The River of No Return Bee Ridgway (best free ebook reader .TXT) 📖

are not one of them. You must learn to feel it. You must learn to know when time is slowing down. If you feel it, if you know, you will never be caught. You will stay awake and not be frozen.”

“But how can I know how to feel it if I don’t already know how to feel it?”

“You English! You have no imagination. I describe it to you so you understand. Do you recall the first time you desired a woman?”

Nick sighed, half amused. He had learned across the course of the afternoon that the older man was very fond of sexual metaphors. “Yes,” he said. “Of course I do.”

“Describe it to me.”

Nick cast his mind back. “I was ten,” he said.

“Such a big boy.” Arkady pulled on his cigar.

Nick resisted the urge to roll his eyes and continued. “I was hiding in the creamery, crouched down behind a mess of pails that needed mending. My sister Clare and I were playing hide-and-seek. It was a hot day, but the creamery was cool and dark. The door opened, and I peeked out, expecting to see my sister. But it was a dairymaid, coming in with two pails of milk hanging from a wooden yoke she wore over her shoulders. She wore a tight-fitting bodice. . . .”

“Yes, yes,” Arkady said, leaning forward. “It was so in Russia at that time, with the dairymaids and their tight bodices.”

“Are you of my time, then?”

“Yes.” Arkady sharpened his focus on Nick. “And of your class as well, Lord Blackdown.”

Nick started. No one had used that title or that name since the butcher, in the Guild hospital. Now Arkady used them with, if not exactly respect, then some sort of acknowledgment. Nick coughed. “What . . . what am I to call you, then?”

“Are you asking me my name? The name to which I was born?”

Impatience pricked him. “I know that’s against Guild etiquette. But for God’s sake, Arkady, I’m sitting here in London waiting for the Guild to send me back to my time. I’m breaking cardinal rules every way I turn. I’m simply asking you to tell me whatever it is that I need to survive this escapade. Perhaps your blessed birth name is one of those things.”

Arkady blew a smoke ring. Nick watched it rise tremblingly and then dissipate. He puffed on his own cigar but performed no smoky tricks. He was in no mood for them. Arkady took another puff, then spoke, the smoke boiling out with his words. “You were allowed to keep your signet ring when you jumped.”

“Yes.” Nick glanced at his hand.

“I too. I kept my ring.” Arkady held his hand out to display his ruby ring. The jewel was huge and looked like a wound on Arkady’s bony hand. “The Guild chose us early on.”

“But how could they know?”

“We are aristocrats. Power likes power. The Guild is always happy to welcome a leader.”

“But I gave up my title. My land. My name.”

“Yes, yes.” Arkady waved his hand and the ruby glinted like an eye. “In your mind, yes, you became the simple man of the people, the commoner Nick Davenant. But the Guild has always known. You are Blackdown. The Guild let you believe it was forgotten. But the Guild did not forget.”

Nick had been happy to be allowed to keep his ring. Was he still? “And you? What manner of aristocrat are you? How noble, Arkady? Are you a prince? A czar?”

“I am Count Lebedev.”

Nick nodded his head in the old gesture of respect between equals. “Lebedev.”

Arkady smiled thinly. “Nice to meet you, too, Blackdown. But do you think I believe in this thing, this aristocracy? I know the future. I am not the fool. I am merely happy to be the count when it is good for the Guild. And you will be happy to be the marquess.”

“If you say so.” These old titles, these old gestures—Nick felt a little dizzy.

“I say so. I know it. You will have to struggle against how much you are happy to be the marquess. In fact, he will try to eat you up, this marquess who waits for you in the past. You will have to fight him. I will help you in that struggle.” Arkady spread his hands. “I am coming with you. Back to 1815.”

“You’re coming too?”

“Yes.” Arkady leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Does that please you?”

“I’m not exactly pleased with anything having to do with this mess.”

“Such friendliness. But you will be glad, I assure you. In the meantime, Nicholas Falcott, Marquess of Blackdown, we must accustom you again to your old names and your old personality.”

Arkady had said those names—names that had once been his—three times in a minute. In this room, no less; the same room where Nick had spent his last night in London before leaving for Spain. Before breaking his mother’s heart. Before destroying his patrimony. Before ruining his sisters’ lives. Before damning his own sorry soul to hell at Badajoz.

Arkady’s voice was tender when he spoke again. “Shall we return to the more pleasant topic of the lovely dairymaid?”

“The dairymaid. Yes.” Nick took a deep breath, let it out, and packed his bad feelings away for another day. “She was lovely. Buxom. She came in, set the pails down, and drew the scarf from her bosom. Her bodice was low-cut, but the scarf hid everything, you understand.”

“Yes, I do understand.”

“She took it off, and her breasts rose up plump. One nipple peeked over the edge of her bodice. She used her scarf to wipe her face and stood fanning herself with her hand for a moment in the cool of the creamery. Her cheeks were flushed, and then as she bent to scratch her ankle, her breasts simply seemed to spill out. I was only about a foot away, crouched at that level. The world turned upside down. I was flooded with sensation. It seemed mostly to be in my head, a rushing of blood, or something like that.”

“Did you do