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

did not know your devotion to Alice, Arkady, I would challenge you for those words.”

The Russian raised his brows high and let his eyes drop down to Nick’s two fists. “My old friend Nick Davenant, he was a blasé fellow,” he said in a constricted voice. “But Lord Blackdown has a temper.”

Nick released him and took a step back. He was shaken. “I apologize,” he said. “But . . .”

“But?” Arkady brushed his nightshirt into place with the same care as if it had been one of Weston’s finest jackets.

“My sister is not a modern woman.”

“And you? You are a modern man, Nick Davenant.”

“Am I? I’m not so sure.”

“If I trifle with your sister, what will you do?”

“I will horsewhip you.”

“Ah.” Arkady bowed. “And now, my lord, we have both threatened to harm each other over women.”

“Have we?”

“Yes.” Arkady’s smile was a little sad. “When you flirted with my wife? I said I would kill you. I joke. But you . . . you are in earnest about your whip. Nevertheless. Now we are true friends. Come to me.” The Russian gathered Nick into a bear hug and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. “My brother.” Then he stepped back into his bedchamber and snapped the door shut.

Nick stared at the closed door, flexing his hands. The marquess was triumphing. Indeed, Nick had been the marquess since the moment he had awoken this morning. Maybe it was best that way. A month ago he had been a New Yorker with a house in Vermont, a twenty-first-century Casanova with no responsibilities beyond his own pleasures. Today he was a Georgian aristocrat, the lord of a vast estate. His concerns were bound up with tenants, farming cycles, investments, virginal spinster sisters, and oversexed Russian noblemen. Perhaps he needed nineteenth-century feelings to handle nineteenth-century situations. He couldn’t lay his title aside, neither legally nor, it seemed, emotionally. So be it. When they sent him back to the twenty-first century, then he would become Nick Davenant again.

And perhaps he could find a way to stay here. Arkady had said the Guild would drag him back to the twenty-first century, but all the rules of the Guild seemed to be malleable. Perhaps he could simply be the marquess forever.

* * *

Half an hour later Nick stood on the front steps, his belly full of ham and eggs from the home farm. A lunch stolen from the kitchens bulged in his satchel, and his none-too-supple buckskin breeches were warming up nicely. His toes were happily at home in an old pair of country boots made especially for his feet. He carried his favorite fowling piece, in case he scared up any game. He would take a long walk all around the periphery of the estate. Greet whichever of the tenants were left. Maybe take a detour into the village and pay his respects to the vicar.

“My lord.”

The voice came from behind him. A northern voice. Jem Jemison’s voice. Nick turned, and there he was.

He was dressed as a civilian, not as a soldier. Of course. But it surprised Nick. Somehow he had pictured Jemison still in those sun-faded, dust-dulled regimentals. The only true scarlet left had been their armpits and beneath the white straps that crossed their chests. X marks the spot.

“Jemison.” Nick held out his hand.

Brown hair and eyes as black as a Spaniard’s. They’d used to tease him about that. But Jemison was unteasable. Nick remembered watching him in the firelight, as the men laughed all around them, making cruel fun of one another. That thin, alert face in the flickering glow, like a fox’s mask when it turns and watches the baying pack of hounds that chase it.

It was only when he felt Jemison’s hand in his own that Nick remembered; he was a marquess and Jemison a commoner. He pulled his hand away and nodded instead.

Jemison’s mouth twitched—was he amused? But then he bowed, with precision. “Welcome home, my lord.”

“Thank you.” Nick looked the man up and down. The last man he’d seen before jumping. Well, the second to last. For Nick had certainly seen the Frenchman, seen the look in his eye.

“I killed him,” Jemison said.

Nick blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Why?” Jemison looked puzzled.

“I mean, what did you say?”

“The dragoon. I killed him.”

“I see. Thank you—I suppose.”

“No need to thank me. I didn’t save your life.”

“No. Of course not.” It was a heavy debt, owing a man your life. Jemison wasn’t claiming those dues. He was up to something, though.

“He fell, you see, after you disappeared,” Jemison said, his voice flat. “He lunged to kill you, and then when you weren’t there he overbalanced and tumbled. I crushed his head with my rifle butt.”

Nick nodded, his eyes never leaving Jemison’s. Painted into that blunt portrait of a death was the thing Jemison was really telling him. He had seen Nick disappear, and he wasn’t going to pretend he hadn’t. “Are you the one who blabbed about my disappearance?”

“That was Peel. Everyone thought he was crazy.”

“And you didn’t corroborate his story, I take it.”

“I keep myself to myself.”

“Where is Peel now?”

“Dead of a fever.”

Nick rocked back on his heels and looked up at the sky. “So you are telling me that you are the only one left alive who saw. Peel and the Frenchman are both dead.”

Jemison shrugged. “I’m not telling you anything.”

Tell no one. The third rule of the Guild. And yet here was this man, this enigmatic Natural northerner. This man who had been with him at Badajoz. Nick sucked in his cheeks, remembering standing beside Jemison on the city wall on the third day of the sack. Down below in the square two soldiers of their own regiment were dragging a girl out of hiding, calling to their comrades who were lounging, drunk, in the shadow of the gallows Wellington had erected to try to scare the men out of their mad rampage. So far it wasn’t working. Jemison had turned to Nick with those knowing eyes and said, conversationally, “I bet you five guineas we can