The River of No Return

air. But this was all new to Julia, and her first taste of bergamot ice was a revelation. It was cold but creamy, sweet but tart. The exotic flavor and delicate perfume made the perfect complement to this upliftingly glorious day in London.
    It had been three weeks since Grandfather’s death, and a week since she had been her cousin’s prisoner. Now here she was in London for the first time in her life. Bella, her oldest and best crony, was beside her, and they were seated at the very center of a world designed to delight the senses, eating the most delectable sweetmeats ever concocted by human hand. Julia was dressed in the highest kick of fashion—albeit all in black. The beautiful mourning clothes were a gift of the dowager marchioness. Upon receiving the news that her son was alive and that he planned to bring Julia to London along with his sister and a Russian nobleman, she had arranged for Julia to have a black walking dress, a black carriage dress, and a black evening gown ready and waiting.
    Julia took another spoonful, sat back in her chair, and gave herself over to pleasure. She banished all thought, except appreciation of the moment and relish of this most beautiful of beautiful spring days. The town houses around the square sparkled white in the sun. Brightly painted high-perch phaetons pulled by prime horseflesh dashed by on the way to Hyde Park. They were driven by gentlemen of the first stare and carried ladies dressed in all the colors of a spring garden. The oval park itself was full of mamas and nursemaids and scampering children, a few strolling couples, the dedicated patrons of Gunter’s, and of course, weaving through it all, the ever-nimble waiters, carrying aloft their silver trays of sugary iced confections. Julia sighed and wished it could go on forever—but the dancing shadows cast by the overarching plane trees made the scene feel like a flickering dream, and she had to eat her ice quickly or it would melt.
    Bella stuck out her tongue and flicked the last of her ice off her spoon. “What shall we do next?”
    “Surely licking your spoon is bad ton, Bella.” Julia eyed her own with temptation but set it back in her empty dish.
    “You are still afraid of London. I have learned that rules are made to be broken. Although you must pick and choose which ones to break, and when.”
    “Hmm. Which rules have you been breaking, pray tell?”
    “Nothing very serious.” Bella stood and brushed out her green cambric skirt. “Licking my spoon. Going alone to Vauxhall Gardens. Tying my garter in public.”
    “Be serious.”
    “How do you know I’m not being serious?” Bella held her hand out and pulled Julia to her feet. “Let us take a stroll around the square and I shall tell you all about it.”
    Bella was small, with black hair and hazel eyes. She looked nothing like Clare and Nick, who were both tall and fair. Luckily, there was an uncanny resemblance to a great-great-aunt on her father’s side. The dowager marchioness, always terrified of What Other People Might Think, had rescued the dour portrait of that otherwise forgotten ancestress from the attics and hung it prominently at Falcott House; nobody was going to accuse her of playing her husband false. Still, Bella’s family nickname was “Changeling.”
    She was a mercurial young woman, mostly full of fun, though sometimes a darker thread appeared in the bright fabric of her personality. A fervent Romanticist, Bella had committed whole swathes of Werther —in German, which she only partly understood—to memory. She could often be found painting by moonlight or sitting at the piano, plunking out the tune of a dreary lied with one finger and paging through her German wordbook with the other hand, discerning the meaning of the lyrics. Sometimes she was not to be found at all, for every now and then she took herself off for a long, solitary walk, preferably when the weather was threatening. She was firmly forbidden to wander off by herself in London, but as she now explained to Julia, it was a rule that was impossible to obey. “I have the wanderlust, you see,” she said, careful to pronounce the word correctly. “I just can’t help myself. Some days I wake up, and I must simply follow my own footsteps and see where they lead.”
    “You came here to find a husband, Bella. Not to explore the underbelly of London.”
    “I know.” Bella squeezed Julia’s arm to her side. “I shall. The Season is excessively entertaining,