The River of No Return (36 page)

“You told me you were not free.”

“I was not speaking of another woman, Julia.”

“I know. You were talking of the count.”

He stared. “How do you know that?”

The truth wanted to burst from her. No . . . it wanted to rise from her like a feather on a breath of wind. But instead she dropped her gaze from his and walked more quickly, pulling on his hand. Who then was this Nick Davenant, this new man? She could not quite bring herself to trust him . . . or to break faith with Grandfather.

They emerged from the trees into the sunlight, and Nick took her arm decorously again, but she could feel the tension in him. When he spoke, his voice was low and urgent. “What do you know about Count Lebedev? What do you know about me? What do you know . . . about your grandfather?”

“My grandfather?” Julia’s heart lurched. This was cutting to the heart of the matter. Soon enough he would be asking her about time! “Nothing,” she said emphatically, her memory flashing to Grandfather on his deathbed, begging her to pretend. Her thoughts toppled into panic. “Oh, God!”

Nick grabbed her hand and held it again, clearly not caring who might see. “Look at me!”

She met his gaze with caution.

“What do you know about your grandfather?”

She pulled back. “Let me go!”

He dropped her hand, but his voice gained in urgency. “You can trust me, Julia. I won’t betray you. I am . . . oh, bloody hell, just give me your hand again! I need to touch you.”

She held it out, feeling somewhat unreal, and he took and placed her palm firmly against his chest. “I consider myself bound to you. And I
am
also free. Do you understand? I told you I was not free, that day in the rain. But I rescind those words. Remember the poem, Julia. ‘To enter in these bonds, is to be free.’ Do
you understand?”

“I think so.” She could feel his heart beating, and her panic sank again. “I . . . I don’t know why you would ask me about Grandfather.”

Nick searched her face. “You really don’t know? You don’t know anything?”

“I don’t know what I know. He told me nothing!” She shook her head, to dispel the rushing of blood in her head, the terrible loneliness and fear. “I know nothing!”

“We must talk,” he said, letting her hand go. “Privately. And soon.”

She whispered, “I can’t tell you anything.”

Nick frowned, his eyes bleak. Then he glanced up. His sisters were looking back at them. “We must keep walking.”

He took her arm once more and they walked in tense silence, her elbow tucked so tightly against his side that she could feel the way his body moved beneath his coat.

“What is Count Lebedev to you?” she asked, once Bella and Clare seemed distracted again by Solvig’s antics.

Nick puffed up his cheeks and blew the air out slowly as he searched for words. “In a way, Arkady is a fellow soldier. But I don’t know if we are comrades in arms or enemies. It is very hard—impossible—to explain.”

“Count Lebedev has power over you,” she said slowly. “But not, perhaps, as much as he thinks? Is that it?”

Nick nodded. “In a way, I am bound to him.
He
doesn’t think I am free. He thinks me his lackey. For the time being I must pretend. I must seem to do as he says. But I am determined to be free, Julia, and I would never betray you to him. Do you understand me now?”

So they were both pretending. “Yes,” Julia said with more certainty. “You are not free, but you want to be. Arkady is your friend, but he is also your enemy. You are searching for a pathway through, a pathway that will lead you to . . .” She paused, letting herself really look at him, not as Lord Blackdown but as Nick Davenant, a man who had forgotten all his ancient prejudices and manners, and discovered now that he was happy to have lost them.
“A pathway that will lead you to yourself,” she said.

His serious expression didn’t change. “Not just to myself. To you, too.”

In the time it took for her take a step, she knew that she loved him. “Yes,” she agreed. “To me, too.”

Clare, Bella, and the dog had stopped up ahead and were playing with a stick. Nothing could have been more prosaic. Three siblings and their friend walk in the park, not even at the fashionable hour. But Julia felt changed, through and through. The air filling her lungs felt different. And every time she chanced to look up at Nick, he was looking down at her.

“How do you do that?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Every time I try to steal a look at you, you catch me at it. You are a witch.”

“Perhaps you are able to tell when
I
am stealing a look at
you
.”

She recognized that look—it made her skin tingle. But Solvig, in spite of her bandaged paw, had loped up and was gamboling in a heavy circle around her idol and therefore also around Julia. Solvig’s face was upturned, love radiating from her goggling eyes. Julia gestured at the dog. “There’s a lady who wants nothing more in the world than to look at you.”

“Heel, Solvig.” Nick brought the dog to his other side. “Now, Julia. You will have to compete for my attentions.”

Julia disengaged her arm. “Oh, no. I yield.” In spite of Nick’s protests, she walked ahead to join Bella, and Clare fell back to walk with Nick.

T
hree days later, and no sharing of secrets had occurred. Julia had seen Nick only twice, both times at breakfast, in the company of servants and the dowager marchioness. Each day Bella bragged about how late her brother had been out the night before and speculated on how much fun he was having in what she relished calling “the fleshpots of London.”

“Enough,” Clare finally snapped as the three young women were walking to Hatchards, Solvig ahead of them on a leather lead, two footmen trailing behind. “Nick is not a libertine, Bella. We must all be eternally grateful that you are not a man, for you would clearly rake the coals of hell and fan the flames of vice from one end of the year to the other.”

“Indeed I would.” Bella stroked the dog’s head. “Solvig could be my devilish hound, couldn’t you?”

The enormous creature looked up at the sound of her name. As the days had passed, Solvig had revealed herself to be entirely craven, going so far as to run from a mouse in the kitchen and try to hide under the cook’s skirts, a misadventure that had resulted in her permanent banishment from below stairs.

“Besides,” Bella said, “I learned all about Nick’s recent activities when Mother and I were at Almack’s last night. He has been cutting quite the swathe through the town, if the gossips are to be believed. Julia, it is so unfortunate that you cannot come to balls when you are in mourning. You are missing all the diversion.”

Julia indulged herself in a moment of self-pity. It was true. Clare stayed home with her most evenings, but Bella and her mother were out at balls and routs and masquerades night after night. Bella always came home bursting with some thrilling tale of intrigue or some hint of scandal that she’d heard from the gossips. For the last few days these had mostly involved Nick, blast him. “Maybe next year,” Julia said.

“Yes. As I have not met a single gentleman I can imagine marrying, I shall have to come back next year, too. It will be delightful.” Bella linked her arm with Julia’s.

“What did you learn about Nick last night?” Julia tried to sound nonchalant, but Bella laughed.

“Good show, Julia. But you can’t hide from us. We know you are breaking your heart over him, don’t we, Clare?”

“Arabella!” Clare spoke sharply.

“Oh. It is serious.” Bella waggled her eyebrows at Julia.
“Is Nick the apple?”

“Please,” Julia said. “Just hold your tongue.”

“Even though I heard the most delicious gossip about him last night? May I tell, if we all agree not to believe it?”

Clare rolled her eyes. “You will tell us with or without our permission, Bella, so get on with it.”

“Well.” She took Clare’s and Julia’s arms and pulled them close on either side. “Let us take up the entire pavement and I shall tell you.” She led her sister and her friend by the elbows. “Apparently Nick has been seen everywhere in the company of the most ravishing cyprian. Rumor has it that he has been publicly lavishing attention on her in all the gaming halls. She is elegantly tall, and blonde, with eyes the most magical shade of violet, and it is said he has given her an amethyst necklace that exactly matches them. . . .”

Clare frowned. “We shall stop discussing this foolishness this minute. Not another word. We are at Hatchards.” She handed Solvig’s lead to a footman and swept into the bookseller’s.

Bella followed her sister, but not before winking broadly at Julia.

And so one of the moments Julia had looked forward to her entire life was destroyed. She had always thought of Hatchards with reverent delight and looked forward to the day that she would be able to peruse its shelves and choose her own reading materials. And now, instead of reveling in the scent of leather and paper and ink, she felt like wringing Bella’s neck with one hand and Nick’s with the other. She was the Talisman. She could manipulate time. Count Lebedev was out to kill her. But instead of making any headway on these very real problems, she was standing in a bookshop, teetering on the verge of tears, thinking about her swain kissing another shepherdess. A blonde shepherdess dripping with amethysts.

Bella pulled on her sleeve. She looked contrite, to the extent that a pitchfork-wielding devil can look contrite. “You are scowling,” she said. “I’m terribly sorry if I caused you distress.”

Julia thinned her lips and said nothing. Instead she stared at the rows of books and the men and women who stood about, looking into them, not talking to one other. Two dozen people in two dozen different worlds. Worlds of knowledge, beauty, romance, discovery.

“Let me take you to visit my friend, the one I told you about when we were having ices,” Bella said. “We can leave the footmen and take Solvig. No one will trouble us when we have a dog as big as a pony. Clare will be happy here for a couple of hours until we return.”

Julia turned her head and looked out of the window at the bright spring day. Another two dozen people out in the sunshine, dashing here and there, on their way through their different lives. Happy lives, sad lives—who could tell?

Julia had gone twice in the past two days—humiliating fact—to the cupola. Each time she told herself she was going to practice. And she had, to good effect. She had managed to turn the seconds briefly backward and to freeze time for as long as forty minutes. It was an exhilarating and terrifying power, this control she had. Terrifying and lonely.

She had hoped that Nick would come and find her practicing. That he would find her out. That her secret would be revealed, shared, understood, without her having to decide to tell him. He would sense her shifting time and come up to the cupola to find her there in a bubble of timelessness. He would step into the bubble. . . .

Well. The cupola and the fantasy were both castles in the air.

She wheeled and faced Bella. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”

* * *

It was a considerable walk from genteel Hatchards to Soho Square, which sat at the edge of a great slum. Julia was pleased to see that although Bella was adventurous, she wasn’t a complete fool; she led them all the way north past the construction that was busily transforming old Swallow Street into the much-vaunted, grandiose New Street. They then turned right along busy Oxford Street, rather than cut through the noisome, dark streets of Soho. Solvig began to get excited and pulled on the lead. Julia was surprised to find that she, too, felt a rising thrill, as though she were coming home.

“Here we are, and Solvig seems to know it!” Bella pointed to a pretty yellow house that faced on the square from the south corner of Carlisle Street. Julia looked up at the fanciful façade. Of course she had never been here before, and yet something seemed to sizzle in the air, some familiar happiness just out of reach. As they mounted the stairs, Julia found herself grasping the iron rail and fighting back tears; this was how Castle Dar had felt, before Grandfather died and Eamon arrived.

Bella’s knock was answered by a diminutive elderly man in black, who, when he saw the dog, drew back in horror. But Solvig seemed delighted to see him and surged forward in spite of Bella’s hauling back on her lead. “No. No dog.” The old man’s English was not very good. “You must keep dog.”

“We aren’t offering you the dog,” Bella said. “Down, Solvig.” The beast had her huge paws up on the man’s shoulders and was licking his face. “Down!” With a yank on the lead, Bella managed to pull Solvig away without herself tumbling back down the steps and into the street. “We are here to see Miss Blomgren.”

“
Ja, ja
 . . .” The old man eyed them up and down as he brushed dog hair from his jacket.

“I met Miss Blomgren in the square last week. . . .”

“What she offer you?”

“Offer me? Why, nothing. We talked about women’s education. . . .”

The old man opened his hands and looked to heaven. “Education! Why you not say? Miss Blomgren help you. But not dog.”

Bella drew herself up. “We are not here for Miss Blomgren’s help. We are visiting. I am Lady Arabella Falcott and this is Miss Percy. Now announce us to her. With dog.”

The old man led them into the house. “Miss Blomgren is in kitchen. You follow me. Announce yourselves.” He opened a door. “Down there.” He pointed. “Take dog.” And he was gone.

Julia and Bella peered down a stairway into darkness. A bright smell, half sweet, half sour, rose to meet their nostrils. It wasn’t like anything Julia had smelled before. There was some spice in it that she didn’t recognize, and a powerful odor of dill. In fact, the smell was so strong that it was almost unpleasant, with a tang that brought tears to her eyes.

They descended the steps. At the bottom there was a doorway to the right and a smaller, older-looking doorway to the left. The smell was overwhelming. “Hello?” Julia called.

Then they heard the sound of coughing, and the door to the right was flung open. Vinegary steam poured out. Solvig gave one deep, joyful bark and launched herself into the room.

“Solvig!” A woman’s surprised voice floated out to them through the mist, followed by more coughing. “What are you doing here?” The steam was dissipating, revealing a tall woman in a homespun dress, her hair tucked up under a starched white cap, except for one white-blonde strand that had escaped and was curling down her neck. Her hands were stained bright pink halfway up to the elbows. “Oh, hello! I’m sorry about the smell. I put the vinegar in when the pan was too hot.” She spoke with a light accent.

“Hello, Miss Blomgren,” Bella said, holding her hand out. “We met in the square a week and more ago. Do you remember me? I am Bella.”

Julia thought she saw a flash of annoyance cross Miss Blomgren’s face, but it was quickly hidden behind a lovely smile. “Bella, of course! Isn’t this a surprise. And you have Solvig with you. . . . How did you come to have her?”

“You know Solvig? My brother brought her home with him earlier this week.”

“Your brother? Ah, and so you are a lady, Bella. I did not know.”

“Yes, I should have told you, I suppose, when we met, but I found our conversation so interesting, and then we said good-bye so precipitously when we reached your house. . . .” Bella looked up at the older woman with the light of hero worship in her eyes. But if Miss Blomgren noticed, or felt that it was irregular to be accosted in her basement kitchen by a young lady she had met accidentally, she did not say so. Instead she turned to Julia. “And what is your name?”

Julia found herself looking into the largest, most beautiful pair of violet eyes she had ever seen. The fine eyebrows slowly rose as Julia stared. She said her name stammeringly, like a ninny.

“What a pretty name. We have it in Sweden, also, but we pronounce it differently: Yulia, so. It means ‘youth,’ did you know that?” Miss Blomgren reached out and touched Julia’s cheek with her scarlet finger. “You are young and lovely. Such beautiful brown eyes. Oh, dear. I have stained your cheek. These beets. I am pickling them. I thought to make enough for everyone. What a fool I am. It has consumed my life.” Then, just like a mother, she spat on a corner of her apron and used it to scrub at Julia’s cheek. “There. It is gone, as if it had never been.” Her smile deepened and became real. “Those eyes. They remind me of someone else’s brown eyes, someone I loved very much.” She gazed into Julia’s face, her own dreamy and sad. Then she shook her head. “It is good to be young, Julia. Enjoy it. I am forty-three. You look surprised. I know. I am lucky.” She waved her hand as if her looks were nothing. “The beauty of youth is a gift, but it will go. The memories, though, they pile up, and they never go. Or at least, they do not go for a long, long time.” She sighed and seemed to collect herself. “Well.” She turned to Bella. “I am in the midst of my pickling and I cannot leave it. But you may sit and take tea here in the kitchen while I work. Would you like some lemon cake? It is very good.”

“I don’t know if we should. . . .” Julia looked hopelessly at Bella, but Bella was smiling as if nothing were wrong. Did she not realize that this Miss Blomgren must be Nick’s mistress? The woman knew him. She even knew the dreadful dog. “I . . . I need to go home.”

“Why?” Bella looked at her in all innocence. “Do you not want lemon cake? You love cake.”

Miss Blomgren began untying her apron. “Just tea and a small slice of cake, and then I’ll have Edvard drive you home in the carriage.” She hung her apron on a hook by the kitchen door, then reached up and pulled her starched cap off her head. Her glorious white-blond hair tumbled like water, falling all the way down her back. Julia gasped. Miss Blomgren looked at her. “Yes, my hair. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

Julia was able to recognize, dimly, that under normal circumstances she would probably have liked this no-nonsense woman very much. Instead, she was shriveling with every new proof of Miss Blomgren’s perfections. It felt like she was being eaten from the inside out by a gnawing animal. Probably a rat. So this was jealousy. “It is very beautiful,” she said, and her voice sounded strange to her own ears.

Miss Blomgren looked at her in surprise. “You look so tragic, my dear. Are you feeling ill? Is it the smell of the beets? I assure you, cake and tea is what you need to set you up again.” She turned to Bella. “Now, Lady Falcott. I am going to feed you tea and cake and then I am going to send you and your friend home. And you must never visit me again. Whatever were you doing, the sister of a marquess, alone in Soho Square? Exchanging tittle-tattle with strange women and not telling them your title? I never would have encouraged your conversation had I known your identity. Do you not realize that to be seen with me would destroy your reputation? Do you not realize that I am a courtesan?”

“You are?” Bella looked at her heroine with alarm, but the expression quickly transformed into glee. “But that is marvelous!” She whirled to face Julia. “I told you she was marvelous.” She looked more closely at Julia. “Whatever is the matter with you? You look like a goose walked over your grave. Are you upset because Miss Blomgren is a courtesan?” She turned to Miss Blomgren. “I apologize for my friend. She was raised in the country and now she is in love. She cannot be held responsible for her reactions. But I assure you that neither of us sits in judgment upon you—”