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

Brummell, who saluted him through the glass. Nick nodded to the prince of dandies, took a deep breath, and prepared to greet many of the men he had known in his old life.

The doors opened onto warmth, light, and a low roar of welcome. Nick’s apprehensions lifted from him as easily as the greatcoat that was removed from his shoulders by a servant. A glass was pressed into his hand, a toast was raised. Bonhomie flowed like wine, and the wine tasted like nectar. Nick was passed through a crowd of men ranging in age from eighteen to eighty, their hands grasping his, their pale faces shining with benevolence. The sound of their laughter was like a tune he had once loved but had forgotten. The weight of an arm over his shoulder, the gentle humor of a lewd joke, the good wishes passed on from someone who couldn’t be there. The smells soothed: beeswax, tobacco, leather, booze, musk, and cologne. The sounds delighted: bass, baritone, and tenor voices; glasses clinking; cards shuffling; dice clicking; fire crackling. This was the very perfection of good living, good drinking, good feeling. Nick found himself casting about for the river, its pull, its depth all around him, but it simply wasn’t there. It was like he was suspended in warm honey, and he wondered if this place was some paradisiacal twin of Tyburn, a scar, a place where time and feeling turn in upon themselves. He made his slow way through the crowd, guided by smiles and halloos and fragments of fraternal conversation.

At dinner, Nick shared a table with nine bachelors of his own generation, each as genial as the next. Steak had never tasted so good; it was perfectly aged, with a sensuous chew and a yielding, buttery taste. Nick found himself raising his glass and calling out in a loud voice, “Beef and liberty!” This was his only error; it was the rallying cry of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks, a Whig club, and White’s was firmly Tory. For a moment he felt a vibration of doubt move through the room. But approval was strong for Nick tonight, the miraculously returned hero. He was forgiven his gaffe almost before the words were out of his mouth, and the drop of uneasy feeling dissipated without a trace into the unguent of brotherly love. And so the evening slipped along, the hours told by glasses of wine. It was only when the clock struck midnight that Nick realized he had seen neither hide nor hair of Kirklaw.

The snuff was being passed when a footman tapped him on his shoulder. The duke, apparently, awaited Nick in a private chamber. Nick got to his feet and bade his companions a tender farewell. They chorused their good-byes. His brain pleasantly fuzzy, his stomach handsomely full, Nick followed the bewigged footman up the stairs and into a private drawing room.

* * *

Kirklaw was not alone; two other men stood by the mantel, each looking expectantly toward him. Good Lord. The one on the left, the bald one, that was Baron Blessing. And the one on the right was the Honorable Richard Bonnet. Nick strode forward. “Blessing! Bonnet!”

He was brought up short by their chilly bows. “Blackdown,” Blessing said. And, “Blackdown,” Bonnet echoed. Then, “I’m not Bonnet anymore. My father is dead. I’m Delbun.”

“Delbun,” Nick said, bowing.

Kirklaw came forward, hand outstretched. Five years had transformed the duke. In 1810 he had been twenty-two but had looked sixteen, pale and scrawny. The man walking toward Nick now was well padded, and although Nick knew he was only twenty-seven, he looked indeterminately middle-aged, with a high color and a receding hairline. His face was set in an expression that could clearly tip toward the pleased or the displeased without disrupting the general aura of smug self-congratulation. He took Nick’s hand. “By God you’ve changed, Blackdown. Look at you! What happened?”

“War,” Nick said. “Then I was lost . . . in Spain.”

“Yes, yes, we’ve heard. Your memory.” Kirklaw stepped back. “And very glad we are to have you returned to us, aren’t we?”

“Very glad,” said Blessing.

“Indeed,” said Delbun.

“It was quite a blow when they told me you were dead. Quite a blow.”

“A blow,” confirmed Blessing.

“You don’t have a drink, Blackdown. We’re drinking brandy; it’s the good stuff, from my own cellars.”

“Thank you.”

Kirklaw turned to a sideboard. Nick stood looking at Blessing and Delbun and they looked back. Surely old friends should talk to one another? But they were stiffly silent, and Nick wasn’t going to yammer like a ninny. So he waited, letting his collar and cravat decide the arrogant angle of his head.

Kirklaw handed Nick a glass and raised his own. “While deeds of glory stimulate the brave and Laurels spring upon the hero’s grave!”

“Deeds of glory!” Blessing said.

“Deeds!” Delbun echoed.

Nick held his glass aloft and let his gaze slip from lord to lord to lord as they drank. The three men were uncomfortable, their anxiety made the more obvious by the congenial buzz of conversation that still ebbed and swelled from the floor below. These men wanted something from him, and they weren’t sure how to ask. Nick set his glass down, put his hands in his pockets, and waited. They would get to the point sooner or later.

Kirklaw plucked a cigar from a box, twirled it between his fingers, and made a show of sniffing it. “Finally can get these from Spain, thanks to gallant boys like you.” The duke’s nails, Nick noticed, were bitten to the quick and his blunt, raw fingertips stained with tobacco. He tapped a toe and tossed the cigar from hand to hand. “Back from the wars, back from the wars, back from the wars,” he said in singsong. “Little Lord Blackdown is back from the wars.”

Nick found that his hands, in his pockets, were clenched. But at the heart of one fist, that little acorn. It calmed him, and he managed to extract his other hand from his pocket in a peaceable manner, lift