The River of No Return

Brew and blue. Tutu.”
    He groaned. The last time he had tried the rhyming game it had ended with his thinking of Julia. Way back in the twenty-first century, when the thought of Julia used to calm him down. Now she inflamed him.
    She probably thought he was marriage material. Maybe she even wanted to tempt his kisses. That was how it worked. A kiss and then a proposal. A girl in her position expected to get married, to dutifully offer up her virginity on her wedding night, to have children and be a respected lady. Getting herself married off to the boy next door might seem like the perfect happy ending to her. Goddamn it, it was the perfect happy ending.
    Nick groaned again as the wedding-night scenario unrolled its luxurious details, like Cleopatra out of a carpet.
    He would stay home tomorrow morning. He would stay home tomorrow morning. He would stay home. . . .
    * * *
    Morning found him walking toward the woods, rain dripping from his curly-brimmed beaver hat and from the capes of his greatcoat. Gore-Tex, he thought to himself. Wicking fabric. He had high-tech rain gear in his hall closet in Vermont. Yet here he was, dressed in clothes that smelled when they got wet. Wool and linen and leather and fur and cotton. Animals and vegetables. Natural dyes. Hand stitching. He breathed the clean air in through his mouth. The rain tasted pure on his tongue. Perhaps Julia would stay home and solve his problem for him. She hadn’t said she would come. She certainly shouldn’t come. If she was a good girl, a lady . . .
    She wasn’t a good girl or a lady. She was Julia.
    She would come.
    He looked up, almost expecting to see her up at the edge of the wood, waiting for him. But the line of trees, black in the rain, cut blankly across the horizon like a wall.
    * * *
    Julia hung back under the boughs, watching him come toward her. He looked severe in his hat and greatcoat, and he was walking with deliberate purpose, as if striding across the field to a duel. Or perhaps he was coming to tell her that he now believed the rumors.
    She took a step or two back into the trees. She wasn’t sure she could bear to hear those recriminations on his lips. There was still time to turn around and walk away. But he was making short work of the distance. She saw him look up and wondered whether he’d seen her. She was wearing her red cloak, for she had no black one. But if he did see her he gave no sign and simply marched inexorably forward.
    * * *
    God, he was a fool. No fool like an old fool. He was only supposed to be a few years her senior, and if you counted by birth year, that was true enough. But in another way he was nearly twelve years older, and in yet another way he was unfathomably older—so old, in fact, that he shouldn’t even have been born yet. Yet, in spite of it all, here he was, squelching through the fields like some pastoral swain off to meet his shepherdess. Fortunately she wasn’t there, and he was later than he had been yesterday. Maybe she had some sense. It would be good if one of them did. In spite of the cold rain wilting his cravat and spotting his boots, in spite of the knowledge that he was a damned idiot, and in spite of the fact that he was clearly stomping up the high road to supreme folly, he burned for her.
    “Damn.” He cursed aloud. Then he looked up again, and there she was, her red cape like an ensign against the black bark of the trees, her face lifted to the rain. She was so beautiful that he stopped in his tracks. Then he couldn’t help it. He frowned, but he stepped forward, and his hand was reaching out for hers.
    * * *
    She could sense his foul mood as he came closer, and perversely, it drew her out of the trees. She put her chin up, and her hood fell back. She didn’t replace it. The cool rain on her face felt good. She didn’t know why he was coming toward her looking so ferocious, but if he thought he could scare her he could think again. Then he looked up and his eyes fastened on hers and his frown deepened. But he closed the space between them in a few short strides and his hand in its brown glove reached for hers. “Julia,” he said, and his voice was rough.
    She put her black-gloved hand in his and curtsied, her back straight. “My lord.”
    He looked down at her, holding her hand lightly in his. Now that he was close she could tell that he was angry with himself and not with her. He said nothing.
    “You are thinking you should not have come,” she