The River of No Return

dedication to her dream, and the grace with which she had yielded it when Nick returned. The seconds ticked by.
    “It was the least I could do,” the duke finally said, as if Nick had thanked him. “Not that I did do it. I seem to be almost offering for both your superannuated sisters tonight! But you understand me, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    “Now.” Kirklaw leaned his elbows on the back of Delbun’s overstuffed chair. “Lady Clare owed her scheme to the interventions of a new steward, or so I heard. A man by the name of . . .” Kirklaw snapped his fingers, pretending to search his memory.
    “Jem Jemison.”
    “Yes, that’s it. This Jem Jemison.”
    “Not a married man, I take it,” Blessing said.
    Nick turned his head slowly and stared at the baron, until he saw a flush of red climb up from his collar.
    “Now, Blackdown,” Kirklaw said. “Blessing isn’t suggesting . . .”
    “Isn’t suggesting what?”
    “Isn’t suggesting anything,” Blessing said.
    “Yet,” Delbun said.
    And there it was. The threat. Out in the open, like a hart breaking cover. Except that a hart is beautiful. “I’ve forgotten,” Nick said. “Is this what we do, we lords of the realm? Do we spend all of our time slandering females?”
    “Blackdown . . .” Kirklaw’s tone was a warning.
    “When I left,” Nick interrupted, swirling his brandy in his glass, “we were all young men.”
    “Rakehells,” Blessing said, a little bashful.
    “Yes,” Nick said. “Such larks. We never spared a thought for sisters, or stewards, or whether or not stewards were married.”
    “We were young,” Delbun said.
    Nick sipped his brandy and let the burn spread across his tongue before speaking again. “I left Great Britain in 1810. Five long years ago. Like Odysseus, I sacked Troy. Like Odysseus, it was a long and strange journey that brought me home again.”
    “Well now, Blackdown, that’s a romantical way of thinking,” Blessing said. “You were only in Spain.”
    Nick continued. “And like Odysseus, I have returned to find that the reputations of the women in my household are in danger. I find that you have called me here neither to welcome me nor to reestablish our old conviviality. Instead, you are panting with concern over my sister’s choices, and my sister’s virtue, a sister you would disdain, yourselves, to marry.” The three men stared at him. They had each of them become repellent, in ways that had nothing to do with the composition of their features. Nick suspected that had he stayed with them instead of going to war, he would have hardened into just such an anxious ugliness. “I would be grateful if you would stop amusing yourself with my sisters’ good names and come to the point.”
    “Would you? Would you indeed?” Kirklaw frowned, got the cigar out of his mouth, and worried at its wet, frayed end with his fingers. “All right then, here it is without roundaboutation. The point is this. Jem Jemison. He’s come to London, now that you have put paid to his plans for Blackdown. He’s here, and he’s making a damned nuisance of himself. Rabble-rousing in Soho and the East End. Drumming up opposition to the Corn Bill.”
    “So? What does that have to do with me? Or with Clare?”
    All three men laughed. “Everything!” Blessing said. “Your name is linked with his! This scheme of your sister’s; people want to know if you are turning against the politics of your fathers. They want to know if you support her, if you stand against the aristocracy, against everything we represent!”
    “They doubt me? The men below seemed to have no anxiety on that front.”
    “They don’t doubt you yet,” Kirklaw said. “But they could well come to doubt you. You are in a precarious position, Blackdown.”
    “Ah.” Nick smiled. “Yes. I forgot. You brought me here to threaten me.”
    “We are not threatening you; the future itself is threatening you! Have you not been reading the papers? The Corn Bill is going to save your sorry hide. Now that the war is over, it’s the only thing that can keep prices high.”
    “I’ve been in Spain, you may recall. Saving your own sorry hide.”
    “Oh, spare me, please.” Kirklaw thrust his ruined cigar back between his teeth and spoke around it. “You went to Spain to escape your responsibilities. Don’t play the great hero with us. While you were marching about like a toy soldier, we grew up. We shouldered our responsibilities. We sat on our