The River of No Return

tricked him. She was almost free.
    “Miss Percy.”
    She looked up and met Lebedev’s blue eyes. They were melting with tears. The force of his emotion—grief—hit her like a blast of wind.
    “Did your grandfather ever . . .” His tears spilled over. “Did he ever talk to you of another child, a brilliant child? A child of incredible gifts? Once he was her teacher, far away. She was unlike you, this girl. She was . . .”
    Before Julia knew it, his grief for her mother had pulled her to her feet and he was hugging her close and sobbing into her hair. His pain flooded her. His tears were wet on her forehead and temple, and tears were streaming down her own cheeks. She was becoming this Russian, this man named Arkady, her mother’s father . . . this man who had lost his daughter and would never be whole again. When he finally stumbled away from her, apologizing and drying his eyes, she gathered herself just enough to flee the room, throwing open the double doors into the hallway and shutting them with a bang behind her. She leaned back against the doors, gasping for breath. She could still feel him in the room behind her, dragging at her soul.
    Someone grabbed her hand. It was Leo, who had clearly been listening through the door. “Hold on to me,” he whispered fiercely. “Hold on!”
    Julia stared blindly at him, and clutched first at his hand and then at his shoulders. Now she could feel Leo! Sense the terrible pain that lay at his core. She shrank, terrified.
    “No!” He gathered her up into his arms. “Stop it, Julia. Don’t reach out to me. Reach in. Find your mooring. Reach in.”
    She closed her eyes and breathed. She turned her attention to herself. Leo’s arms around her, which had at first felt as if they were grabbing at her very soul, were now stabilizing her like a scaffold. She felt her heartbeat. Slowing. Her breath. Slowing. She felt the pull from the other room weaken. Then, like water falling away as the swimmer climbs up from the river, it left her altogether.
    She raised her face to Leo’s, and he stepped away from the embrace, smiling at her. He held a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he whispered. “You’re all right now. You’re fine.”
    “Yes.” Julia was whispering too. “I was in his feelings!”
    Leo shook his head. “And I felt you entering mine.”
    “Is that part of the talent?” she asked.
    “No. It isn’t part of the talent.”
    “But . . . I can put my feelings into people. I’ve done it once to Count Lebedev and once to Jemison. I can make them feel what I feel. You can’t do that?”
    “No.” Leo frowned. “No one can. Except . . .” He stopped, his lips folded.
    “Except who? You must tell me.”
    “Mr. Mibbs.”
    “But . . . ,” Julia whispered. “What does that mean?”
    Leo looked at the ground, then up again at Julia. He took her hand and squeezed it. “That is what we will have to find out.”
    * * *
    It was raining. Leo and Bertrand were playing hazard, and Bertrand was winning. Leo was talking, a steady stream of nonsense. Hazard was such an interesting game. So complex . . . and yet it could be more complex, didn’t Bertrand think so? It rather reminded Leo of a Pocumtuk gambling game that took a lifetime to master. Perhaps Bertrand would like to learn? It was played with stones instead of dice, but if you just imagined that you had a stone in your hand . . .
    Bertrand told him in a dry tone to shut up.
    Julia sat staring out of the window, her spirits low. It had been a full day since Arkady had left, and Nick and Julia hadn’t had a moment alone together. And now it was raining.
    But then Nick was standing up, stretching, and announcing he was going to walk over to Castle Dar, the rain be damned, and would anyone like to join him? He looked directly at Julia.
    “I will,” Leo said from the card table. “I’m losing anyway.”
    “You will not.” Bertrand handed him the dice. “You will continue to gamble away your fortune.”
    “But I want to get out of the house.”
    “Roll the dice.”
    Leo glanced at Nick and then at Julia. “Oh,” he said. “I see. Yes. All right, then. I’ll raise you ten, you evil Frenchman.” He rolled the dice with a practiced flick of the wrist.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
    T hey had walked up to this spot together without exchanging a word. Now they stood in the cold rain, at the edge of the woods, at the exact spot where they had met on the day of the Seventh Marquess’s