The River of No Return

said. “Shake your sister off.”
    Nick looked the Russian up and down. His borrowed nightshirt barely skimmed his bony knees, and its full sleeves didn’t reach his wrists. “You look like a girl who has outgrown her pinafore, Arkady.”
    “Bah. These nightclothes of this time. So undignified.”
    “Indeed. I recommend that you dress yourself before emerging from your lair.” Nick twitched his cuffs. “As for your plans, I’m afraid I must disappoint you. I’ve just been reunited with my sister, the world smells good for the first time in two centuries, and I intend to spend a few days forgetting your existence. Today I am going to beat my bounds and if I catch sight of your unkempt white hair anywhere in my path, why, I’ll scalp you. What day is it today, Monday? I do not wish to think about the Guild or the Ofan until Friday. Oh—and on Friday, Count Lebedev, this household is going to London.” He held his hand up to quash Arkady’s response. “You cannot bring me back and not expect me to care for my family. My young sister is having her first London Season, and my mother is with her. We will be going to London and joining them. You said that the Ofan are at work in London, too; we will begin there, and finish the job up in Devon later. Is that understood?”
    “You are quick to slip back into your aristocratic arrogance, Blackdown.”
    “You told me I would enjoy it.”
    Arkady looked at him soberly for a moment, then slapped Nick on the back. “Yes. I did say it. And I like to be right. Up to a point. Enjoy your freedom. Then yes, London is a good place to start. As for me, I make myself scarce. Hunt the Ofan. Perhaps I will cultivate the acquaintance of your so lovely sister.”
    Almost before he realized what he was doing, Nick found himself grabbing Arkady with both hands by the thin cotton of the nightshirt and dragging his face close to his own. “If I did not know your devotion to Alice, Arkady, I would challenge you for those words.”
    The Russian raised his brows high and let his eyes drop down to Nick’s two fists. “My old friend Nick Davenant, he was a blasé fellow,” he said in a constricted voice. “But Lord Blackdown has a temper.”
    Nick released him and took a step back. He was shaken. “I apologize,” he said. “But . . .”
    “But?” Arkady brushed his nightshirt into place with the same care as if it had been one of Weston’s finest jackets.
    “My sister is not a modern woman.”
    “And you? You are a modern man, Nick Davenant.”
    “Am I? I’m not so sure.”
    “If I trifle with your sister, what will you do?”
    “I will horsewhip you.”
    “Ah.” Arkady bowed. “And now, my lord, we have both threatened to harm each other over women.”
    “Have we?”
    “Yes.” Arkady’s smile was a little sad. “When you flirted with my wife? I said I would kill you. I joke. But you . . . you are in earnest about your whip. Nevertheless. Now we are true friends. Come to me.” The Russian gathered Nick into a bear hug and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. “My brother.” Then he stepped back into his bedchamber and snapped the door shut.
    Nick stared at the closed door, flexing his hands. The marquess was triumphing. Indeed, Nick had been the marquess since the moment he had awoken this morning. Maybe it was best that way. A month ago he had been a New Yorker with a house in Vermont, a twenty-first-century Casanova with no responsibilities beyond his own pleasures. Today he was a Georgian aristocrat, the lord of a vast estate. His concerns were bound up with tenants, farming cycles, investments, virginal spinster sisters, and oversexed Russian noblemen. Perhaps he needed nineteenth-century feelings to handle nineteenth-century situations. He couldn’t lay his title aside, neither legally nor, it seemed, emotionally. So be it. When they sent him back to the twenty-first century, then he would become Nick Davenant again.
    And perhaps he could find a way to stay here. Arkady had said the Guild would drag him back to the twenty-first century, but all the rules of the Guild seemed to be malleable. Perhaps he could simply be the marquess forever.
    * * *
    Half an hour later Nick stood on the front steps, his belly full of ham and eggs from the home farm. A lunch stolen from the kitchens bulged in his satchel, and his none-too-supple buckskin breeches were warming up nicely. His toes were happily at home in an old pair of country boots made especially for