The River of No Return

by Bee Ridgway

  A few weeks ago Nick might have thought this assignment would be fun. Maybe. He couldn’t really even recall who he had been a few weeks ago, and two hundred years in the future.

  It was John Donne’s fault. He should leave this party, march on down to St. Paul’s, and punch the statue of a piously shrouded Donne on the nose.

  Nick had been in perfect control of his emotions, holding Julia at arm’s length. But then she had risen up out of the floor, just when Nick was reading that bit about America. And before a lamb could shake its tail . . . no. He needed an American animal. Before a raccoon could wash its dinner, they had been in each other’s arms and halfway to paradise. Paradise or Gretna Green or Las Vegas. Wherever he could marry her and live happily ever after with the greatest possible efficiency. Nick frowned to himself. America! Home of American girls. Raised on promises. Make it last all night. He’d liked those girls, liked them a lot. But now it seemed that this Devonshire acorn was his America, his newfound land, even though he’d stumbled across her in his own past and in his own backyard.

  Except that now Arkady had dumped the Whore of Babylon in his lap and told him it was his duty to service her in the name of the Guild.

  The crowd in the ballroom was staring at him, of course. The two aristocrats had arrived. All those faces turned upward to where they stood at the top of the stairs leading down into the ballroom. Each and every person here knew, apparently, that Nick was looking for sex. Well, they could stare all they liked. He wasn’t going to give them a show. He wouldn’t talk to a single woman all evening.

  Finally Nick stepped forward to meet his host. Bertrand Penture was a man of about Nick’s own age and height, handsome in the Gary Cooper style. Nick nodded. “Penture.”

  Penture’s bow was precise and perfunctory, only just deep enough to acknowledge Nick’s rank. “My lord.” His French accent was slight, and it tinged his words with honey, but there was nothing sweet about his expression. Nick could see it in the man’s strange, pale green eyes: Penture disliked him. And Nick found himself responding, his lip curling in a scornful smile, his eyes flickering down the man’s immaculate evening dress and back up again.

  “Ah, Penture, you old undertaker.” Arkady pushed in between them, his voice booming out over the crowd. “Wonderful news about the shipping venture. I was afraid I would lose my trousers.”

  Nick raised an eyebrow. “The count is afraid to lose his trousers, but he is always happy to trick his friends into losing theirs. You must be careful, Penture. Before you know it this Russian will have you dancing the cancan on a tabletop.”

  Arkady barked, but Penture’s expression did not change. “I am not given to making or enjoying jokes, my lord,” he said. “Especially not jokes made at the expense of people for whom your English is not a mother tongue. Besides.” He lowered his voice. “The cancan is a dance not yet invented. You are clearly an ass, but please try not to be a fool.”

  So this was the Alderman of the Guild in 1815, a few months before the battle of Waterloo: a humorless, supercilious Frenchman. For a second Nick forgot that, back in the good old twenty-first century, he liked the French. Something deadly must have flared in Nick’s face, for Penture, without taking those strange eyes from him, spoke softly, for Nick’s ears alone. “Watch yourself, Mr. Davenant.”

  “I am in perfect control,” Nick said in a normal tone of voice. “In spite of the greatest possible provocation.”

  Penture’s nostrils flared. But when he opened his mouth again, he spoke as the host welcoming important guests. “Please enjoy yourselves in my home, my lords. I hope I have time to speak to you later.” He bowed and turned to greet his next guest.

  “Well,” Nick said as they descended the steps. “He’s a prick.”

  “He put you in your place,” Arkady said. “But I am glad you have rediscovered your sense of humor. I introduce you to the woman now, yes?”

  Nick turned to the Russian with a public smile, but with private venom in his voice. “Do not speak to me. In fact, do not even come near me. You may find your own way home tonight. Good-bye.” Without a backward glance he slipped sideways into the crowd.

  “She has the yellow hair and tonight she wears a blue gown,” Arkady called over the heads of several partiers. “You cannot miss her.”

  Nick did not reply. He headed straight for the tables where drinks were being served.

  Fifteen minutes later he had relaxed, and could even admit to himself that the ball was agreeable. It was easy enough to avoid speaking more than a few words to women. No one admitted belonging to the Guild, of course, although everyone here was clearly fabulously wealthy. The clothes and jewelry were at the teetering pinnacle of fashion. The women were far more elegantly dressed, in fact, than many members of the ton. It was a grand spectacle. And they all talked of the glorious shipping venture as if it were real—as perhaps it was.

  Nick scanned the crowd. His eyes caught on a face. A woman at the center of the crowd. And another face, a man’s. Dark faces. Nick felt some distant part of himself pricked by what he hadn’t even noticed a moment before; that not everyone at this party shared his skin color. Of course they didn’t; this was a Guild party. And yet now that Nick had noticed it, he found that part of him—perhaps it was the marquess—could see nothing else. He leaned back against the table and tried to forget it, tried to watch, as he had a moment before, people laughing, dancing, bowing and curtseying, the silks and satins worn by the women shifting beneath the glittering chandeliers, the more sober colors of the men’s clothing punctuating the scene, like rocks in the midst of a swirling, sunset-drenched sea of sumptuous cloth. But as he sipped his champagne he let his eyes rest on a handsome dark-skinned man, who was bowing, and signing the dance card of a white woman, the man’s hand on the woman’s elbow . . .

  Suddenly that distant part of Nick was very near, nearer than breathing; the river was pouring through him, crashing like a flood, sweeping him away. Tom Molineaux was fighting Tom Cribb at Shenington Hollow, and Nick was in the crowd, with ten thousand other men, his voice hoarse after hours of yelling. It was the thirty-fourth round, and Molineaux’s hand had been broken for the last fifteen. But now Cribb was going to win. Both boxers were drenched, their bare hands wet and red, their battered bodies running with sweat, their feet caked with blood-churned mud. Molineaux was weaving, swaying into unconsciousness, and the crowd was howling for Cribbs’s imminent victory, howling for Molineaux’s defeat. Nick’s betting slip was clutched in his hand; he was set to win big on Cribb but he didn’t want the show to end—no one wanted the show to end. Nick and the crowd howled with one voice as Tom Molineaux crashed to the ground and Tom Cribb raised his battered face and open, streaming hands to the sky . . .

  “Do you dance, my lord?” The words were soft in his ear.

  The river retreated, like a fast-ebbing wave, sucking him back with it then beaching him in the ballroom. He gasped for breath, and stared wildly at the woman who was there beside him, her hands reaching for his.

  “My lord, you must breathe. Yes, that’s it. Breathe and look at me.”

  The orchestra was tuning up—the dancing was about to begin. A thousand candles caught the facets of a thousand jewels scattered in the hair, and on the hands, and around the throats of the women below. His own diamond tiepin winked, answering the general sparkle.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered. He gripped the woman’s hands. “I was fine, and then . . .” He found he didn’t know how to explain what had happened. “The river swept me away . . . not in time, but in myself. To someone I used to be . . . a fight . . .”

  “Ah,” she said. “Yes.”

  Nick held on to her hands as if they were a lifeline.

  “People are watching us,” she said softly. “Can you pretend to be recovered? I shan’t leave you.”

  He dropped her hands. “Yes, yes of course.” In saying it, it became true. He straightened up and twitched his cuffs into place, casting a severe glance over his shoul
der at a man who was openly gaping. Then he turned back and really looked at her.

  Blonde, blue dress.

  It was her. It had to be her. A woman somewhat older than himself and almost his own height, her white-blonde hair arranged in an elegant coil, a few curls artlessly loose at the front. Her blue gown was far more demure than most that graced the ballroom. Around her neck, square-cut diamonds flashed in the candlelight, and he saw others glinting among the curls that were so perfectly disarranged around her ears. Her oval face was a palette of whites and palest pinks, her violet eyes moonlit and fathomless.

  “You are Alva Blomgren,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “And now that you are yourself again, we can get on with our acquaintance. Let us dance.” She turned on her beauty like stadium lights and opened her arms.

  “Ah,” he said, stepping back, all his offense at this situation recalled. “No. I do not dance. Besides, madam, we have not been introduced.”

  Her slight smile didn’t grow, but it seemed to deepen. Perhaps it was something she did with her eyes. In any case it was clear that she was laughing at him. “But how foolish that you refuse,” she said, and now he heard the faint accent. It was like the tiny bubbles that float up through champagne. “You are Lord Blackdown, and I am Alva Blomgren. We must play our parts. You have come here to . . .” She paused. Damn it if the palest, most delicious shade of pink didn’t stain her porcelain cheeks. “To dance with me.”

  He allowed his gaze to travel from her toes up to her eyes. “You should not listen to gossip,” he said.

  “Perhaps not.” Her blush had faded. “Still, I will dance with you.” She took his glass from his hand and set it down on the table behind him. “And I will call you Nick.”

  “Without my permission?”

  “Oh, come.” She put her long fingers on his shoulder and reached for his hand. “Dance this next waltz with me.” He put his right hand in hers and his left at her waist. He felt the warmth of her through her gown, and her scent was in his nostrils. Something bright. Not the smell of a bordello. “Yes,” she said softly. “Like that.”

  He allowed himself a moment to feel her in his arms before dropping them. “I have said I do not dance,” he said quietly. “And you may not address me as Nick.”

  “Oh.” He was surprised to see kindness and understanding in her eyes. “Then we will simply talk. And surely I do not need your permission to address you by your name, Nick.” She took his arm and began to stroll with him around the edge of the ballroom. “I shall address you however I choose. You don’t have to call me anything. But still we will be friends.”

  “I don’t like you,” he said bluntly, though he was beginning to suspect that perhaps he did like her.

  “Ah.” She peeked at him sidelong, out of those glorious violet eyes of hers. “You are very sure of yourself, my lord.”

  He looked over the heads of the people getting ready to dance, then back down at her, allowing a smile to touch his lips. “‘My lord’? I see you are learning your place.”

  “That sounds remarkably like flirtation . . . Nick.” Alva squeezed his arm. “Why don’t you like me? Is it because they told you that I am a courtesan?”

  “No.” He flushed and hated himself for it. “No. You may do as you wish. It is but a small matter to me.”

  The waltz began, and immediately the edges of the room became too crowded for strolling, as the circle of dancers colonized the floor. Nondancers began to spill out of the doors into adjacent rooms and onto the terrace. Nick found himself outside with Alva. She led him to a balustrade that looked down over the small garden. Others milled around them, and she spoke softly, close to his ear. “It makes no difference to you if I am a courtesan? A whore? But surely it must. You think that you could perhaps have me for a price. Or you think that I want you only for your money. It makes friendship seem impossible. You see, it comes immediately between us, this small matter of my profession.”

  Nick turned to her, and the crowd pressed him close. He could feel her breath on his face. “I did not come here seeking you,” he said. “I know that you have been told that was my intention, but it is not. I am not in need of a mistress.”

  She closed the space between them. Her left hand rested on his thigh, as lightly as a butterfly. She whispered, her champagne voice filling his head with a rush of bursting bubbles. “But what if . . . I am seeking a master?”

  Then his cock, goddamn it, was at attention. She smiled—he knew she smiled, because she was so close that he felt her lips, feather-soft against his cheek, as they curved. Her fingers moved—a single, delicate stroke, up the length of his poor, idiotic cock. “The notion seems to agree with you,” she whispered.

  “God.” He wrenched sideways to face the balustrade. “Leave me.”

  Her sigh was a soft sound, half regretful, half amused. “Well. ‘This is a brave night to cool a courtesan.’ I was only teasing you, my lord. If you do not want to be my lover, I understand.” Turning, she leaned forward over the railing and looked out into the garden. “In fact, it will be good to be just friends. But we must be friends.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?” He looked sideways at her white-blonde head, the elegant curve of her back as she bent, her elbows propped on the railing. “I don’t need friends. I certainly don’t need a friend like you.”

  She tipped her face up. Her expression was full of warmth. “Yes, you do. That incident back there in the ballroom should prove it to you. You are barely in control, and you need friends badly.” She reached out and touched his face—the scar that crossed his eyebrow. “Poor Lord Blackdown. You don’t really understand anything, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. I wish you would explain yourself.”

  She looked out again over the lawn. “But I am very simple. I am not what needs explaining.” She met his gaze squarely. “Do you understand what I am saying to you? I am not what needs explaining.”

  Recognition of what she meant slid into place. Excitement coursed through his veins. It wasn’t sexual excitement . . . it was pure intellectual energy. She had answers. “Yes. Yes, I think I do.”

  But at that moment they were interrupted. “Alva!” A huge, drunken Englishman, as ugly as a side of beef, his eyes spilling tears, pushed himself between them. “Alva, my angel. My goddess.” He grasped Alva’s hands in his enormous, hairy paws and stood weeping down upon her like a bulldog snuffling over a tiny spaniel.

  “Excuse me,” Nick said, outraged. “I was speaking to the lady.”

  The man turned his heavy head. It took a long time for his drunken red eyes to focus on Nick, and when they did, a new flood of tears washed over his cheeks. “Oh, no. No. You are handsome!”

  Nick raised a repressive eyebrow, but the man was long past all subtlety. With a wail he hurled himself forward, and Nick was only just able to put his fists up before his face to combat the assault. But the man wasn’t coming in for a fight; he was coming in for a hug. He gathered Nick to his broad chest as easily as if Nick had been a small child, and he clasped him tenderly, rocking back and forth and keening, head lifted to the stars. “I’m so unhappy!” Then he collapsed, weeping into Nick’s shoulder and grabbing at his jacket in huge handfuls. “She’ll never love me. Never. My Alva. My angel. My goddess.”

  Nick stifled a shocked laugh and patted his back. “Save me,” he mouthed over the man’s shoulder.

  Alva nodded, sparkling with her own suppressed laughter. “Now, Henry,” she said, peeling the man easily away from Nick with her elegant hands. “Enough of that. There, there. Hush now.” She produced a handkerchief from nowhere and wiped his woebegone face. “You must calm down, my dear. We’ve talked about this, do you recall? You promised there would be no more of this.”

  The giant stood calmly now, but new tears continued to seep from his eyes. “I love you, Alva. I can’t bear it. He’s handsome.” He pointed at Nick. “You told me there was no one else.”

  “I have told you I have no lover, Henry.
” Alva peeped at Nick as she said this. “And that is true. But someday I shall, and you must be strong. I can never be your wife.”

  “But, Alva, I love you.” Henry’s voice was sullen now, like a petulant child’s.

  “That’s enough, Henry. Go home,” Alva said firmly.

  “Oh, Alva.” The tears began all over again. He reached for her. “My angel. My goddess.”

  Alva spoke sharply for the first time. “Henry. Stop it!” To Nick’s shock and delight, she hauled her long arm back and slapped the huge man soundly across his face.

  Henry’s tears stopped as if they had never fallen. “Alva.” He put a hand up to nurse his cheek. “My . . . my . . .”

  She stood facing him, her hands on her hips. “Your what? Which is it? Am I your angel or your goddess? Because angels are different from goddesses, Henry.”

  Her mountainous admirer stood staring at Alva for a long moment, and then tears began slowly welling up again.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Alva threw up her hands. “Go home, Henry. Go home. Before I slap you again.”

  “Alva.” Henry half reached for her, but then, with a broken sob, he turned slowly and lumbered away.

  Nick couldn’t help it. He clapped. “Brava! Well played. Marvelous.”

  Alva came back to the balustrade, a more natural smile on her mouth than he had yet seen. Interestingly enough, it downgraded her beauty to mere prettiness, but it made her seem more real. “I have recently lost my lover,” she said. “And I am suddenly beset with suitors.”

  “I am sorry for your loss.”

  Her eyes brightened, surprised. “Thank you. That is kind of you, my lord. I apologize for Henry. I hope he didn’t ruin your jacket.”