The River of No Return

him. His refusal destroyed all our pleasure in the game and so . . .”
    “You abandoned me there.”
    “Yes,” Julia said, laughing, “I’m afraid so.”
    Clare stood and brushed her skirts smooth. “Shall we complete the scene today, but with some of the parts transposed? I believe you will find that Nick is now eager to play.”
    A few short moments later, Clare, Julia, and a candle were ensconced in the priest’s hole. Each woman had her eye pressed to one of the peepholes in the wall.
    At first it was hard to see anything in the drawing room, for the heavy blinds were drawn against the daylight, and only a few candles burned here and there. As their eyes adjusted, figures slowly emerged out of the gloom. The gentlemen must only recently have entered the room, for they were still standing, showing their profiles to the peepholes. Eamon was dressed in rusty black, and he cut a disgraceful figure compared to the others. His fingers were ink stained, and Julia could see that his neck cloth, tied in the simplest of knots, was also smudged with ink. The men were clearly in some sort of standoff, for none of them spoke, and Nick and Arkady each wore an expression of outraged shock.
    “Eamon has not wasted any time in offending them,” Julia whispered. “Look how vexed they seem.” Clare nodded, without taking her eye from her hole.
    Eamon had taken up his belligerent stance, the one that made him look like an affronted piglet. His head was thrust so far forward that it looked as if it must topple off his shoulders. His feet were planted primly but firmly, the toes pointing at ten and two o’clock. His hands flexed and unflexed at his sides, and he was slowly changing color, from a rather repellent shade of poultice pink to a far more alarming shade of red. The Russian, who stood with one booted foot placed elegantly forward, was clearly fascinated, for he slowly lifted his quizzing glass to his eye and surveyed Eamon up and down. He then sneered so broadly that the women could see the curl of his lip.
    Finally Nick broke the silence. “I beg your pardon?”
    “The woman.” Eamon spat the words out. “Where is she? Pringle said there would be three of you. Two roosters and a hen. Two boars and a sow. Two dogs and a bitch. Where is the damned bitch?” His voice rose. “Is she spying on me? Have you sent her to find my secrets?”
    Clare clutched Julia’s hand and looked at her, eyes huge in the candlelight.
    “I told you so,” Julia mouthed.
    “But he is unspeakable, Julia. Unspeakable.” Clare’s whisper was urgent. “We must get you away.”
    Julia pressed her friend’s hand as they both turned back to their peepholes.
    “If you had friends,” Nick was saying, his voice as calm as the earl’s was loud, “I would ask you to name your seconds. No one speaks of my sister in that fashion. However, since you have no friends, and since you are clearly ignorant of the dignities and responsibilities that come with your new title, I shall merely request that you alter your tone with me, sir.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “I await your apology.”
    Eamon stood goggling at him, his mouth forming soundless words.
    “This man.” The Russian gestured at Eamon with a disgusted flick of the wrist. “He is a snorting wild boar. In Russia, we kill this animal like vermin, and yet here he stands, an earl.”
    “He has been an earl for but a few weeks, Count Lebedev,” Nick said, speaking to his friend as if Eamon were nothing more than an interesting exhibit, and not a living man growing more enraged with every passing second. “You see, he was never intended to inherit. The old earl lost his son, and this cousin crawled out from under a rock somewhere. We must endure him.”
    It was then that all hell broke loose. Eamon reached up to the mantelpiece and grabbed a china statuette of Shakespeare leaning contemplatively against a tree, and he smashed it against a nearby table. He brandished the base of the figure, which now sprouted two graceful legs and a stump, all ending in razor-sharp edges. “Leave my house!” the earl screamed, charging at them with his weapon.
    Clare gasped, and Julia acted without thinking. She began to stall time, focusing all her powers of concentration out through that tiny peephole and down onto the gentlemen below. But almost immediately she felt something, someone, fighting her. Eamon! He must have divined that she was the Talisman, must have found a way to