The River of No Return

Julia. The men are ridiculous and the women are worse, but . . .” She cut her eyes sideways at her friend, one black eyebrow winging up. “There are some good apples in among the bad.”
    Julia glittered with intrigue. “Have you discovered any particularly good apples?”
    “It depends on whether you prefer them tart or sweet.”
    Julia thought of Blackdown striding angrily up the hill in the rain. “I think it’s possible to find an apple that is both tart and sweet,” she said.
    “Oh.” Bella’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she laughed—much like her brother’s. “It sounds like perhaps you have come across just such an excellent fruit. I must hear all about him.”
    Julia pressed her lips together. She didn’t like to think of Blackdown’s rainy kisses, not since that scene in the Blue Drawing Room.
    “Ah.” Bella nodded. “And Julia becomes a clam.”
    They were rounding the north corner of Berkeley Square, which meant they passed the Falcotts’ London town house. Bella raised her hand and waved, though Julia could see no one—the windows reflected back the trees and the sky. Then she saw a pale hand rise to the glass of a second-story window. “Is that your mother?”
    “Yes. She watches all day when I am out without her, simply waiting for me. Now that Nick is back, she is ten times worse. You’d think she would have rallied with the news of his return. But instead she is even more tormented, because she fears losing him again. Last night she stayed up until three awaiting his return from his club.”
    “He was out until three?” Julia slowed her steps.
    Bella sighed. “I know. Aren’t you consumed with jealousy? Imagine such freedom! But in actual fact, he was out until even later—or should I say earlier? For it was only that Mother finally gave up and went to bed at three. She came along the hallway weeping, convinced he was dead again, and I had to gather her up and tuck her in like a child. I am surprised we did not wake you.”
    Julia hadn’t heard anything. She had lain awake late thinking over her own problems, only to fall into a dreamless sleep just before two. “Do you think the marquess came home at all last night?”
    Bella kicked a pebble with her silk slipper, and it skittled away into the grass. “Call him Nick, Julia, like you used to in the old days. It’s so dreary, hearing his title on your lips like he’s something special all of a sudden. Lord, I hope he stayed out all night. Imagine if you were a gentleman and you arrived home after three years. Not just any three years, but years when you didn’t even know who you were. Suddenly it turns out you are not a wandering, penniless soldier, but a great lord with a vast fortune. You discover that you have a town house in the heart of a throbbing metropolis, and everything you see is yours for the asking. Would you spend your first night at home at home, if you know what I mean?”
    Julia knew exactly what her friend meant, but she wasn’t going to commit to it yet. “I’m not sure.”
    “Peagoose.” Bella pinched the skin on the back of Julia’s hand. “Doesn’t blood run in here anymore? I mean that he must have gone out with all his old friends, wining and dining and wenching the night away. At breakfast he denied it. He said he’d been with the Duke of Kirklaw, catching up on old times. But I don’t believe him. Kirklaw is a terrible bore. Nick was carousing, I’ll wager you anything. Just imagine. The jollity, the gay abandon, the laughter and song. I wish I were a man or . . . or . . .” Bella subsided.
    “Or what?”
    “I don’t know. A woman who could do those things.”
    “A member of the demimonde?”
    “Well,” Bella said, “why not?” She tossed this shocking statement off lightly, half an eye on Julia. Julia smiled at her friend’s daring but was terribly distracted. She could not now rid herself of the image of Nicholas Falcott, his arm around a beautiful woman. The woman was spilling out of her clothes and kissing him, and he had a bottle of champagne raised high in his other fist. Was he that sort of man? A rake? He had been a bit of a roaring boy before he went to war. Bella clearly thought he still was.
    Rake, dandy, Corinthian . . . it didn’t really matter what kind of man Blackdown was. Now she knew something far more important about him, something awful. Blackdown was involved somehow in a much larger world of time manipulation than Julia had dreamed