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

“Wait.” Nick caught her hand. “I don’t want to be your lover, but I do want to be your friend. I want . . . I want to learn from you. I am beginning to think that I like you very much indeed.”

“Thank you.” She squeezed his hand.

“One more thing, Alva.” Nick looked searchingly at her face. “Henry couldn’t tell if you were an angel or a goddess. But I think I know.” He felt her hand twitch in his, just once. “You are an angel, aren’t you? A very specific kind of angel.”

She lifted a finger to her lips. “Shh.” With a twist and a flurry of blue silk, she was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

A footman waited just inside the doors that led to the terrace. “If you will follow me, my lord,” he said. He was a short man, with a thick accent that Nick couldn’t place. He led Nick across the ballroom, where dancers were forming for the next set, through a door on the other side, down a long hallway, and up a flight of stairs. Finally they reached a small, inconspicuous wooden door, and the footman knocked three times slowly, followed by a pause, and then four times, fast.

The door was unlocked from the inside, in a series of soft clicks that sounded, to Nick’s ears, like the mechanism of a computerized lock. Eventually it opened. Penture stood looking at them. “You are alone?”

“Yes,” the footman said.

“No one followed you?”

“No.”

“Good. Come.” Penture stood aside and Nick followed the footman in, glancing back to see that yes, on this side the door was smooth, gleaming metal, inset with a lock that looked like it belonged to a bank vault.

It was a large, windowless chamber, much older than the house that now surrounded it. A small fire in a large fireplace created a pool of light against the far wall; otherwise the chamber was lit only dimly by a few flickering wall sconces. A massive, carved Jacobean table ran down the center of the room, set around with a mélange of sleek modernist chairs. The floor was mosaic, clearly Roman, though Nick could not see what was depicted in the center. Only some naked arms and legs and the head of a snake emerged from the shadows under the table. The vaulted ceiling was Norman, the walls hung with tapestries that, to the extent that they were illuminated by the wall sconces, seemed to depict the horticulture of tulips in be-windmilled Dutch landscapes. Hanging above the center of the table was a grotesque chandelier of white hand-blown glass, which Nick recognized as the twenty-first-century work of Dale Chihuly. A few candles gleamed somewhere in its bulbous interior but shed no light outward. Beneath it, a vase of white tulips seemed to flush with their own light, like phosphorescent sea creatures in the gloom.

It was, Nick thought, one of the ugliest rooms he’d ever seen, for all that each individual part of it was refined and rare.

People were emerging from the shadows to greet him. Arkady—Nick could tell him by his great height and shock of white hair. And that was Alice Gacoki the Russian had tucked in by his side; she was dressed in a twenty-first-century business suit: black slacks and jacket, and white shirt. The other two were unknown to him: a middle-aged Asian man dressed in a shimmery gold fabric that seemed to move almost as a liquid, and a woman in a farthingale and stomacher embroidered all over with Tudor roses.

“Nick.” Alice hugged him and began to introduce him around. “Arkady and Bertrand you know already, of course.” She grasped the fingers of the man in gold. “This is Alderman Ahn Jun-suh, from the mid-twenty-second century.”

“Call me Ahn,” the man said, disengaging from Alice and shaking Nick’s hand.

“Nick Davenant.”

“Great to meet you.”

“And this,” Alice said, putting a hand on the footman’s shoulder, “is Mürsel Saatçi. He is playing the part of a servant tonight. In fact, he is Bertrand’s secretary and the cornerstone of the Guild in this era.”

“Davenant.” Saatçi gripped Nick’s hand; he had an eager, friendly air.

Alice turned last to the other woman in the room. “This is my friend Marjory Northway. She is our head of intelligence for the mid-fifteenth century in Britain, though she sometimes works farther afield. In fact, she made a three-month case study of you, Nick, leading up to your Summons. She gave you a glowing recommendation.”

This woman with a ruff the size of a hubcap had spied on him? Nick peered at her, but it was impossible to see past the Elizabethan costume. Her face was painted as white as paper; her lips and cheeks were cherry red. A heavy rose scent wafted from her.

Her eyes glittered and her mask cracked open in a smile, revealing a set of startlingly perfect white teeth. “Hi, England,” she said, her southern drawl exaggerated. “How’s them cheeses hanging?”

The awful truth yawned beneath him like a trapdoor. When he’d last seen this woman, she’d been dressed in jeans, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She had been waving out the open window of her BMW as she pulled away down his driveway, early in the morning. Out of his life forever. Or so he’d thought.

The cheese inspector.

Those straight white teeth, shining in that red, red mouth. He had taken her to bed, for God’s sake, to keep himself and Tom Feely out of the FDA’s leg manacles. Did everyone in the room know that? He glanced at their audience. They were watching as if this were a play. Very well then. If they wanted a play, they would get one.

He quirked a smile at Marjory, letting her see he knew she knew he knew, and that he was mildly amused. He took her hand. “I hope I rewarded your months of hard work,” he said. “Tailing a farmer around Vermont. I’m sure the fifteenth century is much more exciting.”

She sank down in a graceful bob. “I was amply rewarded, thank you.”