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

stopped going years ago. According to him, arguing a point in the House of Lords is like speaking to the dead, in a vault, by the glimmering of a sepulchral lamp.”

“I’m sure he was right.” Blackdown stared into the fire for another moment, then he rolled his head to the side and looked at Julia. His morose expression transformed into a sleepy smile. “You’re pretty,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Come sit on my lap.” He patted his thighs. “I’ll be Santa Claus.”

“Who?”

His smile faded. “Oh. Right . . . Father Christmas?”

“Are you foxed, my lord? Why would I want to sit on Father Christmas’s lap? And anyway, you look nothing like him. He wears green, and he’s fat and has a beard.”

His arm snaked out and hauled her, yelping, out of her chair. “Stop being pernickety. Come snuggle up.”

After a few moments of elbowy rearrangement, they were both settled in Blackdown’s chair, Julia’s legs over his, his arm around her shoulders, his sheaf of papers stuffed beside him. “Mm.” He pressed her close. “Your hair smells good.” His other arm found its way around her waist. “And this feels good.”

“And you feel like an unfortunate cross between a sheep and a stoat.” She stroked one of the ermine bands that crossed his crimson chest. “You smell musty.”

He put his head back against the chair and looked down his nose with mock solemnity. “I’ll have you know that these robes are the sign of my great dignity and magnificence and superior . . . superiority.”

“Well, then.” She moved to stand up. “Best if I leave you in majestic isolation.”

“Oh, no!” He pulled her firmly against him. “If I have to take the oath of allegiance, I need to be drunk . . . on kisses.”

“I am not going to kiss you here, at nine in the morning, with the door unlocked.”

“No? But what if I kiss you?” He suited action to words.

She smiled against his mouth, and a few delightful minutes ticked away.

It was Blackdown who pulled back. “Have you ever made a paper airplane?” he whispered.

“A what?”

He tugged a piece of paper from the sheaf that was wedged beside him. Both sides were covered in big, loopy writing. “A paper airplane. A glider, made of paper.”

“No. And what is written on that paper?”

“Nothing important. Here, let me show you.”

Julia was tucked lusciously up against him, her head resting on one shoulder, and he was able, with his arms around her, to demonstrate folding the piece of paper in half, and then in a series of angles, until it looked like the head of a spear. “That’s a paper glider,” he said. “You hold it like this, by this cluster of folds here underneath. You aim it. . . .” He pointed it at the fire. “Then you give it a little shove. . . .” Nick sent the glider winging into the fire. He made a sound like the wind as it went, and then a crashing sound when it wedged itself between two logs and went up in flames. He immediately began making another. “This one’s for you.” He folded it carefully and put it in her hands. “That’s right. Pinch it there, and then aim it . . . and let go.”

She watched as her glider floated away from her and into the flames. It sat for a moment on some embers, the undersides of its wings glowing pink. Then all at once it became a miniature inferno. She laughed and grabbed his knee. “Make me another one.”

They worked their way through the entire sheaf, sending glider after glider into the flames. Soon it became a rule that they must kiss until each glider was finished burning, and they both became adept at sending their gliders into cooler corners of the fire. But when Julia sent one deliberately outside the fireplace altogether, Nick sent her after it. “You won’t trick me into losing my virtue that easily,” he said.

After she had tossed it onto the fire and turned around, she found him standing and brushing his robes into place. “That’s it,” he said nonchalantly. “That’s my entire maiden speech, burned up. Like the Battle of Britain.”

“That was your maiden speech?” Julia stared at him.

“That’s right.”

“But what will you do? Do you have it memorized?”

“No.” He straightened the robe on his shoulders, then smoothed his hair with a hand, looking at himself in the mirror that hung over the mantel. “Mahvelous, dahling,” he said to his reflection.

“Nicholas Falcott! Be serious. What will you say instead?”

He turned from the mirror, and for just a moment he managed to look dignified. “That I would prefer not to.”

* * *

An hour later Blackdown was gone, and the hallway was filled with the bustling return of Arabella and the dowager marchioness from Greenwich. Julia watched as box after box was unloaded from the carriage that waited at the front door, Arabella overseeing the whole operation; her mother had rushed upstairs claiming a headache.

“All of that for one overnight visit?”

Bella gestured to a neat pile of three blue bandboxes. “Those are mine. The rest . . . Mother’s.”

“Perhaps that is a good sign. She is interesting herself in society again.”

“Yes.” Bella looked doubtful. “Perhaps.”

When the last box was in, Bella asked one of the footmen to hold the horses and the coachman to come inside. He entered, his hat in his hand, and Bella addressed him and the remaining footman with great warmth. “I want to thank you both,” she said, “for sending that madman on his way just now. I would have been quite anxious without the two of you.” She fished in her reticule, took out two coins, and handed one to each man. “If I were a man, I would stand you both a drink, but you will have to raise your glasses to yourselves.”

The coachman bowed and left to drive the coach around to the mews, and the footman returned to organizing the luggage. Bella took Julia’s arm. “I’m so glad to be home, I cannot tell you. Greenwich was a bore.”

“At least you were able to leave the