The River of No Return

gallant soldier to his dear mama, the last she ever heard from him before he died for king and country. And the simple Spanish! How they adore us.”
    “Glorious times,” Blessing said. “Rule Britannia!” He raised his glass.
    “Glorious,” Delbun agreed.
    They drank.
    “And you were there, in the midst of it all, Blackdown,” Kirklaw said, tossing the paper aside. “Why, when you think of it, when we were lads, the army was no place for a nobleman. What did Wellington call the soldiery?”
    “The scum of the earth,” Nick said.
    “Indeed. The scum of the earth. What a thing to say!” Delbun downed his brandy in a single swallow, coughed, and set his balloon aside. Then he sat down. “When you hared off to join up, I must admit it—I thought you were crazy.”
    “We all did,” Blessing said, also sitting.
    “You weren’t entirely wrong.” Nick disposed himself in a straight-backed chair.
    “Maybe so,” Delbun said. “But what I wouldn’t give to be in your shoes now that the war is over. The country’s gone army-mad. Heroes everywhere you turn. Falling from the rafters like spiders. Women can’t get enough of them.”
    “My God, the women.” Kirklaw remained on his feet. “They are denatured by army fever. Why, my own sister, the other day, read out loud to me from her Belle Assemblée— and was she reading to me of fashion? Or gossip? Or cucumber treatments? Would you believe, she lisped whole sentences about the disinterested patriotism of Great Britain in flying to the aid of Spain. Not to say she’s a bluestocking. Pretty girl, my sister. Do you know she is eighteen this year?”
    “Please.” Nick raised his hand. “I am only just returned. I am not yet thinking of marriage.”
    “And I wasn’t offering.” Kirklaw’s glance was hard and bright. “Your own sister, the little Lady Arabella—she is hawking her wares to good effect this Season.”
    “Good effect,” Blessing said. “Fetching girl.”
    “She’s hardly a girl.” Kirklaw’s expression slid toward the cruel. “Somewhat overripe, I’d say. Now, now—don’t take offense. I meant no offense. I’ve cut a caper or two with her at Almack’s.”
    “Oh, you have, have you?”
    “And I’m still not offering!” The duke laughed and fished an evil-looking device from his pocket. “There’s another sister, isn’t there, Blackdown.” He snipped the end off his cigar. “Not your marriageable sister, no. Your spinster sister. What is her name? The Lady . . .”
    “Clare.” Nick knew Kirklaw knew her name full well. He narrowed his eyes. Somehow, through this talk of sisters, they were coming to the point. “Her name is Clare.”
    “Lady Clare.” The duke lit his cigar from a candle with a series of minuscule, moist little puffs. “Lady Clare, Lady Clare, Lady Clare.” His face disappeared behind a cloud of smoke, and when it emerged the expression hovered between disapproval and disgust. “I suppose she told you of her mad plan.”
    Ah. Nick glanced at Blessing and Delbun. They sat tightly in their seats, and they were right to be anxious. The talk was bumping up against slander. “Yes. I know of it,” Nick said carefully. “It has come to nothing, however. I am returned.”
    “Of course, of course.” The duke pinched at the wet end of his cigar with a stained thumb and forefinger. Then he popped the cigar back in his mouth and visibly chewed on it. Nick looked away.
    “You disapprove of her plans, then,” Delbun asked. “Just want to make sure of that.”
    Nick frowned. “I fail to understand how it is any business of yours.”
    Delbun looked to Kirklaw for backup. The duke disappeared into another cloud of smoke. His smile appeared first, like the Cheshire-Cat’s. “What Delbun means is that we are glad you are returned and Blackdown is saved. There are so few of us left, after all. All the king’s newly created titles swell our ranks, of course, but meanwhile the real aristocracy is dwindling away.”
    “Dwindling,” Blessing said.
    “Why, when I heard what was in train for Blackdown, I almost offered for Lady Clare myself. With my influence your title could have been brought out of abeyance for our second son, perhaps, and the entail reestablished.” Kirklaw gazed down on Nick, clearly waiting to be thanked.
    The crystal curve of Nick’s brandy balloon rested lightly on his fingertips, its perfect, fragile arc catching the light. He remembered the intensity of Clare’s