The River of No Return

Clare, my friend Count Lebedev, and I will be arriving this afternoon at four to confront your cousin. We intend to be disgustingly imperious. I shall be the grand marquess, and Clare shall be the outraged lady of virtue. Lebedev will fill in as necessary. The intention is to shame your cousin into releasing you.”
    She turned her head and showed him one haughty eye. “Thank you, my lord,” she said, stiffly formal. “I shall be ready.” She snapped her head back around and walked away, her red cloak brilliant against the wet green leaves.
    Nick watched her go, half expecting her to turn again, but of course she did not. When she disappeared around a bend in the dripping tunnel of trees, he retrieved his hat from the ground and absentmindedly brushed its pile into place before jamming it on his head. Well, he’d gone ahead and kissed her. Because it was the only thing to do. Because rules are made to be broken.
    There was a rustle in the tree above him, then something fell, ricocheting off his hat. He watched as the small missile bounced once and came to rest near his toe. Nick bent and picked it up. It was a perfect little acorn, still with its jaunty cap. One of last season’s. It must have held on until this spring rain knocked it down. It was like Julia. Small, brown, and lovely. Filled with a compact, passionate promise. He tucked it in his pocket.
    He set off toward home, kicking at the ground and cursing the dragoon whose raised saber had sent him crashing into the twenty-first century. He doubly cursed the Guild, which had first made it impossible for him to return and now made it impossible for him to stay. If, instead of jumping, he had somehow survived the war and returned home, he might at this moment be safely buckled to Julia, well on the way to the smug, fat contentment that was his birthright. Instead he had been hurled forward, out of Julia’s life, and then back into her life like a bloody bolt from the blue. He had just this moment bruised her pride, if not her heart, and he might well have destroyed his own chances for happiness into the bargain.
    He kicked a clod of mud and cursed when it proved to be a cowpat. “I hate myself,” he muttered, hopping on one foot while trying to wipe the toe of his boot on the grass. “Sometimes I just hate myself.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    A t three forty-five Julia was waiting upstairs in the Yellow Saloon, where callers were usually received. She alternated sitting with pacing back and forth in front of the windows, looking for the first sign of the carriage. Would they come? He’d said they would, but that had been in the wake of him kissing her. Perhaps he had gone away and thought better of it. After all, she had stolen away to meet him, she had recklessly kissed him back . . . when they were supposed to be planning how to save her reputation. How stood her reputation now? Julia closed her eyes. The world was very small, and it was easy to trip over things, easy to close doors forever. Easy to trap yourself.
    That was why she hadn’t wanted him to say anything afterward. She hadn’t wanted the kiss to resolve immediately into debts, duties . . . or awkward explanations of why he couldn’t, why he wouldn’t. She had just wanted him to be silent. Just wanted the kiss to be a kiss, a floating moment in time without repercussions.
    Instead, he’d spoken. “I am not free.” It was strange, but his saying that had made the notion of freedom seem suddenly sordid. It had made her feel like he was perfectly free and it was she who was tainted, guilty, unfree. And perhaps now he did finally believe that she was no better than her reputation. A loose woman.
    Well. Best not to borrow trouble from earlier today, either. Julia sighed and turned her mind to more immediate problems. If he did come, it was important that the plan should work, and she wasn’t sure strategic snobbery and appeals to propriety would do the trick. Eamon was currently obsessed with the lacquered box and much less interested in Julia than he had been. He might already be willing to let her go. Or he might be enraged by the pomposity of his neighbors and refuse.
    She heard a sound and went to the window. She couldn’t yet see the carriage, but she could hear the horses’ hooves and the wheels on the gravel. She turned and looked somewhat wildly around the room. Soon Nicholas would be here, in this room. The man she had kissed in the rain. Desire had held her in its hand