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

to express itself, it wanted to be trained. But they were keeping him ignorant.

Arkady reached across the space between their two chairs and gripped Nick’s shoulder. “My friend,” he said. “Do you think I like it? The lies and the secrets? I do not like it. But believe me, it is the only way. The past must stay the past, Nick.”

“Why?”

“To protect the future.” Arkady spoke with conviction, and with the frustration of a teacher for a willfully stupid student. “It is obvious.”

“But why? Why is the future so precious?”

Arkady shook his head. “My priest,” he said, and his voice was strangely loving. “Simply believe.”

“I am no priest.”

Arkady sat back. “No, you are not a priest. And belief is not simple. But try. I ask you: Stay afloat. Remember. This era wants to drown you, wants to claim you. Swim in the river. But do not drown. We are here to fight the Ofan, and I don’t want to lose you to your marquessing. You are Nick Davenant, of the Guild.”

Nick looked for a moment into Arkady’s pale eyes, then nodded. Yes. He could feel it now. The strong pull to be someone he might have been, to be swept away, to be the Marquess of Blackdown, marquess, war hero, protector of women, benevolent master—and nothing else. At first it would feel good to let go. It would feel good to forget Nick Davenant, forget the twenty-first century, forget the blasted Guild. But Arkady was right. It would be to drown in his personal tempest. “‘Those are pearls that were his eyes. . . . Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.’”

Arkady stood up, suddenly all energy. “Enough of this! I can smell him, on the wind, our Ofan whom we have come so far to find. He is somewhere nearby. But he is lying low. Who can he be? All day I listen to the peasants, talking of you. They talk of nothing else. How sad that you lost your memory, how wonderful that you are returned, how glad your poor mother will be. I hear nothing, nothing at all to help me.”

Nick swirled the brandy in his glass. “Perhaps I am Ofan.”

Arkady whirled and pointed a long finger at Nick. “Do not joke about such a thing. The Ofan!” Arkady spat the word out. “They killed my daughter, did I tell you?”

Nick whistled a low note. “No, you most certainly did not.”

“Well.” The Russian passed a hand over his face. “They did. My poor Eréndira. But. It is in the past.”

“How terrible for you and Alice. I’m so very sorry.”

“She was not also Alice’s daughter. She was born before I knew my Alice. Eréndira was the child of a lover I had in South America, how shall I say—many, many years ago. She was a brilliant girl. . . .” Arkady blew his breath out through his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. “But enough of that. Enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“My brother, it is I who am sorry to burden you with this long-ago pain of mine. But now you know. We do not joke about them. If the Ofan are trying to set up their business here and now, in little Stoke Canon, I will find them.”

Neither man spoke for a long while. Nick stared into the shifting light of the embers, and Arkady, standing, stared through the window. When Arkady broke the silence, his voice was peevish. “Your English peasants, they are not very friendly.”

Nick chuckled. “I hope you didn’t call them peasants to their faces.”

Arkady turned from the window, his hands spread. “I did not get the chance to call them anything. I drink their beer and eat their food, and no one will talk to me. I am a foreigner and a stranger.”

“But you listened.”

“Yes. To the chatter about you, I listen. A little about the new earl, Lord Dar-something?”

“Darchester.”

“Yes. There is a new earl, and he is hated. I thought, perhaps he is Ofan, so I push my chair back to hear the conversation that is happening behind me. I learn that he is an ugly man, an old man. But already, they say, he has a young mistress. The peasants, they know the mistress before he came. She is young and beautiful, but they say she is the daughter of a whore, perhaps. This bad mother is why she will be with the ugly earl.”

Nick frowned. He didn’t remember any woman with that story in the village. “A local girl?”

“Yes, so they said. But I think an Ofan would not have a mistress that local people know; he will not take that risk. This is not our man.”

“I wonder if it was the earl’s mistress that I saw today. I saw a girl when I was out walking.”

“Pretty?”

“I think so. I was quite far away and the sun was behind her. But she was shapely. She could ride like a Valkyrie. I wouldn’t have thought she was an old man’s mistress, but it’s been so long. I can no longer read the women of this time.” Nick took a swallow of brandy. “If she is his mistress, perhaps she is open for a little dalliance.”

“You will steal your neighbor’s mistress? Is that the sort of man you are, back here in the past?”

Nick grinned. “No . . . not steal. Maybe just borrow?”

“Bah! To be unmarried! I tell you, it is hard to be married to the Alderwoman. She knows everything. My leash—it is very short. I so much as smile at a girl in this time, she will know it two hundred years later.”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way, Arkady.” Nick drained his glass and stood. “Don’t try to fool me.”

He was surprised to see the Russian blush. “Yes. I love her like I love my own life. She is my heartbeat.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The next morning Nick was down at the stables at dawn. He’d left orders for a hunter to be saddled, and he was delighted when he saw that it was Boatswain who was waiting for him in the yard, a