The River of No Return

seen Nick disappear at Salamanca. So now Nick was in his debt after all. Not because Jemison had saved his life. This debt was a far stranger encumbrance than that most brotherly of bonds. Jemison had protected Nick from his own impulse to share. No secrets, no promises, no pledge, no collateral. No return.
    Nick looked at the ground as he walked. Bright, tender, green English grass cropped short by sheep. So different from the tough, blue-green grass that carpeted American lawns. Nick had never thought to feel it again—that particular way that wet turf gives beneath the feet, welcoming you, then springs back beneath the heels, pushing you away again.
    All those years in America and barely a complicated feeling. He hadn’t been home for twenty-four hours and already nothing was simple. The marquess was battling for ascendancy. Clare, who had been about to sell Blackdown, was now dispossessed by his return. And Jemison. That thin hand held up against Nick’s story. That curt nod, and that way that Jemison had turned and left, as if it were his own land across which he walked so lightly.
    A sound made Nick look up. A horse was nosing its way out of the little path that emerged from the trees up ahead. At first he could see only the horse’s head, but then the entire animal stepped delicately into the sun, and its rider was revealed.
    Thank God. A woman. Something to distract him from himself.
    Her black riding habit was unrelieved by any color except for a splash of white at her throat. The early-morning sun was shining behind her, so that he couldn’t see her face or determine the color of her hair, which was coiled and netted. She was looking away from him, down the long slope toward Falcott House, and he could make out the pure line of her cheek, her neck, her breast. The rest was camouflaged by her full skirts.
    The mysterious lady held her horse’s reins lightly in one gloved hand. The mare tossed her head, but the lady’s hand remained resting at the pommel. Nick felt a rush of erotic pleasure: her small hand, the powerful animal. She trusted the horse, and her own control over it. Nick had spent ten years in the republic of tight jeans and bikinis, and he had come to like it there very much. But it was good here, too. He stepped forward, intending to present himself, but, without ever realizing he was there, she urged her horse on and was soon flying over the fields in the direction of the river.
    The mare neighed once, shrilly, hallooing the joy she felt in the canter, and Nick heard the rider’s responding laugh. He stood, hands on hips, watching them go. The mare’s pretty black legs flashed, her hooves kicking up clods of rich earth as she stretched to run as fast as she could. The lady sat her like a queen, her lovely bottom (and this Nick could now see, for the habit was tucked most advantageously) lifting with the horse’s gait. Would she come back this way? Nick watched as horse and rider grew smaller, slowing as they reached the river, then walking along it back up toward the line of trees. There was a path there, also, that led along the river to the village; they still might choose to come back this way. He waited. The lady and her horse disappeared into the woods. No matter. This was clearly her morning ride.
    He would be here tomorrow, perhaps on a horse of his own. He wasn’t looking forward to the painful process of getting reaccustomed to the saddle. He didn’t want to think about the ache and pains that were coming the way of his own lovely bottom.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    W hat did you do today?” Nick asked Arkady over brandy, after Clare had left them for the evening.
    “I sat all day in the inn yard in Stoke Canon and listened to conversations. Mostly they were talking about you.”
    Nick smiled.
    Arkady did not. “You enjoy yourself too much, playing the great lord,” he said. “Remember, you are here to do a job.”
    Nick sipped his brandy. “The way I see it, I am doing my job. The job I was raised to do. I am the marquess.” He looked out of the window at the perfectly dark night. “I know that this way of life is passing. Is already past. Factories are rising, the railway is coming. But you cannot bring me back here and not expect me to take up the old ways. You said that I would enjoy being the marquess again. But it isn’t enjoyment that I feel. It is simply . . .” Nick swirled the amber liquid in his glass. “It feels right. I am home.”
    “Listen to me.”