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

groom by his shoulder. When he heard Nick’s step he looked up and tossed his head, whickering and stepping to the side. The groom held him firm. “He has missed you, my lord.”

Nick took the reins and stroked the stallion’s neck. He let that spicy scent of horse and leather fill his nose. “How are you, old man?” He reached into his pocket and fished out a carrot. Boatswain took it daintily from his master’s palm. Nick turned to thank the groom, but Boatswain would not tolerate the shift of attention from himself and blew snot all over Nick’s hand. Nick accepted the cloth the groom handed him and looked Boatswain in the eye, seeing the horsey amusement there. “I’d forgotten about you and your tricks.”

Boatswain snickered, pleased with himself.

“He’s sixteen now, my lord, but at heart he’ll always be a colt.”

“I hope so. Thank you for readying him for me.”

Nick mounted. He hadn’t been on horseback in years, and it felt good, though he knew he would suffer for it later. “Now then, Boatswain,” he said. “Let’s see what you can do, and more to the point, what I can do.”

They set out at a canter, and Nick relaxed into the easy gait. Boatswain was older and heavier; Nick could feel the difference in the horse’s stride. It was a cold, overcast morning, not as sparkling as yesterday. He urged his mount on, his heartbeat quickening as he thought of the mysterious woman in black. He wanted to be at the pathway into the trees when she appeared. A dalliance would be the perfect thing to smooth the transition back into this time. The perfect thing to keep him from drowning. Boatswain picked up his pace, breaking into a gallop, and Nick’s body shifted to accommodate.

“Like riding a bicycle,” Arkady had said about women. But Nick was as anxious as a fifteen-year-old; what would she be like? He had left for Spain when he was twenty, and before that he had sown his wild oats among the demimonde and willing serving wenches. And for years now his lovers had been twenty-first-century women.

Boatswain was flagging, and Nick let him slow to a walk. Why was he even thinking about this woman at all? He couldn’t actually sleep with another man’s mistress; it would be ungentlemanly in the extreme. And if she wasn’t Darchester’s mistress, she was another man’s wife, or a virgin, at which point ill manners tipped into villainy.

In the end, he convinced himself that he wasn’t riding out to see the mysterious woman in black. He was riding his estate, getting to know his horse again, and if he happened to meet a neighbor, so much the better. Nevertheless, when he reached the path that led back into the trees, he dismounted and let Boatswain graze while he leaned against a tree and . . . if he was being honest with himself, he was waiting. But he wasn’t being honest with himself. So he wasn’t waiting. He was resting.

* * *

Marigold was calmer this morning and accepted her carrot with dignity. She only capered a little as they cantered down the drive, and she picked her way along the woodland path quietly. But before the trees gave way to fields, the horse pricked her ears. A bright whinny sounded from somewhere up ahead, and Marigold answered, breaking into a trot.

Julia pulled her back and stopped. Someone was up ahead, there where the path entered Blackdown land. Perhaps it was the Falcotts’ new steward, Mr. Jemison. Or were the Falcotts themselves back from London? Julia hoped so, fervently. Perhaps she could wangle an invitation to stay, and that would prove to the village that she was still worthy of their friendship. Otherwise . . .

Julia frowned up into the oak leaves above her head, tears pressing against her eyes. Otherwise she would have to leave Castle Dar, leave Stoke Canon, and go . . . where? To Scotland, to her mother’s family? She didn’t even know how to find them.

But leave she must, unless something miraculous were to happen, and soon. That had been patently obvious yesterday when she had ridden through Stoke Canon, hoping to stop and talk to people, hoping to let them know that she was still Julia Percy.

Instead, she had received only a few distant hellos, and no offers of conversation. She had kept her pride down the length of the High Street, greeting averted faces as if they were the smiling neighbors she had known all her life. But the minute she was out in the fields again she had set Marigold’s face for home and let her gallop all the way.

Once back in Castle Dar, Julia had packed two bandboxes with a change of clothes and her jewelry, then unpacked them again; the servants would discover what she was planning if she left luggage sitting about. Meanwhile, let the townspeople indulge themselves in an orgy of recriminations, old and new. “‘And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet!’” Julia spoke the words into the mirror. The sentence began bravely enough, but by the end she was weeping. How could she shake the dust of this house from her feet when she felt that she was crumbling away to join it? She knew no dust in the world but this dust.

So this morning she was riding, not away, but around, trying to collect her thoughts and make a plan.

The horse up ahead whinnied again, and Julia gave Marigold her head. She held her own head high and her spine straight. Whoever it was that waited there, Julia Percy was ready.

He was standing in the same place, the same big bay stallion beside him. His hair, which had been fair, was several shades darker. She would never describe him as all elbows now. He was taller by a head and broader in the beam. Instead of crying he was leaning at his ease against a