The River of No Return

enough to avoid speaking more than a few words to women. No one admitted belonging to the Guild, of course, although everyone here was clearly fabulously wealthy. The clothes and jewelry were at the teetering pinnacle of fashion. The women were far more elegantly dressed, in fact, than many members of the ton. It was a grand spectacle. And they all talked of the glorious shipping venture as if it were real—as perhaps it was.
    Nick scanned the crowd. His eyes caught on a face. A woman at the center of the crowd. And another face, a man’s. Dark faces. Nick felt some distant part of himself pricked by what he hadn’t even noticed a moment before; that not everyone at this party shared his skin color. Of course they didn’t; this was a Guild party. And yet now that Nick had noticed it, he found that part of him—perhaps it was the marquess—could see nothing else. He leaned back against the table and tried to forget it, tried to watch, as he had a moment before, people laughing, dancing, bowing and curtseying, the silks and satins worn by the women shifting beneath the glittering chandeliers, the more sober colors of the men’s clothing punctuating the scene, like rocks in the midst of a swirling, sunset-drenched sea of sumptuous cloth. But as he sipped his champagne he let his eyes rest on a handsome dark-skinned man, who was bowing, and signing the dance card of a white woman, the man’s hand on the woman’s elbow . . .
    Suddenly that distant part of Nick was very near, nearer than breathing; the river was pouring through him, crashing like a flood, sweeping him away. Tom Molineaux was fighting Tom Cribb at Shenington Hollow, and Nick was in the crowd, with ten thousand other men, his voice hoarse after hours of yelling. It was the thirty-fourth round, and Molineaux’s hand had been broken for the last fifteen. But now Cribb was going to win. Both boxers were drenched, their bare hands wet and red, their battered bodies running with sweat, their feet caked with blood-churned mud. Molineaux was weaving, swaying into unconsciousness, and the crowd was howling for Cribbs’s imminent victory, howling for Molineaux’s defeat. Nick’s betting slip was clutched in his hand; he was set to win big on Cribb but he didn’t want the show to end—no one wanted the show to end. Nick and the crowd howled with one voice as Tom Molineaux crashed to the ground and Tom Cribb raised his battered face and open, streaming hands to the sky . . .
    “Do you dance, my lord?” The words were soft in his ear.
    The river retreated, like a fast-ebbing wave, sucking him back with it then beaching him in the ballroom. He gasped for breath, and stared wildly at the woman who was there beside him, her hands reaching for his.
    “My lord, you must breathe. Yes, that’s it. Breathe and look at me.”
    The orchestra was tuning up—the dancing was about to begin. A thousand candles caught the facets of a thousand jewels scattered in the hair, and on the hands, and around the throats of the women below. His own diamond tiepin winked, answering the general sparkle.
    “Holy shit,” he whispered. He gripped the woman’s hands. “I was fine, and then . . .” He found he didn’t know how to explain what had happened. “The river swept me away . . . not in time, but in myself. To someone I used to be . . . a fight . . .”
    “Ah,” she said. “Yes.”
    Nick held on to her hands as if they were a lifeline.
    “People are watching us,” she said softly. “Can you pretend to be recovered? I shan’t leave you.”
    He dropped her hands. “Yes, yes of course.” In saying it, it became true. He straightened up and twitched his cuffs into place, casting a severe glance over his shoulder at a man who was openly gaping. Then he turned back and really looked at her.
    Blonde, blue dress.
    It was her. It had to be her. A woman somewhat older than himself and almost his own height, her white-blonde hair arranged in an elegant coil, a few curls artlessly loose at the front. Her blue gown was far more demure than most that graced the ballroom. Around her neck, square-cut diamonds flashed in the candlelight, and he saw others glinting among the curls that were so perfectly disarranged around her ears. Her oval face was a palette of whites and palest pinks, her violet eyes moonlit and fathomless.
    “You are Alva Blomgren,” he said.
    “Yes,” she said. “And now that you are yourself again, we can get on with our