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

think.” He stepped closer to her. “I need to think, and I need to consult with Clare. Don’t run away. Don’t do anything. Just meet me here tomorrow.”

Her eyes widened, and he realized he was looming over her, demanding that she meet him again, unchaperoned. For God’s sake, the nineteenth century! It was ridiculous. “To make plans,” he said, stepping back.

“Of course.” She put her nose up, affecting not to have misunderstood him. Perfection. “That is, if Clare raises no objection to you trysting with the whore of Stoke Canon.”

“I shall be here, Julia, never you fear. Now let me toss you up.” He put his hands at her waist, felt the delicious swell of her hips, and in spite of all his instincts, which urged him to pull that beautiful derrière back against himself, he placed her neatly in her saddle, allowing his hand to rest for just a fraction of a second on her thigh.

She looked down at him, her eyes grave. Then, without saying anything more, she turned Marigold back toward the path through the woods. The horse made its careful way through the trees, soon disappearing into the shifting shade. Nick stood stock-still, staring after them. Then he yanked Boatswain’s head up from the grass, threw himself into the saddle, and galloped all the way back to Blackdown House.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Julia rode slowly through the woods. Blackdown was back from the dead. And just in time to help her.

She had recognized him immediately, but the longer they talked the less she could see the boy in the man in front of her. By the end of their conversation she had felt she was talking to a stranger. His eyes crinkled when he smiled. What had been dimples were now two deeply carved lines. He had a scar across his eyebrow.

Well, he had been in the wars, hadn’t he? He had been lost for three years. He must have been terribly injured, not to know himself for that long. Terrible things could age a man.

This new Blackdown was unsettling. The distance in his eyes had suddenly become a nearness that seemed to sear right through her. The strength she had felt in his arms when he helped her into the saddle. He was grown.

As was she. Twenty-two. Almost on the shelf, that’s how grown she was.

In other words, the years had flown. Time had passed. There was nothing strange in that.

Yet there was something off-kilter. Time had passed, but it had passed wrongly. Blackdown looked older than he should. And she, who had never seen the world, never been to a ball more grand than an impromptu minuet at a neighbor’s—she realized, in his presence, that she had not ever truly stepped across the threshold into adulthood, despite being too old to be young.

All her problems seemed to be about time.

She ducked her head to avoid a low-hanging bough. Do not borrow trouble from tomorrow. That had been Grandfather’s motto, and look what good it had done. It turned out that yesterday’s trouble had been brewing in Stoke Canon ever since she’d arrived. Some suspicion of her mother’s virtue, long buried, but ready to burst forth. The chicken-and-the-egg conundrum. Was she bad because her mother was bad, or was her poor dead mother being vilified only now that the daughter was in trouble?

Julia laughed bitterly. Because now she was, indeed, living down to her reputation. She had, after all, agreed to meet Blackdown again tomorrow. Julia would be the first to admit that she had been raised largely by accident, but it was wrong for a young woman to sneak off and meet a man alone in the woods. Even she knew that much about propriety.

As for Falcott, he was no paragon. He had put his ungloved hand on hers, when she reached up for her pommel, then left it there for ages. And then when he had tossed her up, for just a moment that hand had rested on her leg. She had looked at his hand, both times. The ring that had looked too big when he was young now suited his strength exactly. His hand was beautiful. More beautiful than the rest of him.

Did he believe she was Eamon’s mistress?

Marigold emerged from the woods and broke, unasked, into a trot. Julia welcomed the jolting gait. Maybe it would bring her back to herself. Because it didn’t matter what the marquess thought. What mattered was that she now had an invitation to Falcott House, the invitation that she desperately needed. The grandeur of his title and his home, the unquestionable virtue of his sister and her chaperonage—her honor would be salvaged. All she had to do was find a way to leave Castle Dar.

* * *

“So. You disobey me.” Eamon stood in the doorway, watching her climb the steps.

“Good day, Cousin.” Julia found that the sight of him no longer nauseated her.

“Get in here.” He reached out for her arm as she walked up the steps.

She jerked it away. “Unhand me. There is no need. I am coming in.” She swept past him into the dark hallway, stripping off her gloves and unpinning her hat. She laid them on the footman’s chair and turned to face her fulminating cousin. “What is it you want of me?”

Eamon’s tombstone teeth gleamed in the dim light of the entrance hall. “I have found the talisman,” he said.

Julia raised her eyebrows. “Really? Have you stopped time?”

“No, but I will soon enough. Come. I want to see if you recognize it.” He led the way into the study, and Julia suppressed a gasp. The piles of strange items that the servants had collected for Eamon had all been cleared away. Everything of Grandfather’s, all his stones and books and knickknacks, was gone. The room was bare and the desk entirely clear, except for one small, colorful box sitting in the exact center of the leather desktop.

It was the lacquered Chinese box that Grandfather had shown her years before.

Eamon picked it up