The River of No Return

by Bee Ridgway

  Nick stared at her blankly for a moment. Then a big smile split his face. It was all too absurd. “No relation,” he said. “But thank you. Thank you for your comforting words.”

  He caught up with Arkady and put his arm around the older man’s shoulders. “Caroline likes you after all,” he said. “She thinks I should keep you.”

  “I do not understand,” Arkady said. “You were miserable a moment ago and now you’re laughing.”

  “Send me home, then.”

  “You are home.” Arkady produced the key and proceeded to open the door to their flat. “We jump at dawn. It was not a good idea, spending a few days here in the future.”

  “The present.”

  Arkady held the door, allowing Nick to enter, then closed it behind them. “Tomorrow, my lord, this present that you love so much will be the far away future.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Arkady shook Nick awake an hour before the sun rose. He was as fussy as a valet over Nick’s outfit, and then as anxious as a girl over his own. But finally, when the first gray light was filtering through the windows, they were primped and ready in their unmentionables and Hessian boots, their tight jackets and starched cravats. They poked their beaver-hatted heads cautiously out of the door, then stepped into the early dawn like two nervous peacocks. No one was about.

  “We stroll down to that bend in the drive,” Arkady said. “When we are far away enough from the house we jump, then stroll back. As if we are walking up from the main road.”

  “It makes no sense,” Nick said. “We would drive up in a coach, or at least a phaeton.”

  “We were dropped off by a traveling friend.”

  “Without luggage?”

  “We were robbed.”

  “My family is not comprised of fools.”

  “Your family will be glad to see you. They will not ask questions. And the truth? It is so outlandish that they will never guess it. Believe me, I have done this many times before.”

  “And yet still you do not inspire confidence, Arkady.”

  The Russian flicked dust from his sleeve and stuck his nose in the air. The twenty-first century was falling from him with each step he took. He looked every inch the elegant and slightly savage Russian count. It was impressive. Nick tried to follow suit and did manage to find his more upright nineteenth-century stride. The two men crunched along in silence for a minute.

  “Arkady?”

  “Mm.”

  “You won’t abandon me there . . . here?”

  Arkady glanced at Nick out of the corner of his eye, then stopped and put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “I am your friend, Blackdown. I know you are frustrated that I do not teach you to jump, I do not teach you to freeze time. I only teach you to recognize time play. But believe me, it is for a reason that you are kept without these skills. It is perhaps more dangerous to have the skills. The Ofan can sense time play like we can. If they sensed you shifting time, they would know you were with the Guild. We need you to be clean, ready to infiltrate, to get close to them, to be inside.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  Arkady grinned. “You are to use your . . . how do you say it? Your charmingness? The charmingness you have. The charmingness that makes you so good at what you do.”

  “What I do?” Nick shrugged his shoulder free of Arkady’s grip. “I don’t do anything. I bum around New York seducing women and eating expensive meals. I help some farmers in Vermont. I enjoy myself.”

  “Well. Even these little, lazy things. You do them with your charmingness.”

  “You mean my charm,” Nick said. “And I’m not lazy. I work hard at enjoying myself.”

  Arkady chuckled. “Yes, yes. You work hard. But you see, it is more than hard work we need. Any person can work hard. In 1815 you are Lord Blackdown, hero of the war. You are the rich marquess and you have this thing, this charmingness. And you have Falcott House. You are perfect, you see, for what we need. You are the only one.”

  “What does Falcott House have to do with it?”

  Arkady’s expression hardened. “Something is going on, near Falcott House and also in London. In Devon we need you to be the marquess, magically returned, but secretly on the alert: What are the Ofan doing down here? In London it is yet more important, what you are to do. You must be charming to the Ofan. Make them want you. You must pretend to join them.”

  “I thought you wanted me to fight them.”

  “Fighting, spying—it is the same. Do not worry. I will always be near you and I will be playing my part. When it is all over, I will bring you back again to this century.”

  “And if I don’t want to come back?”

  “You must come back.” Arkady’s voice was tinged with regret. “There is no choice. The Guild permits no one to be left behind. Even should you die. If you die, I will personally bring your body back to the twenty-first century. Like in that film, you have seen it, yes? It is the First World War, where the soldier goes into the no-man’s-land to get his friend’s broken body. I am your comrade, like that. The music swells and the guns are shooting, but still he goes forward for his friend—”

  Nick held up a hand. “I haven’t seen that film.”

  “But I didn’t tell you the title.”

  “Nevertheless. I don’t like war movies.” Nick’s tone was abrupt. “I give you permission to leave my dead body in no-man’s-land, Arkady. Please.”

  The Russian shrugged. “Never. I am your brother! But the point is not this foolish movie. The point is that you will come back.”

  “Dead or alive.”

  “Yes.”

  Nick shivered in his stiff clothes and thought about his warm, living body underneath them: scarred, yes, but strong and still relatively young. He didn’t want to die for Arkady’s cause. He had jumped forward two centuries rather than die for England’s cause. Cowardice. Treason. Words he used to excoriate himself. Was this cowardice that he felt now, this reluctance to follow Arkady into the River of Time, into this war against the Ofan? Nick packed that thought away. This was no time for memories and no time for self-doubt. He was about to step lightly across an abyss that was centuries deep. He was about to go home.

  They followed the bend in the drive, and the house was lost from sight. Arkady stopped and looked around. “Behind this tree,” he said. “In your time, would there be anything over there, a building where people might see us?”

  “There might always be someone about. Scything the lawn, tending sheep, walking or riding across the land.”

  “Hm. Perhaps we jump to nighttime.”

  “It’s probably best. But not too late in the evening. I don’t want to wake my mother.” Nick laughed without humor. “That’s a sentence I never thought I’d say again.”

  “You are about to say many things you never thought you’d say again. Do many things again.”

  Nick didn’t reply. He was thinking about dark eyes, trying to stay calm.

  “Now then,” Arkady said, stepping off the path and behind the tree, being careful not to get dirt on his shining black boots. “Are you ready?” He held out his hands. “Hold tightly.”

  Nick gripped the Russian’s hands. “What am I supposed to do? Lie back and think of England?”

  “No, you do nothing,” Arkady said, missing the joke. “I will think of England. You will come along with me as I think. You do not know in your conscious mind how to jump, but deep inside, in the heart of you, you know. I could not touch the shoulder of a Natural and drag him with me down through history. But you, you are already a time traveler.”

  “Okay,” Nick said, dubious.

  “Little priest. You must trust me.” Arkady’s smile was probably intended to be reassuring, but it was a trifle too wide; with his wild white hair sticking out from under his curly-brimmed beaver hat, he looked slightly manic, like Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future, a film Nick had finally stopped renting after the girl in the video store started calling him “Marty McFly.” “When I r
each out to the past, I will feel for it with my heart. I will sense it. When I have found the past in my heart, I will begin to pull myself back. You too will feel it, through my hands. Your heart will open to the feeling. It will come in like the flood. You will come along with me. Do you understand?”

  Nick nodded, though really, they were probably both insane: two grown men dressed up like Mr. Darcy, holding hands behind a tree, trying to pull themselves by their heartstrings back to the long ago. Mad.

  “Close your eyes, then, my friend. Yes, good.”

  Immediately Julia Percy was there behind his eyelids, as if she were waiting for him. Closer than usual, emerging from the trees in her yellow dress . . . Nick felt a tug, then a sharp pull backward. It felt as if his stomach were trying to burst through his spine. He opened his mouth to breathe and found he couldn’t. Only the feeling of Arkady’s hands and the image of those dark eyes kept him from screaming. Then, abruptly, it was over. Before opening his eyes he breathed, and immediately he was weeping. The air was sweet, sweeter than any air he had breathed in ten years, and it smelled so powerfully of home that Nick began to sink to his knees.

  “Goddamn it.” Arkady hauled him upright. “Do you want to ruin your trousers? Pull yourself together.” He shook Nick by the shoulders. “Now!”

  Nick gasped and opened his eyes to a night so black he could hardly see Arkady beside him. He put out a hand to steady himself against the tree and stumbled as his hand fell through a foot of air; the tree was smaller. It was no longer winter; tiny new leaves were rustling in a slight, cool breeze. Plowed earth and freshly cut grass and wood smoke . . . He took a few deep breaths.

  Arkady spoke more softly. “Are you all right?”

  Nick nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry. The shock.”

  “I must admit you have done better than most.” Arkady allowed some pride into his voice. “In fact, you have done the best. Most people completely break down. Except for me. Me, I jump back for the first time without a care. I arrive ready for my dinner.”

  Nick could not be bothered with Arkady’s braggadocio, for through the shifting shadows he had caught sight of twinkling candlelight. Falcott House. Where his sisters and mother were probably sitting down to eat . . . he set off at a run.

  “Wait!” He heard Arkady start out after him. “Do you want to break your leg?”

  Nick didn’t care. The clean, rich air of home filled his lungs as he ran, leaving Arkady far behind. The gravel of the drive kicked up behind his heels. He vaulted up the stone steps and pounded on the door. “Mother! Clare! Arabella!”

  The door opened to the butler’s shocked face.

  Nick fell into the doorway, one arm gathering the little butler to his side in a strong embrace. “Winthrop, you old reprobate. Where is my mother?”

  * * *

  An hour later and a modicum of sanity was restored to Falcott House. It turned out that Mother and Arabella were in London for the Season, but Clare had flown into her brother’s arms and stayed there for a full fifteen minutes, crying and laughing and stroking him and calling him by all his childhood names, as servants emerged from every corner of the house to welcome Nick home. Arkady stood to one side and watched it all. Now the Russian was taking himself off to be settled in a guest bedroom. He had explained about their being robbed. Would it be possible to borrow a few things from Lord Blackdown’s wardrobe? Or had all his old clothes been discarded?

  Nick’s mother had not cleared out his rooms after his “death”; his clothes were as he had left them several years ago, when he departed for the war. “Be sure to take all the very best things,” Clare said, laughing over her shoulder at Nick as Arkady bowed low over her hand.

  “I will endeavor to please you, my lady,” the Russian said, straightening and keeping her hand in his.

  Nick felt a rush of anger as he watched them flirt. He frowned, more at the feeling than because of it. The emotion felt so . . . antique.

  Arkady went off to raid Nick’s dressing room, and Clare tucked her hand into the crook of Nick’s elbow. “I must have you to myself for at least three hours,” she said. “I want to hear all about your adventures.”

  “And I want to hear about yours.”

  “That will take two seconds,” she said. “During the winter I do nothing indoors, and during the summer I do nothing outdoors. And now my tale is done.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  She smiled. “Nor should you. In truth I work very hard. Do you wish for some brandy or tea?”

  Soon Nick found himself seated beside his elder sister on a delicate sofa in the little blue parlor. “I’m sure you could not get a good cup of tea in Spain,” she said, picking up the sugar tongs and getting ready to put a lump into his cup.

  Nick held up his hand. “No sugar, please.”

  Clare looked up. “Your tastes have changed.”

  “Many things have changed in the years since I left for Spain.”

  “Five years is a long time,” she said, “though the war has aged you more, Brother.” She pursed her lips as she looked at him, in that funny way she had that he had forgotten. She handed him his cup, her eyes on the scar across his eyebrow. “It must have been terrible, the war. And terrible to lose your memory.”

  “It was.”

  Clare stirred sugar into her own tea. “We grieved for you. There is a monument in the churchyard in Stoke Canon.”

  “It will have to come down.” Nick was surprised to hear the resolution in his voice. And of course it shouldn’t come down—he was only going to disappear all over again when this task was done, and break her heart once more.

  “Yes, tomorrow.” Clare smiled. “We will smash it to pieces, you and I.”

  “You can wear a chip of it in a locket, to remember how I conquered death.”

  “Arrogant! As if I would carry it around like a fragment of the one true cross.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Clare’s smile became a grin. “Of course, Mother must be informed that you are returned.”

  “I shall send for her in the morning.”

  “Yes . . .” Clare appeared to consider it, but Nick knew his sister and could see she had already come up with a plan. “It would be a shame to ruin Bella’s Season, though, wouldn’t it?”

  Nick shrugged.

  “Well, it would, even if you don’t realize it, man that you are. If Mother knew you were here she would pack Bella up in the space of an hour and kill three teams of horses in her rush to get to you. Best to simply inform her that, by the time she is reading our letter, we are already on our way to her. It will take me a few days—maybe four—to ready the house and myself for a trip to London. Will Count Lebedev be disappointed to turn around and return to London so quickly?”

  Nick straightened his cuffs. “Lebedev will do as he is told.”

  “Oh, will he, my lord?”

  “Yes, he will.”

  She beamed at him over the edge of her cup. He had missed her, deep in his marrow. “Clare,” he said.

  “Do I look older to you?” She said it lightly, but he knew it was an important question. She was twenty-nine years old. Back in the twenty-first century, that was still considered young. Here and now, she was well past her youth. Her beautiful hair was bundled up beneath a frilly white cap: His sister was a spinster.

  “When did you put on caps?”

  Clare took a delicate sip. “Last year.”

  Nick was silent, not knowing what to say. Would his old self have been silent, too? Clare seemed to think so.

  “I can see what you are thinking, Nick, and I assure you, I want to hear no words about it.”

  He nodded. “As to whether or not you look older,” he said, “I always think of you as a kid, dragging me behind you into trouble.”

  “A kid?”

  “I’m sorry.” He had slipped up already. “A kid. It’s . . . it’s soldier’s cant for a child. I meant that I always see a young girl when I look at you.”

&
nbsp; “That’s kind of you. But I know my age. And I no longer expect to be married.” She looked at him closely. “I can comfort myself that my little brother looks years older than I do.”

  Nick knew that his face told its own story. He had been three years her junior when he went off to war. Now he was four years her senior.

  “Your scar. How did you get it?”

  “This?” He touched his eyebrow, the ramparts of Badajoz looming in his memory.

  “Yes.”

  “A taproom disagreement.”

  Clare frowned but said nothing.

  “I think you are beautiful,” he said, both to break the silence, and because it was true.

  “Thank you. I suppose I should learn that when you ask for compliments, the compliments you receive always sound like false coin.”

  “You never used to be this self-doubting.”

  “Your death changed everything. We have not known how to be happy for three years.” Between one breath and the next Clare was crying.

  Nick gathered his sister into his arms, pushing the wretched cap from her head and stroking her hair. “Hush,” he said. “Hush now.”

  She gripped his shoulders and wept for a moment, then she pulled away and rearranged herself on her chair. With her face turned from him, she replaced her cap carefully back over her hair. “Oh, dear.” She wiped her eyes with her napkin. “I am sorry. It is such a shock.” She looked at him again, her eyes a little red. “Such a lovely, lovely shock to see you, Nick. I’m afraid I lost control.”

  “I am glad you could show me your tears. It makes me feel . . .” He stopped, surprised to discover that the feeling was pride. It was in relation to the emotion that had surprised him a few moments ago, when Clare had been flirting with Arkady. Except that he wasn’t angry now.

  “It makes you feel like you’re home again? To have your sister dissolve into tears like a ninny?”