, as Eamon had ordered, although at almost any time she could have simply walked out of the front door and down to the stables. She could have saddled a horse and ridden away, if only she had the funds to support herself. But she had no funds—and wouldn’t have for three long years—so until she could come up with a viable plan, she was opting for a show of obedience. She schooled herself to show Eamon no temper. Whenever he asked where the talisman was, as he did ten times a day, she looked up from whatever she was doing and quietly informed him that she did not know. Meanwhile, he had the servants turn Castle Dar inside out. They went through every chest in the attics, pulled every wine bottle from the cellar racks, searched the scullery, the empty bedrooms, the gunroom, the kennels. Their orders were to bring him anything unusual, or beautiful, or old, or foreign. After two days the study was piled with bizarre objects. In one corner, all of Grandfather’s rocks, sorted by size. Another corner housed a pile of especially old and mysterious-looking books. The rest was a miscellany, culled from all over the house and grounds. An embroidered reticule three generations old. A badger skull. A lock of gray hair tied with a rotting black ribbon. A scarab. An armored glove. An angel farthing. A shoe buckle made of enormous black-spot paste jewels. Eamon sat in the midst of it all like Job on his dung heap, growing progressively more enraged, and bellowing now and then for Julia. When she appeared, he demanded that she look over any new additions to the collection. Had she ever seen Grandfather with this object? This ivory needle case, for instance. Surely that was a magical symbol carved into it? Some sort of mystical rune?

  “No,” she had said in the quiet voice she had learned to use with him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize that.”

  “Blast it all. This could be it. This could well be it, and yet how am I to know it or access its powers?” He’d held the cylinder of needles up and perused it from all sides, then hurled it in a rage across the room. Then he’d looked at her and screamed, “Get out!”

  Julia had risen quietly and walked regally out of the study, but once the door closed behind her she stormed up to her room. She slammed the door and, barely pausing to pull the chair out and sit down at her writing desk, she scrawled a letter to her childhood friend Lady Arabella Falcott. Bella had grown up on the neighboring estate and was now in London for the Season. Julia’s letter was impassioned, almost every sentence underlined, and it ended with a blotted plea for help.

  Minutes after finishing it, Julia burned it. She could not foist herself on the Falcotts. The dowager marchioness, once a leading light in London society, had become a recluse since the young marquess had been killed in Spain. Clare, the elder sister, was firmly on the shelf. But Bella had always wanted to escape Falcott House. The minute she put off her mourning for her brother she began to pester her mother for a Season. Finally the dowager marchioness gave in. But Bella was twenty-one now, long in the tooth for a debutante, and if she was only to have one Season she needed to make the most of it. Having a penniless friend in deep mourning descend on her would cause her nothing but trouble.

  Now it was dinnertime. Eamon was scowling at his plate and pushing his food around with his fork, making a paste of his meal. Julia eyed him analytically. He was revolting, but she was fairly certain that he wasn’t actually dangerous. The real danger was to her reputation.

  The country society round about would forgive a week or two of domestic irregularity as the new earl settled in. But it had already been ten days since Grandfather’s death, and Eamon had shut the house to visitors. Before long the gossip would begin.

  Eamon looked up and caught her eye. “Penny for your thoughts, kitten,” he said. “Are you thinking of the talisman?”

  “No, Cousin. I am thinking of my reputation.”

  He waved his fork airily. “A thing of rags and patches.”

  “It pleases you to make fun of it, Cousin, but you should be worried, as I am.”

  Eamon snapped his fingers in the air. “That is what I think of your precious reputation, Cousin. It can hang from a gibbet for all I care.” He pushed his plate away.

  It was then that Julia felt something break. It was the taut thread of her patience. “You,” she said in a low voice, “are no better than a bastard.”

  He raised his glass to her. “A thrust! But alas, my dear, so easily parried. My parents were married a sure three years before my birth. If any claim to legitimacy is fragile, it is yours. Your runt of a father, marrying a commoner in Scotland? Over the anvil?” He shrugged. “She is seen by no one? And then they simultaneously perish in a carriage accident?”

  Julia gaped at him. “How dare you question my parents’ virtue? Their deaths were tragic. Grandfather had given them his blessing! What you suggest is ludicrous.”

  “I did not suggest it, Julia.” Eamon drank and set his glass down carefully. “You did. I am merely agreeing wi
th you. Your reputation is fragile. Indeed, it is more fragile even than you know. Probably it is already destroyed.”

  “You cannot keep me here a prisoner, Cousin. You must appoint a chaperone. And you—we—must accept visitors and invitations and be seen to be sociable, or we shall both become pariahs.”

  Eamon rolled his eyes. “The pariahs of Devon. My dear kitten, who cares? Soon I will find the talisman and be richer than Croesus. I shall marry a diamond, and society will beg me for my very fingernail clippings. And you?” Eamon opened his eyes wide in a look of false concern. “What will happen to you then?” He stuffed a hunk of bread into his mouth.

  Julia didn’t answer. But she allowed all her contempt to show in her face as she watched him.

  “I shall tell you.” He spoke with his mouth full, spraying masticated crumbs. “I shall drive you from the gate like a whore, be you one or nay.”

  Julia took a sip of wine, impressed that her hand was steady enough to do so. “You wish to find an aristocratic wife? Who will have you, Cousin? Everyone will say that you have been living in sin with your own young cousin. Furthermore, they will say that you abandoned her when you set out to find a rich wife. I think you will find that most eligible young ladies have better options than that.”

  Eamon slammed his fork and knife down on the table. “I am the Earl of Darchester,” he bellowed. “The Earl of Darchester! Any woman would be glad to have me. Once I find the talisman I shall make my pick.”

  Julia twirled her wineglass recklessly in her fingers. “But if you don’t find it? Which you will not, for it does not exist. What will you do then?” She considered the sparkle of candlelight on the cut crystal. “After all,” she said, “who is the Earl of Darchester? Is he well regarded in London? Is he a man of political influence? Is he a man of dashing good looks? Is he such a paragon that he can survive the scandal of a rumored liaison with the old earl’s twenty-two-year-old granddaughter?” Julia took a sip of wine and eyed him over the rim of her glass. Then she spoke again, in a soft voice. “I believe the answer to all of those questions is a firm no, Cousin. I believe that in fact the Earl of Darchester is an ugly man of late middle age, without dash or influence enough to charm a pig.”