The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (best novels of all time txt) đź“•
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- Author: Bee Ridgway
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“Blackdown . . .” Kirklaw’s tone was a warning.
“When I left,” Nick interrupted, swirling his brandy in his glass, “we were all young men.”
“Rakehells,” Blessing said, a little bashful.
“Yes,” Nick said. “Such larks. We never spared a thought for sisters, or stewards, or whether or not stewards were married.”
“We were young,” Delbun said.
Nick sipped his brandy and let the burn spread across his tongue before speaking again. “I left Great Britain in 1810. Five long years ago. Like Odysseus, I sacked Troy. Like Odysseus, it was a long and strange journey that brought me home again.”
“Well now, Blackdown, that’s a romantical way of thinking,” Blessing said. “You were only in Spain.”
Nick continued. “And like Odysseus, I have returned to find that the reputations of the women in my household are in danger. I find that you have called me here neither to welcome me nor to reestablish our old conviviality. Instead, you are panting with concern over my sister’s choices, and my sister’s virtue, a sister you would disdain, yourselves, to marry.” The three men stared at him. They had each of them become repellent, in ways that had nothing to do with the composition of their features. Nick suspected that had he stayed with them instead of going to war, he would have hardened into just such an anxious ugliness. “I would be grateful if you would stop amusing yourself with my sisters’ good names and come to the point.”
“Would you? Would you indeed?” Kirklaw frowned, got the cigar out of his mouth, and worried at its wet, frayed end with his fingers. “All right then, here it is without roundaboutation. The point is this. Jem Jemison. He’s come to London, now that you have put paid to his plans for Blackdown. He’s here, and he’s making a damned nuisance of himself. Rabble-rousing in Soho and the East End. Drumming up opposition to the Corn Bill.”
“So? What does that have to do with me? Or with Clare?”
All three men laughed. “Everything!” Blessing said. “Your name is linked with his! This scheme of your sister’s; people want to know if you are turning against the politics of your fathers. They want to know if you support her, if you stand against the aristocracy, against everything we represent!”
“They doubt me? The men below seemed to have no anxiety on that front.”
“They don’t doubt you yet,” Kirklaw said. “But they could well come to doubt you. You are in a precarious position, Blackdown.”
“Ah.” Nick smiled. “Yes. I forgot. You brought me here to threaten me.”
“We are not threatening you; the future itself is threatening you! Have you not been reading the papers? The Corn Bill is going to save your sorry hide. Now that the war is over, it’s the only thing that can keep prices high.”
“I’ve been in Spain, you may recall. Saving your own sorry hide.”
“Oh, spare me, please.” Kirklaw thrust his ruined cigar back between his teeth and spoke around it. “You went to Spain to escape your responsibilities. Don’t play the great hero with us. While you were marching about like a toy soldier, we grew up. We shouldered our responsibilities. We sat on our cold seats in the House of Lords and we served this country. And now you come back without the foggiest notion of the dangers you face as a lord of the realm, as a brother to your wayward—yes, your wayward—sisters. The dangers you face as an Englishman.”
“Do you dare to rebuke me because you outrank me, Kirklaw? I only ask because it has been so long since I have studied the Peerage. I’ve heard it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.”
The three lords stared at Nick from matching pairs of blue eyes, their faces as flat as a row of Wedgwood plates. Then Kirklaw blinked and flushed. “Fiction? Fiction? Without the Corn Bill fixing the price of our corn, our days are numbered. The manufactories are already squeezing us, stealing our workers. And the merchants are buying our titles with their whey-faced daughters and their filthy money. Once foreign corn starts pouring in, we will have neither the money nor the influence to keep men on the land. Do you want America, or France, to happen on English soil? Are you ready, at best, to become a commoner, who must make his leg to the richest tailor in town, or at worst to see your sisters’ heads roll as you wait your own turn for Madame Guillotine?”
“And your Corn Bill? It will save us from those unimaginable fates?”
“It certainly will,” Blessing said. “Indefinitely.”
“If it passes,” Delbun said.
Kirklaw waved a dismissive hand. “The bill will pass, handily. But it is unpopular with the lower classes. To say the least. And your Jemison—”
“He is not my Jemison.”
“Your Jemison,” the duke said insistently, “is at the heart of the trouble. I need you to denounce him. You are known to be my friend, and you cannot be both my friend and his.”
“Surely one returned soldier cannot tarnish the reputation of a duke.”
“No, but one marquess can.” Kirklaw pointed a wet finger at Nick. “Your peers are ready to accept you as a hero, as a leader. They are ready to hand you their trust and their admiration on a plate. But that could change. I am merely warning you of the thin ice upon which you stand. If the people rise up after the vote—and they will—and if you have not stood up and made clear your loyalty to your party and your class, your peers will turn on you. They will blame you for the unrest. Then they will turn to me, and they will think, How could Kirklaw be friends with that man? The mob or me. That is your choice.”
The Mob! Nick pictured Tony Soprano bursting into the House of Lords and shooting everyone dead with his
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