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

Pretend, Grandfather had said. It was the only thing he had ever said to her that might be information about her power, and it was beginning to seem like sound advice, indeed.

Julia sighed onto a windowpane, then drew a sweeping J in the mist.

* * *

Nick pushed open the door to the house in St. James’s Square, half expecting to find Alice and Arkady waiting for him, like angry parents. But the foyer was deserted. Nick headed to the kitchen to make himself some tea and eventually found the two older people in the parlor, sitting cozily around their own tea tray. “Nick!” Alice looked delighted to see him, as if he hadn’t broken her rule about leaving the house.

Arkady twisted around and beamed.

“Hi,” Nick said. “How are you guys?”

“Fine, fine.” Alice held out a hand, and Nick strolled over and took it. She squeezed his fingers. “I see you have a cup of something—won’t you join us?”

Nick settled into the chair that matched Alice’s and took a sip of his tea. He eyed his hosts over the rim of his cup. They wore matching expressions of almost comical benevolence. So they were playing Mommy and Daddy after all, just in an amiable vein. They looked like June and Ward Cleaver, getting ready to deliver the moral lesson of the episode. Don’t wander too far from home, Beaver, or Mr. Mibbs will control your mind!

“So,” Alice said, “what did you do today? Go anywhere in particular?”

He gave Alice his thinnest smile. “Come now. You know what I did. I ran away.”

“But of course,” Arkady said. “We knew you would. What kind of man would stay, day after day?”

Nick leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “So this was a test of my manhood. Well played, me.”

“Bah! Of course it was not a test. I only say, how strange it would be if you did not break free. And you did. Off you went. All my wife does, like a civilized person, is ask: Where did you go?”

“You know perfectly well where I went. You had me tailed.”

Alice laughed. “How wonderful that you noticed. You see, Arkady? I told you he would realize. He’s very clever.”

“Do you mean to tell me your man was supposed to be subtle?” Nick snorted as Mibbs’s villainous yellow socks rose up in his imagination, the hair like Donny Osmond’s, the psychedelic Bertie Wooster suit.

“I’m pleasantly surprised, that’s all.”

“Okay . . .” Nick frowned, wondering what joy she could possibly be deriving from the misery he had endured by the gates of the Foundling Hospital. “Whatever. The point is, you know exactly where I went. And you know what happened.”

“Yes,” Arkady said. “That— how should I put it?—that mishap in Guilford Street.”

“We’re so relieved it came to nothing.” Alice leaned forward, her teacup cradled in her hands like an egg. “We weren’t having you followed for the fun of it. It was for your own safety.”

“Is that how you’re going to spin this?”

“It’s true. Alone all day in London—eventually you were bound to get sucked into your emotions.”

That fear at Euston Road and then that despair on Guilford Street—those had been his fault somehow? Because he couldn’t handle London? “That’s bullshit,” he said. “I’m in perfect control of my feelings. And those feelings weren’t my feelings at all. They were forced on me.”

Alice sighed. “Of course you are in control. Most of the time. But you are a time traveler, Nick, and your emotions are your time machine. That’s how it works.”

He raised his eyebrows and stared at her.

She smiled serenely, as if she hadn’t just said something unbelievable. “Normally your feelings are calibrated to keep you in the present, ticking over from moment to moment. But they also can propel you forward and pull you back. Don’t you see? We do it with feelings. That’s why we keep Guild members away from their homelands. Yearning, nostalgia, loss, loneliness—these are all superhighways back to the past. Your emotions can be overwhelming when you’re in a place that once was familiar to you. Without training, without proper understanding . . . well. It can be dangerous. If time is a river, it is a deep and a strong one. It is easy to drown, easy to get swept away.”

“Feelings.” Nick shook his head. “We do it with feelings.” He snorted, then laughed out loud. “That’s absurd!”

“I don’t know why you’re being so scornful,” Alice said. “You should appreciate it. You’re from the Romantic era. ‘Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart . . . the affections gently lead us on.’”

“Oh, please. And anyway, I favor the metaphysical poets.”

“Fair enough. But surely you understand; we couldn’t let you trot off into London all alone. We needed somebody near you to keep you from slipping away. You were bound to have a moment or two of intense longing for the past. And you did. In Guilford Street.”

Nick blew a long breath out between his teeth. “I’m sorry, Alice. But your lies don’t become you. If those were my feelings, emanating from my heart, I’ll eat my hat. And if that spy of yours, that atrocity in tweeds, is your idea of a gentle guiding hand . . .”

Alice’s face was as blank as a sheet of foolscap.

“You’re pretending to have no idea what I’m talking about.” Nick got to his feet. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, not after what I learned about you over dinner last night. The Guild and its deep dark secrets.” A shadow of that terrible despair he had experienced outside the Foundling Hospital fell over him, and he passed a hand over his face. “This is all bullshit. I’m tired and I need to be alone.”

“Wait.” Alice held a hand out. “Please. Sit down. Atrocity in tweeds? Who?”

“Your spy. Mr. Mibbs.”

“Mr. Mibbs?” Alice frowned and glanced at her husband. He shrugged.

“Oh, God, I don’t know his real name, but your secret police guy. That big lummox