The River of No Return

ran lightly up the stairs.
    Pringle led the men across the entrance hall, but after only a few steps Arkady held up his hand. “Hush.” He cocked his head, as if listening. “Do you feel it?”
    “Feel what?”
    Arkady mouthed the word so that Pringle could not hear: “Time.”
    Nick concentrated. Perhaps he did feel a little tremor, a tiny sensation. But nothing definite. He raised a quizzical eyebrow, and Arkady nodded.
    “Give us a moment please, Pringle?” Nick looked to the butler, who stepped discreetly away.
    “That is time play?” Nick whispered. “But it’s so faint. It doesn’t feel right.”
    “Yes.” Arkady looked all around the room. “Someone is thinking of playing with time. They have not yet done it, but they are making the surface of the river ripple with the power of their feelings.” Arkady paused again, wrinkling his nose as if at a bad smell. “But as you say, it doesn’t feel right. Something is very strange here.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “Keep your eyes and ears open. Someone here is dangling their fingers in the river. Perhaps we will discover who it is. Perhaps this so-reclusive earl is of interest after all.”
    Arkady strode toward Pringle, and with a flourish the butler pulled open the huge mahogany double doors that led to the formal rooms of Castle Dar. “The Marquess of Blackdown. Count Lebedev of St. Petersburg.” Pringle sang their names into the echoing, dark vastness of the Blue Drawing Room.
    * * *
    Where were they? Julia paced the Yellow Saloon, tamping down the desire to go in search of them. She had half a mind to freeze time and go downstairs to see what was going on, but then she heard a light step running up the stair. Julia opened the door just as Clare reached it. Julia cried out at the sight of the familiar face, and Clare hugged her.
    “Oh, poor Julia!” Clare pulled away, gripping Julia’s shoulders. “Nick told me what you have been suffering. I did not realize the gossip was so cruel, but that is no excuse for my negligence. I hope you can forgive me.”
    “Please, it is nothing. I am just so glad to see you, and to see that you believe in me.” Julia hugged Clare again. “Where are the others?”
    “There is a fly in the ointment. They are downstairs with your cousin in the Blue Drawing Room.”
    “But we never use that room. It is a silk-lined barn. The servants probably haven’t dusted it in a month.”
    “Nevertheless, that is where the gentlemen are. Your cousin did not want you to be informed of our visit.”
    Anger bit Julia, hard. “He is a toad,” she said, spitting the word out. “He makes me his prisoner, allows the gossip to grow—and only for his own perverse pleasure in seeing me suffer.”
    Julia barely heard Clare’s words of condolence and continued apology. She wanted nothing more than to stop time. She could do it. She could feel the desire to do it building at the base of her skull. She could march downstairs and into the Blue Drawing Room, drop her deepest curtsey to Lord Blackdown and his Russian friend, who would be standing like two statues. She could pull her arm back. . . .
    But if the men awoke to find Eamon with a painful handprint on his cheek, where a moment ago there had been none? Eamon was stupid, but it wouldn’t take him long to realize what she could do.
    With a powerful effort Julia quelled her rage. And inspiration struck. “The priest’s hole,” she said slowly, remembering the secret closet on the landing built during the Dissolution to hide not a priest, but an abbess. It contained spy holes overlooking the Blue Dining Room from high in its east hall. She jumped to her feet, pulling Clare up with her. “If Eamon wants to pose as the evil guardian and pretend that we are all trapped in a ‘horrid’ novel, then let us play along!”
    Clare laughed. “Last time we played in the priest’s hole, I had agreed to be a queen held for ransom in a tower. You and Bella were to rescue me.”
    “It wasn’t a tower,” Julia said. “Please, Clare. You were locked in the hold of a pirate ship.”
    “Was I? I spent the time reading by candlelight, I’m afraid. As I recall, I believe I spent a full hour in that closet, waiting to be sprung free.”
    “Ah, yes. Indeed. That can be explained. You see, you agreed to be the queen, so long as we didn’t distract you from your reading, but the game relied upon Nick agreeing to be the pirate. Once we had you in place, we went to convince