The River of No Return

by Bee Ridgway

  “Is she a prostitute?”

  Bella dropped her voice. “Of course not. But she believes in education. Of all kinds.”

  “I am beginning to believe in education myself,” Julia said. She looked into Bella’s eyes and wished her friend could read her mind. “Thank you,” she said. “You have taught me something today.”

  “You are most welcome,” Bella replied. “Now—shall we go home to Mother?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Nick had indeed been with the Duke of Kirklaw the previous night. The butler had delivered a note at midday; “White’s tonight—Kirklaw.” Nick had groaned, crumpled the note, and tossed it back onto the silver salver. Back in America, his friends were ambivalent at best about their high school reunions, and now Nick knew why. The thought of going to his father’s club and strolling down memory lane with three dozen Georgian Tories—he would rather eat ground glass. But like his American friends, who once a decade found themselves traveling to their hometowns in order to compare weight gain and hair loss with people they had never intended to see again, Nick realized around dinnertime that his steps were carrying him toward the grand building in Mayfair.

  Before he even mounted the stairs he was hailed by the bow-window set, including Beau Brummell, who saluted him through the glass. Nick nodded to the prince of dandies, took a deep breath, and prepared to greet many of the men he had known in his old life.

  The doors opened onto warmth, light, and a low roar of welcome. Nick’s apprehensions lifted from him as easily as the greatcoat that was removed from his shoulders by a servant. A glass was pressed into his hand, a toast was raised. Bonhomie flowed like wine, and the wine tasted like nectar. Nick was passed through a crowd of men ranging in age from eighteen to eighty, their hands grasping his, their pale faces shining with benevolence. The sound of their laughter was like a tune he had once loved but had forgotten. The weight of an arm over his shoulder, the gentle humor of a lewd joke, the good wishes passed on from someone who couldn’t be there. The smells soothed: beeswax, tobacco, leather, booze, musk, and cologne. The sounds delighted: bass, baritone, and tenor voices; glasses clinking; cards shuffling; dice clicking; fire crackling. This was the very perfection of good living, good drinking, good feeling. Nick found himself casting about for the river, its pull, its depth all around him, but it simply wasn’t there. It was like he was suspended in warm honey, and he wondered if this place was some paradisiacal twin of Tyburn, a scar, a place where time and feeling turn in upon themselves. He made his slow way through the crowd, guided by smiles and halloos and fragments of fraternal conversation.

  At dinner, Nick shared a table with nine bachelors of his own generation, each as genial as the next. Steak had never tasted so good; it was perfectly aged, with a sensuous chew and a yielding, buttery taste. Nick found himself raising his glass and calling out in a loud voice, “Beef and liberty!” This was his only error; it was the rallying cry of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, a Whig club, and White’s was firmly Tory. For a moment he felt a vibration of doubt move through the room. But approval was strong for Nick tonight, the miraculously returned hero. He was forgiven his gaffe almost before the words were out of his mouth, and the drop of uneasy feeling dissipated without a trace into the unguent of brotherly love. And so the evening slipped along, the hours told by glasses of wine. It was only when the clock struck midnight that Nick realized he had seen neither hide nor hair of Kirklaw.

  The snuff was being passed when a footman tapped him on his shoulder. The duke, apparently, awaited Nick in a private chamber. Nick got to his feet and bade his companions a tender farewell. They chorused their good-byes. His brain pleasantly fuzzy, his stomach handsomely full, Nick followed the bewigged footman up the stairs and into a private drawing room.

  * * *

  Kirklaw was not alone; two other men stood by the mantel, each looking expectantly toward him. Good Lord. The one on the left, the bald one, that was Baron Blessing. And the one on the right was the Honorable Richard Bonnet. Nick strode forward. “Blessing! Bonnet!”

  He was brought up short by their chilly bows. “Blackdown,” Blessing said. And, “Blackdown,” Bonnet echoed. Then, “I’m not Bonnet anymore. My father is dead. I’m Delbun.”

  “Delbun,” Nick said, bowing.

  Kirklaw came forward, hand outstretched. Five years had transformed the duke. In 1810 he had been twenty-two but had looked sixteen, pale and scrawny. The man walking toward Nick now was well padded, and although Nick knew he was only twenty-seven, he looked indeterminately middle-aged, with a high color and a receding hairline. His face was set in an expression that could clearly tip toward the pleased or the displeased without disrupting the general aura of smug self-congratulation. He took Nick’s hand. “By God you’ve changed, Blackdown. Look at you! What happened?”

  “War,” Nick said. “Then I was lost . . . in Spain.”

  “Yes, yes, we’ve heard. Your memory.” Kirklaw stepped back. “And very glad we are to have you returned to us, aren’t we?”

  “Very glad,” said Blessing.

  “Indeed,” said Delbun.

  “It was quite a blow when they told me you were dead. Quite a blow.”

  “A blow,” confirmed Blessing.

  “You don’t have a drink, Blackdown. We’re drinking brandy; it’s the good stuff, from my own cellars.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kirklaw turned to a sideboard. Nick stood looking at Blessing and Delbun and they looked back. Surely old friends should talk to one another? But they were stiffly silent, and Nick wasn’t going to yammer like a ninny. So he waited, letting his collar and cravat decide the arrogant angle of his head.

  Kirklaw handed Nick a glass and raised his own. “While deeds of glory stimulate the brave and Laurels spring upon the hero’s grave!”

  “Deeds of glory!” Blessing said.

  “Deeds!” Delbun echoed.

  Nick held his glass aloft and let his gaze slip from lord to lord to lord as they drank. The three men were uncomfortable, their anxiety made the more obvious by the congenial buzz of conversation that still ebbed and swelled from the floor below. These men wanted something from him, and they weren’t sure how to ask. Nick set his glass down, put his hands in his pockets, and waited. They would get to the point sooner or later.

  Kirklaw plucked a cigar from a box, twirled it between his fingers, and made a show of sniffing it. “Finally can get these from Spain, thanks to gallant boys like you.” The duke’s nails, Nick noticed, were bitten to the quick and his blunt, raw fingertips stained with tobacco. He tapped a toe and tossed the cigar from hand to hand. “Back from the wars, back from the wars, back from the wars,” he said in singsong. “Little Lord Blackdown is back from the wars.”

  Nick found that his hands, in his pockets, were clenched. But at the heart of one fist, that little acorn. It calmed him, and he managed to extract his other hand from his pocket in a peaceable manner, lift his glass, and take a sip of brandy. “And you, Kirklaw? What have you done with yourself these past five years?”

  “Oh . . .” Kirklaw waved his cigar airily. “Politics, my boy. Have a hankering to be PM one day.”

  Nick raised his eyebrows and scanned his memory. He wasn’t entirely sure, but he didn’t think that particular honor was waiting downriver for the man.

  “Of course that is in the lap of the gods! You are far more interesting. I would ask you to tell us a tale or two, but really, we are still inundated with stories from Spain.” The duke grabbed up a copy of The Gentleman’s Magazine from the table beside him. “Why, almost every day we must read a letter from a gallant soldier to his dear mama, the last she ever heard from him before he died for king and country. And the simple Spanish! How they adore us.”

  “Glorious times,” Blessing said. “Rule Britannia!” He raised his glass.

  “Glorious,” Delbun agreed.

  They drank.

  “And you were there, in the midst of it all, Blackdown,” Kirklaw said
, tossing the paper aside. “Why, when you think of it, when we were lads, the army was no place for a nobleman. What did Wellington call the soldiery?”

  “The scum of the earth,” Nick said.

  “Indeed. The scum of the earth. What a thing to say!” Delbun downed his brandy in a single swallow, coughed, and set his balloon aside. Then he sat down. “When you hared off to join up, I must admit it—I thought you were crazy.”

  “We all did,” Blessing said, also sitting.

  “You weren’t entirely wrong.” Nick disposed himself in a straight-backed chair.

  “Maybe so,” Delbun said. “But what I wouldn’t give to be in your shoes now that the war is over. The country’s gone army-mad. Heroes everywhere you turn. Falling from the rafters like spiders. Women can’t get enough of them.”

  “My God, the women.” Kirklaw remained on his feet. “They are denatured by army fever. Why, my own sister, the other day, read out loud to me from her Belle Assemblée—and was she reading to me of fashion? Or gossip? Or cucumber treatments? Would you believe, she lisped whole sentences about the disinterested patriotism of Great Britain in flying to the aid of Spain. Not to say she’s a bluestocking. Pretty girl, my sister. Do you know she is eighteen this year?”

  “Please.” Nick raised his hand. “I am only just returned. I am not yet thinking of marriage.”

  “And I wasn’t offering.” Kirklaw’s glance was hard and bright. “Your own sister, the little Lady Arabella—she is hawking her wares to good effect this Season.”

  “Good effect,” Blessing said. “Fetching girl.”

  “She’s hardly a girl.” Kirklaw’s expression slid toward the cruel. “Somewhat overripe, I’d say. Now, now—don’t take offense. I meant no offense. I’ve cut a caper or two with her at Almack’s.”

  “Oh, you have, have you?”

  “And I’m still not offering!” The duke laughed and fished an evil-looking device from his pocket. “There’s another sister, isn’t there, Blackdown.” He snipped the end off his cigar. “Not your marriageable sister, no. Your spinster sister. What is her name? The Lady . . .”

  “Clare.” Nick knew Kirklaw knew her name full well. He narrowed his eyes. Somehow, through this talk of sisters, they were coming to the point. “Her name is Clare.”

  “Lady Clare.” The duke lit his cigar from a candle with a series of minuscule, moist little puffs. “Lady Clare, Lady Clare, Lady Clare.” His face disappeared behind a cloud of smoke, and when it emerged the expression hovered between disapproval and disgust. “I suppose she told you of her mad plan.”

  Ah. Nick glanced at Blessing and Delbun. They sat tightly in their seats, and they were right to be anxious. The talk was bumping up against slander. “Yes. I know of it,” Nick said carefully. “It has come to nothing, however. I am returned.”

  “Of course, of course.” The duke pinched at the wet end of his cigar with a stained thumb and forefinger. Then he popped the cigar back in his mouth and visibly chewed on it. Nick looked away.

  “You disapprove of her plans, then,” Delbun asked. “Just want to make sure of that.”

  Nick frowned. “I fail to understand how it is any business of yours.”

  Delbun looked to Kirklaw for backup. The duke disappeared into another cloud of smoke. His smile appeared first, like the Cheshire-Cat’s. “What Delbun means is that we are glad you are returned and Blackdown is saved. There are so few of us left, after all. All the king’s newly created titles swell our ranks, of course, but meanwhile the real aristocracy is dwindling away.”

  “Dwindling,” Blessing said.

  “Why, when I heard what was in train for Blackdown, I almost offered for Lady Clare myself. With my influence your title could have been brought out of abeyance for our second son, perhaps, and the entail reestablished.” Kirklaw gazed down on Nick, clearly waiting to be thanked.

  The crystal curve of Nick’s brandy balloon rested lightly on his fingertips, its perfect, fragile arc catching the light. He remembered the intensity of Clare’s dedication to her dream, and the grace with which she had yielded it when Nick returned. The seconds ticked by.

  “It was the least I could do,” the duke finally said, as if Nick had thanked him. “Not that I did do it. I seem to be almost offering for both your superannuated sisters tonight! But you understand me, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Now.” Kirklaw leaned his elbows on the back of Delbun’s overstuffed chair. “Lady Clare owed her scheme to the interventions of a new steward, or so I heard. A man by the name of . . .” Kirklaw snapped his fingers, pretending to search his memory.

  “Jem Jemison.”

  “Yes, that’s it. This Jem Jemison.”

  “Not a married man, I take it,” Blessing said.

  Nick turned his head slowly and stared at the baron, until he saw a flush of red climb up from his collar.

  “Now, Blackdown,” Kirklaw said. “Blessing isn’t suggesting . . .”

  “Isn’t suggesting what?”

  “Isn’t suggesting anything,” Blessing said.

  “Yet,” Delbun said.

  And there it was. The threat. Out in the open, like a hart breaking cover. Except that a hart is beautiful. “I’ve forgotten,” Nick said. “Is this what we do, we lords of the realm? Do we spend all of our time slandering females?”

  “Blackdown . . .” Kirklaw’s tone was a warning.

  “When I left,” Nick interrupted, swirling his brandy in his glass, “we were all young men.”

  “Rakehells,” Blessing said, a little bashful.

  “Yes,” Nick said. “Such larks. We never spared a thought for sisters, or stewards, or whether or not stewards were married.”

  “We were young,” Delbun said.

  Nick sipped his brandy and let the burn spread across his tongue before speaking again. “I left Great Britain in 1810. Five long years ago. Like Odysseus, I sacked Troy. Like Odysseus, it was a long and strange journey that brought me home again.”

  “Well now, Blackdown, that’s a romantical way of thinking,” Blessing said. “You were only in Spain.”

  Nick continued. “And like Odysseus, I have returned to find that the reputations of the women in my household are in danger. I find that you have called me here neither to welcome me nor to reestablish our old conviviality. Instead, you are panting with concern over my sister’s choices, and my sister’s virtue, a sister you would disdain, yourselves, to marry.” The three men stared at him. They had each of them become repellent, in ways that had nothing to do with the composition of their features. Nick suspected that had he stayed with them instead of going to war, he would have hardened into just such an anxious ugliness. “I would be grateful if you would stop amusing yourself with my sisters’ good names and come to the point.”

  “Would you? Would you indeed?” Kirklaw frowned, got the cigar out of his mouth, and worried at its wet, frayed end with his fingers. “All right then, here it is without roundaboutation. The point is this. Jem Jemison. He’s come to London, now that you have put paid to his plans for Blackdown. He’s here, and he’s making a damned nuisance of himself. Rabble-rousing in Soho and the East End. Drumming up opposition to the Corn Bill.”

  “So? What does that have to do with me? Or with Clare?”

  All three men laughed. “Everything!” Blessing said. “Your name is linked with his! This scheme of your sister’s; people want to know if you are turning against the politics of your fathers. They want to know if you support her, if you stand against the aristocracy, against everything we represent!”

  “They doubt me? The men below seemed to have no anxiety on that front.”

  “They don’t doubt you yet,” Kirklaw said. “But they could well come to doubt you. You are in a precarious position, Blackdown.”

  “Ah.” Nick smiled. “Yes. I forgot. You brought me here to threaten me.”

  “We are not threatening you; the future itself is threatening you! Have you not been reading the pape
rs? The Corn Bill is going to save your sorry hide. Now that the war is over, it’s the only thing that can keep prices high.”

  “I’ve been in Spain, you may recall. Saving your own sorry hide.”

  “Oh, spare me, please.” Kirklaw thrust his ruined cigar back between his teeth and spoke around it. “You went to Spain to escape your responsibilities. Don’t play the great hero with us. While you were marching about like a toy soldier, we grew up. We shouldered our responsibilities. We sat on our cold seats in the House of Lords and we served this country. And now you come back without the foggiest notion of the dangers you face as a lord of the realm, as a brother to your wayward—yes, your wayward—sisters. The dangers you face as an Englishman.”

  “Do you dare to rebuke me because you outrank me, Kirklaw? I only ask because it has been so long since I have studied the Peerage. I’ve heard it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.”

  The three lords stared at Nick from matching pairs of blue eyes, their faces as flat as a row of Wedgwood plates. Then Kirklaw blinked and flushed. “Fiction? Fiction? Without the Corn Bill fixing the price of our corn, our days are numbered. The manufactories are already squeezing us, stealing our workers. And the merchants are buying our titles with their whey-faced daughters and their filthy money. Once foreign corn starts pouring in, we will have neither the money nor the influence to keep men on the land. Do you want America, or France, to happen on English soil? Are you ready, at best, to become a commoner, who must make his leg to the richest tailor in town, or at worst to see your sisters’ heads roll as you wait your own turn for Madame Guillotine?”

  “And your Corn Bill? It will save us from those unimaginable fates?”

  “It certainly will,” Blessing said. “Indefinitely.”

  “If it passes,” Delbun said.

  Kirklaw waved a dismissive hand. “The bill will pass, handily. But it is unpopular with the lower classes. To say the least. And your Jemison—”

  “He is not my Jemison.”