The River of No Return

what,’” Arkady said. “It does not sound quite correct.” He looked darkly at Nick.
    “I don’t give a rat’s arse,” Nick said. “You understand me perfectly. I repeat: so what?”
    Clare laughed. “Calm yourself, Nick, and do exert yourself to speak like a gentleman. The count is only trying to help, and you are behaving like a bear.”
    Arkady spread his hands. “You have been forgetting yourself for three years, Lord Blackdown. Your sister said you have changed. You admire Godwin and his wife Mary . . . Mary . . .”
    “Wollstonecraft.” Nick ground the name out.
    “Ah, yes. You have been keeping company, perhaps, with revolutionaries? And, shall we say, enlightened women? Such exciting thoughts they think, these men and women who dream about the future. But please recall: What is in the brain of a normal aristocrat? He goes to a dinner party. Is he thinking that the women are the equals of the men? Does he want to end the slavery? No. He worries: Who is sitting below me at the table? To that man, he shows only his nostrils. Who is sitting above me? To that man, he smiles and smiles.”
    “Please,” Nick said. “Get to your point.”
    Arkady inclined his head. “If your English aristocracy is anything like our Russian aristocracy, your neighbor the earl will welcome you, the marquess, with bows and scrapes. He thought you were dead. That made him the highest aristocrat in miles and miles. Down he looked upon everyone. But now you have returned. He will not like it, but he must look up to you. I predict that he will accept a visit from you and your sister.”
    “Of course.” Clare pivoted on the couch. She was practically in Arkady’s lap. “You are right. We shall wear our finest apparel, stink of ambergris and disapproval, and stay only fifteen minutes. We shall suggest to him that if he does not stop trampling on his cousin’s reputation, society will shun him.”
    “If I may be permitted to join you?” Arkady smiled at Clare. “I have much interest in this Castle Dar. I have heard, oh, many tales about it. It has a very interesting atmosphere. Almost . . . timeless?” Arkady caught Nick’s eye over Clare’s head and gave him a meaningful look.
    Nick had to admit it was a plan. It did not involve riding up to Castle Dar on a fiery white stallion, fighting the earl with a broadsword, and then carrying Julia away into the sunset. But then again, it would probably work. And if Arkady got to hunt Ofan on the side, that was fine, too. “Yes,” he said. “We go tomorrow afternoon.”
    “Why not this afternoon?” Clare asked.
    Nick thought of Julia, and the possibility of a meeting up by the woods tomorrow morning. Once she was at Blackdown, he would never see her alone; she would always be with Clare, stitching or some other nonsense. “I have said tomorrow afternoon; it is decided.”
    Clare regarded him coolly, then turned to Arkady. “Do you know, Count, I think he is in danger of falling in love with our imperiled Miss Percy.”
    Arkady crossed his arms. “I think you are right.” He, too, favored Nick with a long, serious look. “And I don’t like it.”
    Nick slammed out of the room.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
    J ulia on her horse. Julia dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, curled up by the fire in the Vermont house. Julia bent back over his arm. . . . Nick flipped over, pulling a pillow onto his head. It was three in the morning and he was wracked by lust. His body and soul were on fire with it.
    Yesterday on the hillside the marquess had managed to gain the upper hand, and his idea was simple. Marry her. Settle down and raise little marquesses. The marquess was living in a comedy. Nick Davenant was tied to the Guild and therefore he was living in a tragedy. But this scene, in which the hero is tormented by desire, was the same in both scripts.
    It was the thought of her waist. Of how it had felt in his hands when he had lifted her into the saddle. How she might strain upward to kiss him, if she were to kiss him. How his hands might drift down from her waist . . .
    Good grief.
    She is a gentlewoman, he told himself. A lady. Bred to save her virginity and even her kisses until marriage.
    Even her kisses, Nick, he told himself from under the pillow. You can’t kiss her if she comes to meet you in the morning. You shouldn’t even hold her hand. Those are the rules and you know them through and through.
    “Through and through,” he said out loud. “Shoe and glue.