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

“The Corn Bill, it is as good as passed. Why do you care, Blackdown? You have more important things to think of.”

Nick turned his shoulder and continued talking to his sister.

“It is rude to make ladies talk about politics!”

Clare stopped what she was saying midsentence. “Mal chien!” She pointed at the Russian. “Mal!”

The set-down had the unfortunate effect of forcing the count to talk to Julia. He turned with a barely repressed sigh and asked her how her day had been. She said that she’d had a lovely time reading. Had he had a restful day?

“The English rain. So unpleasant. I slept. But tell me . . .” His voice dwindled away. “Such dark eyes you have.”

“My grandfather had dark eyes.”

He gazed for a moment more into her eyes. “Poor girl. And now you are an Ofan.”

She started involuntarily. How did he know? She had done nothing whatsoever in his presence to indicate that she could manipulate time, too. But still somehow he knew!

But his blue eyes were limpid, and his smile was benign.

An orphan.

He had called her an orphan.

She cursed herself for the fluttering fear which might so easily have exposed her secret. “I am grateful for your sympathy,” she said, her voice coming out high, like a child’s. But let him think her foolish. It was better than the alternative. She cleared her throat discreetly. “And thank you for the part you played in freeing me from my cousin.”

“It was the pleasure.” His perfunctory nod was meant to make it obvious that he had found saving her a chore. But Julia knew otherwise. The Russian was fascinated by Eamon; he thought Eamon was Ofan. And he pursued that secret interest now, to Julia’s intense discomfort. “This cousin you have. This new earl who replaces your grandfather. How well do you know him?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Since your grandfather’s death? You have not come to know him any better?”

“He is not an outgoing man.”

“Perhaps you notice strange things about this cousin?” He spoke as he might to a child, asking simple questions in a friendly tone. “Perhaps he has mysterious instruments in his study? Perhaps he speaks and does acts oddly? Is there anything, any unusual object, that particularly he treasured?”

Julia bit her lip. So the Russian was looking for a talisman too. Grandfather had said that there might be others, besides Eamon, who would come and ask questions of her. Pretend, he had said. Never tell. Pretend. It was Count Lebedev Grandfather had been warning her about. Count Lebedev and . . .

And perhaps Blackdown.

The count leaned toward her. “Well? Was there anything, anything at all?”

“No,” Julia said, willing him to feel that she was telling the truth, pushing with all her might against his suspicion. “Nothing like that.”

Somewhat to her surprise, he relented. “No, of course there wasn’t.” He let his disappointed gaze rest on her for just a moment more before he turned his shoulder and dug into his dinner, eating quickly and paying her not one more moment’s notice.

Julia forced herself to pick up her knife and fork and eat, forced herself to think of anything at all other than Ofans, and time, and the blasted Talisman—which was herself!

Nick. His voice. He was still speaking to Clare.

He might be searching for Ofans, too, and he might be just as dangerous as his Russian friend. But he had said she was his Julia, up in the cupola. Surely that meant he cared for her. She clung to the sound of his voice and the words he was speaking as if they were flotsam and jetsam in a shipwreck.

“Let us say for the sake of the argument that these Corn Laws hung in the balance, and you could choose which way the vote would go, but at a price. Would you be willing to sacrifice your good name for your convictions?”

“Do you mean to ask if I would actually . . . ?”

“No.” Blackdown spread his hands in a gesture of denial. “Of course not, Clare. I’m talking about whether or not you would be willing to be . . .” He paused. “To be shunned. If you could have the vote go the way you wanted, but you knew it would make people talk about you, revile you . . .”

“Some people always say bad things anyway,” Clare said. “And there is always another club. Vote for the Corn Bill, you make one set of friends. Vote against, you make another. If White’s expels you, what do you do? You go to Brooks’s.” She smiled. “Perhaps you will go to Brooks’s of your own accord one day.”

“Yes, that is true enough for me. But you are a woman.”

“What iota of difference does that make?”

“I believe that for women, there is only one respectable club.”

“Ah.” Clare reached up and adjusted her cap. “That is tediously true. How unkind of you to remind me.”

“I didn’t mean—”

Clare reached out and patted her brother’s arm. “For goodness’ sake, Nickin. I am teasing you. You have asked me a hypothetical question. Don’t let it tie you in knots.” She turned to Julia. “What do you think?”

Both siblings were looking at her now, awaiting an answer. Even the Russian glanced up from his food.

“Would I sacrifice my good name for my convictions?” Julia considered, remembering the feeling of hollow desolation that had come over her in Stoke Canon when she realized that the town had turned against her. How precarious her hold on life had felt, as if she were teetering on the edge of a cliff. “I don’t think I have a reputation to trade anymore. At this point my good name depends on yours, Clare. I discovered last week that my neighbors have been waiting all my life for me to prove that I am . . .” She blinked, remembering with searing clarity exactly how it had felt when she had pressed her naked breast to Blackdown’s mouth.

She folded her lips together tightly and fought against her desire to look at him.

“It is ridiculous,” Clare said, taking over. “Women are all chained together by this thing called reputation. If I