The River of No Return

in his presence, that she had not ever truly stepped across the threshold into adulthood, despite being too old to be young.
    All her problems seemed to be about time.
    She ducked her head to avoid a low-hanging bough. Do not borrow trouble from tomorrow. That had been Grandfather’s motto, and look what good it had done. It turned out that yesterday’s trouble had been brewing in Stoke Canon ever since she’d arrived. Some suspicion of her mother’s virtue, long buried, but ready to burst forth. The chicken-and-the-egg conundrum. Was she bad because her mother was bad, or was her poor dead mother being vilified only now that the daughter was in trouble?
    Julia laughed bitterly. Because now she was, indeed, living down to her reputation. She had, after all, agreed to meet Blackdown again tomorrow. Julia would be the first to admit that she had been raised largely by accident, but it was wrong for a young woman to sneak off and meet a man alone in the woods. Even she knew that much about propriety.
    As for Falcott, he was no paragon. He had put his ungloved hand on hers, when she reached up for her pommel, then left it there for ages. And then when he had tossed her up, for just a moment that hand had rested on her leg. She had looked at his hand, both times. The ring that had looked too big when he was young now suited his strength exactly. His hand was beautiful. More beautiful than the rest of him.
    Did he believe she was Eamon’s mistress?
    Marigold emerged from the woods and broke, unasked, into a trot. Julia welcomed the jolting gait. Maybe it would bring her back to herself. Because it didn’t matter what the marquess thought. What mattered was that she now had an invitation to Falcott House, the invitation that she desperately needed. The grandeur of his title and his home, the unquestionable virtue of his sister and her chaperonage—her honor would be salvaged. All she had to do was find a way to leave Castle Dar.
    * * *
    “So. You disobey me.” Eamon stood in the doorway, watching her climb the steps.
    “Good day, Cousin.” Julia found that the sight of him no longer nauseated her.
    “Get in here.” He reached out for her arm as she walked up the steps.
    She jerked it away. “Unhand me. There is no need. I am coming in.” She swept past him into the dark hallway, stripping off her gloves and unpinning her hat. She laid them on the footman’s chair and turned to face her fulminating cousin. “What is it you want of me?”
    Eamon’s tombstone teeth gleamed in the dim light of the entrance hall. “I have found the talisman,” he said.
    Julia raised her eyebrows. “Really? Have you stopped time?”
    “No, but I will soon enough. Come. I want to see if you recognize it.” He led the way into the study, and Julia suppressed a gasp. The piles of strange items that the servants had collected for Eamon had all been cleared away. Everything of Grandfather’s, all his stones and books and knickknacks, was gone. The room was bare and the desk entirely clear, except for one small, colorful box sitting in the exact center of the leather desktop.
    It was the lacquered Chinese box that Grandfather had shown her years before.
    Eamon picked it up and handed it to her. “Have you ever seen this box before?”
    “No,” Julia lied. She held it lightly. “What is it?”
    Eamon looked at her, long and piercingly, and Julia returned his gaze. Apparently satisfied, he took a piece of paper out of his pocket. She could see that it had a line or two of Grandfather’s writing on it. “‘July the twenty-first, 1803,’” Eamon read out loud. “‘Solved reached in forty-eight seconds.’”
    Julia turned the box over in her hands. “It requires a solution?” She hoped her voice sounded innocent.
    Eamon snatched it out of her hands. “Yes, stupid girl. It is clearly a magical box of some sort. There is either something in it or something in the opening of it that must unlock time. I found it in a hidden compartment in this desk—devilish clever, but I found it. This box, and a worthless miniature of some mulatto.” Eamon dug carelessly in his pocket and extracted another square of paper. He handed it over and Julia gazed down at a remarkably realistic painting, smooth as ice. It depicted a young woman’s laughing face. The woman’s skin was darker than English people’s, her hair a deeper black, her eyes a clearer blue. Indeed, the colors of everything in the picture, including the slice of sky