The River of No Return

afraid I do not believe it, my priest. This very morning, I saw you heading toward Castle Dar. I saw the flash of a girl’s red cloak against the trees. She is yours already.”
    Nick got one punch in before Arkady was on him, tumbling him off his legs and pinning him back against the chair. “Ah, Nick,” he said, almost dreamily. “You are romantic. I like it in you. But you cannot hit me. Not me, your old friend.”
    “What makes you my friend, Arkady?” Nick’s face was so close to the Russian’s now that he could see his own face reflected in his pupils. “You expect me to die for a cause I know almost nothing about. You mock a woman I hold in great esteem. You make obscene suggestions about her to my face. Then you claim friendship with me?”
    Arkady’s eyes were sparkling with delight by the end of Nick’s speech. He leapt to his feet, hauling Nick up with him. “Yes! You are so impassioned. Almost like a Russian. There is no priest in you now. I embrace you.” He did so. “No man is a man until he is made weak by a woman.” Arkady pulled back and held Nick by the shoulders, gazing tenderly into his eyes. “Kiss me.”
    “I am not made weak by a woman, and I will not kiss you.”
    “Bah. You lie.” Arkady smashed his lips against Nick’s unresponding mouth. He pulled back, grinning. “You are a man. We will save her. Why? Because it is beautiful and romantic to do so. We will fight this maniac like the men we are—with our fists. Why? Because it is beautiful and romantic to do so.” Arkady released Nick and turned to face Darchester. “Are you ready? I am about to set him free. Prepare, Nicholas Davenant, to defend yourself!”
    Nick couldn’t help but laugh. “You are entirely insane!”
    The Russian turned a wild, joyous face back to him, and then the earl was upon them, howling, and slashing with the broken statuette. Arkady and Nick milled in with their fists. Nick saw Darchester’s spittle, mobile again, fly from his lips, and then felt his own coat, shirt, and skin sliced open just above the elbow. “Damn you to hell!” He charged, head bowed like a ram’s, fists pumping. Meanwhile Arkady stepped behind the earl and caught him as Nick knocked him backward. Darchester got one more slash in before Arkady grasped his wrist and squeezed until Darchester squealed like a pig and dropped his weapon. Nick laughed in Darchester’s enraged face, only to have his shin viciously kicked. “You little shit sack!” Nick yelled, and Darchester began laughing in his turn. Hauling his arm back, Nick delivered a perfect right cross to the earl’s jaw. Darchester’s head snapped back and he fell, senseless, to the ground. Nick rubbed his fist. “That felt wonderful,” he said. “I haven’t done that in centuries.”
    “Hush.” Arkady prodded the crumpled earl with a boot. “Time has started up again. You are the marquess. You know nothing of centuries.”
    And indeed, the room was suddenly full of cheering servants, and then Clare and Julia were there, too. Clare hugged Nick. He looked over her shoulder to find Julia’s dark eyes upon him. He had no idea what it was that he saw in them.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
    W hat do you think of this one?” Arabella Falcott held aloft a wicker hat that managed to be lushly feminine and disturbingly pagan at the same time. Its crown and brim were so sharply curved, and its trimming so abundantly floral, that it looked like a stag’s antlers protruding from a rosebush.
    Julia displayed her own choice. This was a parasol of such minuscule proportions that one would have to be a leprechaun to make any real use of it. But ultimately, after much argument, Bella’s wicker hat was acknowledged the winner. The game, which had been going on all morning up and down the stalls of the Western Exchange, was called “find the most ludicrous thing.” With the triumph of the wicker hat, Bella was now ahead by seven points. Julia laid the parasol down with a sigh. “I admit defeat. Your eye for the vulgar is far better developed than my own. Now I must stand you an ice at Gunter’s.”
    Bella crowed her triumph, and the young women turned away from the stall, much to the relief of the deeply insulted attendant.
    Half an hour later they were seated in Berkeley Square, watching a waiter dodge horses and pedestrians to bring them their ices. After several weeks in town, Bella was an old hand at all things Gunter’s, and she ate her rye-bread ice with a blasé