The River of No Return

the other. He was teasing her away from passion, and she could feel it ebb, just like the rain, which was falling more patchily now.
    “There,” he said, tracing her mouth with one finger.
    She opened her eyes. He was entirely rumpled and handsomer for it. They had kissed again, again in the rain. Again he was pulling away. But now she knew more about him. She reached out a finger and traced the scar that crossed his eyebrow. Then she leaned forward and placed her own kiss on his mouth. “I admire your scar,” she said.
    “It is not a happy memory,” he said. “The getting of it.”
    “How did you come by it?”
    “At Badajoz.” His voice was flat.
    “I haven’t heard much about Badajoz,” she said carefully. “It was a siege?”
    “I am glad you don’t know. I wish no one knew.”
    “Tell me?”
    “The man who fought beside me when finally we stormed the city, who climbed with me, up . . .” He stopped and searched her face. What did he see there? Whatever it was, he chose to continue. “We climbed into Badajoz on a ladder of our own dead, Julia. A man ahead would fall, shot by the French who were picking us off from above. That man would become the next rung. Do you understand?”
    She put her hand on his. “Yes.”
    His eyes deepened. “But of course you know. You were there.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He stroked her hair back from her brow and let his eyes wander from her eyes, down her face and body, and back up. “Julia. That day. So long ago. When you saw me and Boatswain. I was weeping.”
    “For your father’s death.”
    “I wish I could say it was for his death. I was weeping for myself. I did not want to be Blackdown. But I already was Blackdown. Then there you were. Do you know . . .” He drew his hand down her face, causing her to close her eyes. She opened them again when his hand withdrew. “Yes,” he said. “That look.” He touched her lips with his finger. “I am afraid I have used you for years. Carried you into battle with me. Used you to fight back the memories. You, stepping out of the woods at my darkest hour. Smiling at me.”
    “That was your darkest hour? The day your father died?”
    “When I was that young, yes, that was my darkest hour. I have had darker since.”
    Julia touched the scar again. “You got this scar climbing into the city?”
    “No.” His eyes went blank. “It was later. Once we took Badajoz. In the aftermath.” He reached up and grasped her exploring fingers, bringing them down to his mouth.
    “You don’t want to tell me,” she said. “Did you do something terrible?”
    “Yes,” he said. “It was terrible. But it was the only thing I could do. It was right.”
    His face was still strange to her. Rough, broken even, with that scar. But she was coming to understand it. “I don’t care what you did then,” she said. “I like your scar now.”
    He grinned, the light returning to his eyes. “Other women have liked it, too.”
    “Don’t tell me that!”
    He laughed lightly, and she turned her face away. How could he change so quickly?
    “Oh, come.” The laugh was still in his voice. He reached for her, but she held back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re such an innocent. I was teasing you. I take it back.”
    She turned her face to him again. “I cannot help that I am innocent.”
    “I like it.”
    She put her chin up. “Other men have liked it, too!”
    His eyes flashed dark, and with a quick jerk he pulled her against him and kissed her. She kissed him back fiercely, but he pulled away. “You wicked girl,” he said. Yet he was smiling as he said it, a real smile instead of that wretched knowing one. “You make it hard to stop kissing you.”
    “I don’t want you to stop.” She put her hand on his thigh. “I am not that sweet girl you thought about all those years. I’m glad she could help you. But she isn’t me. You made her up out of the shadows and light of that afternoon.”
    “I know it,” he said.
    “I want you to keep kissing me, Nicholas. Why won’t you?”
    “Last time I kissed you, you didn’t want to hear about my reasons for stopping.”
    She looked at her hand on his leg. “I know your reasons.” She pushed her hand up his thigh, feeling the way the lean muscles swelled.
    He put his hand over hers to stay it. “Stop that,” he said. “My reasons are very simple today. We have to call a halt now or we won’t be able to.” He bent to the white book on the floor, and the