The River of No Return

by Bee Ridgway

  “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 a
lter 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.”

  It was then that all hell broke loose. Eamon reached up to the mantelpiece and grabbed a china statuette of Shakespeare leaning contemplatively against a tree, and he smashed it against a nearby table. He brandished the base of the figure, which now sprouted two graceful legs and a stump, all ending in razor-sharp edges. “Leave my house!” the earl screamed, charging at them with his weapon.

  Clare gasped, and Julia acted without thinking. She began to stall time, focusing all her powers of concentration out through that tiny peephole and down onto the gentlemen below. But almost immediately she felt something, someone, fighting her. Eamon! He must have divined that she was the Talisman, must have found a way to use her strength against her. The worst had happened. He was using her. She concentrated her attention, straining against him until she thought her head would burst.

  He was pushing back against the strength of her will. She watched through the peephole as time slowed and Eamon’s motions became ponderous, but try as she might she could not stop time altogether. Her head hurt with trying, and she managed to slow the scene only a fraction more, before her concentration snapped as if it were a dry, dead stem. She pulled back from the peephole with a gasp, clutching her head.

  The pain faded almost immediately. She turned quickly to Clare, who was still pressed to her peephole. They had to run. Farther away than Blackdown House. She had to leave the country. Eamon knew!

  She grabbed at Clare, whispering her name, but her friend did not respond. Clare was frozen in a moment in time. Her hands, spread against the wall on either side of her peephole, were still as death. Julia glanced at the candle. It didn’t move.

  Eamon had stopped time. He had overpowered and used her. She was the Talisman and he was channeling his will through her.

  “Oh, my dear God,” she whispered, and slowly put her eye back to the peephole, letting her shaking fingers rest on Clare’s unmoving wrist.

  * * *

  The earl was suspended in midair, his absurd weapon held triumphantly aloft like Excalibur itself. “That wasn’t part of the plan,” Nick said. He turned to Arkady and was shocked to see that his friend was shaken and sweating. “What’s wrong with you?” He helped him to a seat.

  Arkady pointed at Darchester. “That man is something extraordinary. He is as mad as your King George, but he is powerful. Didn’t you feel it?”

  “I felt you stop time. It took you long enough. The blasted fool was about to slice my face off with Shakespeare’s codpiece.”

  Arkady wiped his forehead. “You are too inexperienced to understand what happened here. He tried to stop time first. I had to fight him. I won. He is not strong enough. Few people are strong enough to win in a duel with me. But still he is very strong. I could feel—he should have been able to fight me, if he were trained. Perhaps he is inexperienced, or perhaps it is that he is crazy, or it is both things combined.”

  “All right . . .” Nick wasn’t quite sure he understood what Arkady was saying, but it was clear they were in some sort of mess. “What the hell are we going to do now?”

  Arkady was not to be rushed. He was calmer now, and contemplated the earl with a scholarly eye. “I don’t understand. Why is he now frozen? If he can freeze time himself, he should also be immune to being frozen. Remember how I trained you to notice when I stopped time? And then you could avoid being frozen with it? And yet you see him there. Even the spittle. It is like ice on his lips.” He stared up from his chair at the earl, suspended in mid-leap. “He cannot be Ofan. The whole purpose of Ofan resistance to the Guild is knowledge, education. An Ofan would know everything about his talent. He would know everything about how to use it.” Arkady propped his head in his hands and stared again at the immobilized earl. “This untrained maniac. He distresses me. Never have I seen anything like him. So strong the talent, and so ignorant the man.” Arkady walked up to Darchester, peering at him closely. “Are you Ofan?”

  The contorted face said nothing.

  “Let me kill him.” Nick heard the words leave his mouth, and realized he meant them. “I want to!”

  Arkady turned, laughing. “The warrior priest! Why do you want to kill him? You who are so squeamish?”

  Nick raked his hands through his hair in frustration. “You brought me here to kill Ofan. You uprooted my life to bring me here for this task. I will gladly begin right here and now and crush this serpent for us all.”

  Arkady rocked back on his heels, that scholarly gaze turned on Nick, now. “Ah. I see. It is the woman. You will kill for a girl, but not for the Guild. This Julia, she beckons to you with the pretty looks and it makes you disloyal.”

  “Do not speak of her that way.”

  “What way?” Arkady looked him up and down. “You do not wish to hear her spoken of as a woman? Nor you as a man?” The Russian smiled, and for the first time Nick disliked him. “You are the great marquess now, is that it? The protector of virgins? You who were so recently the tomcat?” He shook his head. “I’m afraid I do not believe it, my priest. This very morning, I saw you heading toward Castle Dar. I saw the flash of a girl’s red cloak against the trees. She is yours already.”

  Nick got one punch in before Arkady was on him, tumbling him off his legs and pinning him back against the chair. “Ah, Nick,” he said, almost dreamily. “You are romantic. I like it in you. But you cannot hit me. Not me, your old friend.”

  “What makes you my friend, Arkady?” Nick’s face was so close to the Russian’s now that he could see his own face reflected in his pupils. “You expect me to die for a cause I know almost nothing about. You mock a woman I hold in great esteem. You make obscene suggestions about her to my face. Then you claim friendship with me?”

  Arkady’s eyes were sparkling with delight by the end of Nick’s speech. He leapt to his feet, hauling Nick up with him. “Yes! You are so impassioned. Almost like a Russian. There is no priest in you now. I embrace you.” He did so. “No man is a man until he is made weak by a woman.” Arkady pulled back and held Nick by the shoulders, gazing tenderly into his eyes. “Kiss me.”

  “I am not made weak by a woman, and I will not kiss you.”

  “Bah. You lie.” Arkady smashed his lips against Nick’s unresponding mouth. He pulled back, grinning. “You are a man. We will save her. Why? Because it is beautiful and romantic to do so. We will fight this maniac like the men we are—with our fists. Why? Because it is beautiful and romantic to do so.” Arkady released Nick and turned to face Darchester. “Are you ready? I am about to set him free. Prepare, Nicholas Davenant, to defend yourself!”

  Nick couldn’t help but laugh. “You are entirely insane!”

  The Russian turned a wild, joyous face back to him, and then the earl was upon them, howling, and slashing with the broken statuette. Arkady and Nick milled in with their fists. Nick saw Darchester’s spittle, mobile again, fly from his lips, and then felt his own coat, shirt, and skin sliced open just above the elbow. “Damn you to hell!” He charged, head bowed like a ram’s, fists pumping. Meanwhile Arkady stepped behind the earl and caught him as Nick knocked him backward. Darchester got one more slash in before Arkady grasped his wrist and squeezed until Darchester squealed like a pig and dropped his weapon. Nick laughed in Darchester’s enraged face, only to have his shin viciously kicked. “You little shit sack!�
� Nick yelled, and Darchester began laughing in his turn. Hauling his arm back, Nick delivered a perfect right cross to the earl’s jaw. Darchester’s head snapped back and he fell, senseless, to the ground. Nick rubbed his fist. “That felt wonderful,” he said. “I haven’t done that in centuries.”

  “Hush.” Arkady prodded the crumpled earl with a boot. “Time has started up again. You are the marquess. You know nothing of centuries.”

  And indeed, the room was suddenly full of cheering servants, and then Clare and Julia were there, too. Clare hugged Nick. He looked over her shoulder to find Julia’s dark eyes upon him. He had no idea what it was that he saw in them.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  What do you think of this one?” Arabella Falcott held aloft a wicker hat that managed to be lushly feminine and disturbingly pagan at the same time. Its crown and brim were so sharply curved, and its trimming so abundantly floral, that it looked like a stag’s antlers protruding from a rosebush.

  Julia displayed her own choice. This was a parasol of such minuscule proportions that one would have to be a leprechaun to make any real use of it. But ultimately, after much argument, Bella’s wicker hat was acknowledged the winner. The game, which had been going on all morning up and down the stalls of the Western Exchange, was called “find the most ludicrous thing.” With the triumph of the wicker hat, Bella was now ahead by seven points. Julia laid the parasol down with a sigh. “I admit defeat. Your eye for the vulgar is far better developed than my own. Now I must stand you an ice at Gunter’s.”

  Bella crowed her triumph, and the young women turned away from the stall, much to the relief of the deeply insulted attendant.

  Half an hour later they were seated in Berkeley Square, watching a waiter dodge horses and pedestrians to bring them their ices. After several weeks in town, Bella was an old hand at all things Gunter’s, and she ate her rye-bread ice with a blasé air. But this was all new to Julia, and her first taste of bergamot ice was a revelation. It was cold but creamy, sweet but tart. The exotic flavor and delicate perfume made the perfect complement to this upliftingly glorious day in London.