The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (best novels of all time txt) 📕

Jemison said brightly. “Where those same soldiers and sailors will be smashing windows and dragging fat lords into the streets and dancing the hornpipe on them in a few days’ time.”

Julia raised her eyebrows. “Surely not!”

“Oh, you don’t know our London mob,” Jemison said. “A venerable creature, the mob. And it won’t be the lords’ houses, alone. Whole parishes will feel their wrath. Three London parishes have refused to organize against the Corn Bill, and can you guess which ones they are? St. Mary-le-Bone, Hanover Square, and St. James. Tomorrow Westminster is delivering forty-two thousand, four hundred and seventy-three signatures against the bill. But the great men of Mayfair? Who get their money from rents, rents they can keep high if the price of corn is fixed? Not a single name. Not one.”

Julia said nothing. What could she say? She felt like a milk pumpkin, raised all alone under a protective cloth, fed rich, unnatural food, and grown pale and strange as a result.

Jemison seemed to understand. He put a thin hand on her shoulder in a brotherly gesture. “All this talk, this heightened feeling, it’s about more than the Corn Bill,” he said gently. “It’s important because it’s about the future, Miss Julia, when we shall have fellowship among men, and common property, and fair wages. But before all that, we must have a cheap loaf. Grub first, then ethics! That’s why we fight the Corn Bill so fiercely.” He gestured to the papers. “That’s a few weeks’ outpourings only. This bill, you see, it’s turning the tide of feeling. It’s so bloody cynical that everyone can see it, pardon my language. When the lords pass the bill, it will be like they are saying to their tenants, ‘Yes, Joe, I’d rather see you starve than make a living. Now pull that forelock and bend that knee.’” He squeezed Julia’s shoulder. “You will see the future when they pass that bill, Miss Julia, if you are still in London. You will see the future begin.”

“Maybe,” Clare said. “The future has begun many times before and hasn’t come to much.”

“Doubter.” Jemison shook his head. “Why are women such doubters? It really brings a man down.” He took a broadside and struck a pose, one hand uplifted with the paper so he could read it, the other, with the apple core, balanced on his hip. “‘UP, man of reason! Rouse thee UP! AROUSE thee for the strife!’” He waved his apple core suggestively in front of his trouser flap, grinning at Clare. “‘Be UP and doing—for the world with mighty change is rife!’”

“Enough!” Clare laughed and snatched the broadside from Jemison’s hand. “I’m sorry, Julia. Mr. Jemison is . . . well, words fail me.”

He turned that happy grin on them both, then brought the apple stem-end toward his mouth and began eating the core. Julia stared. “Learned to do that in Spain,” he said, mouth full. “Not enough to eat.” He stuffed the last of the core in his mouth.

“He’s just trying to shock,” Clare said, looking bored. “It means he likes you, believe it or not.”

“I suppose I’m flattered.”

“He can behave like a gentleman when he must.”

Jemison swallowed. “Can’t. Tallow chandler’s son.” He licked his fingers.

“Rich as Croesus,” Clare said. “Just playing at being a workingman.”

Jemison reached for another apple from the bowl on the table. “Sticks and stones, my lady. Sticks and stones. So. Tell me. What did your brother have to say about the bill?”

Clare sighed. “He was all in a twist about it. I honestly don’t know what his opinion is. I don’t know what to make of him in general.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s changed. I don’t know how he thinks anymore.”

Jemison polished his second apple on his breast. “War changes a man,” he said carefully. “He was at Badajoz. No man who lived through those days will ever be the same again.”

“What happened?” Clare’s voice was soft, pleading.

But Jemison only glanced at her with those dark eyes. “No, my lady. That’s between a man and his God.” He put the fruit between his lips, and the bright, jolly sound of a crisp apple yielding to the teeth filled the room.

“You probably know Nick better than I do, having served with him.”

“I’m sure I do,” Jemison said. “But I don’t love him, and you do, and that’s a different kind of knowledge. So tell me.”

“It’s like he’s two different men. I wish you could have heard the conversation when I told him about almost selling Blackdown. At first I thought he was more excited by it even than I. But by conversation’s end, it was as if he were the oldest, goutiest, most backward old duke in the Upper House. Ranting at me!”

“That doesn’t surprise me. He’s a brave man, but I suspect he always felt guilty about leaving Blackdown. Now that he’s back he’ll dig right in like a tick.”

“Don’t talk like that about him. He’s my brother. I know you hate him and are sorry he’s returned—”

Jemison’s eyes flew wide. “Is that what you think?” He laughed. “Good God, woman, I almost wept, I was so glad to see him, landlord scum that he is!” He put his apple to his mouth for a bite but lowered it again, and spoke softly. “If I could tell you what I’ve lived through, side by side with your brother. What our eyes have seen. And then at the last, when he . . .” Jemison was holding the apple in front of his heart; Julia could see the red of it between his fingers. “And not to know where he had gone, or how . . .” His eyes were focused on a distant horror.

“Jem?” Clare touched his knee.

“Yes. Enough of that. I’m sorry. Tell me more. So half of him is the great lord, storming around his estate. And the other half?”

“The marquess seems to think that women should be the equals of men. He claims to be a follower of Mary Wollstonecraft.” Clare crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you make