The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (mobi ebook reader .txt) 📗

She held up her frame for Julia to see. “Apollo’s hand is all skewed.”

“Oh, who cares!” Bella snatched the frame away from her sister and tossed it, thread flying, onto an empty chair. “Did you hear me? Nick has brought home a dog. Move over.” Bella squeezed her small form in between Clare and Julia, and put her arms around their shoulders. “Is it not lovely all being together?”

“Except that it’s like you’re eleven years old again.” Clare crossed her arms, refusing to be comfortable.

“Her name is Solvig,” Bella said, ignoring her sister. “She is enormous. I shall be able to go anywhere with her by my side. Wait until you meet her.” Bella popped up as precipitously as she had wedged herself between them and left the room again, calling Nick’s name.

Julia’s hand shook as she got up and fetched Clare’s embroidery. He was home.

“Are you well?”

“Yes.” Julia clutched the embroidery frame. Only a few days ago she had been able to stand up to Eamon’s depravity, even turn back time to keep him from killing her. Now, surrounded by friends and in the lap of luxury, she was entirely off balance, vacillating between fear and joy and absurdly missish confusion.

“Come, sit.”

Julia sat and Clare took the embroidery frame from her. She stroked Julia’s hand as she did so. “Everything is going to be fine,” she said, as if she could read Julia’s mind.

Julia said nothing, only watched as Clare untangled her threads.

“I am a spinster, an ape leader,” Clare said after a moment. “Do you know what that means?”

“That you are unmarried.”

“Yes, but ape leader. What does that delightful term mean?”

“Oh, Clare.”

“No, Julia. Say it.” She looked up from her embroidery. “Say it to my face.”

“Because you have failed to marry and have children, your damnation is to lead the apes in hell.”

“Right.” Clare sat back against the cushions. “Do you know, it’s rather shocking to hear it spoken straight out like that.”

“You made me!”

“Yes, I did. Do you really think that will happen to me?”

“No, of course not. Of course not, Clare, you mooncalf.”

Clare straightened her cap on her head. “I know I’m neither going to hell nor organizing monkey parades while I’m there. I don’t even believe in hell.”

“You don’t?”

“No. Do you?”

“I . . . I . . .” Julia realized she had never thought about it. “Yes, I think I do.”

“Oh,” said Clare. “How strange. I always felt, you know, that hell was a story made up to frighten us into doing what they want us to do.”

“You sound like my grandfather.”

“I shall take that as a compliment, I suppose. But my point, Julia, is this. They hold whips over our heads to make us be good and do what they want. Many of the whips are imaginary. Or at least I believe them so. Hell, for instance, and apes. Other whips are very real. Poverty. Hatred. Loneliness.” Clare smoothed her hand over her deformed Apollo. “I am lucky. I have an income, friends and family, and a roof over my head. Do you know what that means to me?”

“Happiness?”

Clare looked at Julia, and it wasn’t happiness Julia saw in her face. But Clare smiled and said, “Yes, exactly. Happiness. And just an inch of freedom. But you are an orphan, Julia. And you do not come into your inheritance for three years.”

Julia blinked. Recently other problems had overwhelmed these everyday sorrows. But her old troubles remained, waiting for her, as a cough outlasts a fever.

“I want you to know you may live with us for as long as you like,” Clare said, arranging herself to sew again. “Do not rush into a marriage simply to be rid of us, or to rid us of you.”

“Thank you,” Julia managed to say.

Clare touched her cheek with a thimbled finger. “To be honest, Julia, I am not especially fearful for you. You have always had a good head on your shoulders.”

Julia laughed. “Thank you! I have not had much occasion to use it, locked up at Castle Dar.”

“No, no,” Clare said. “In my opinion, anyone who manages to survive beyond the age of eighteen with their character intact should be hailed as a hero. Such a person must have the courage of Jason and the strength of Hercules! Most of us do not make it, you know. We emerge on the other side of childhood as specters, not as real people.” She turned and looked at the enormous portrait of the Falcott family that dominated one wall of the room.

Julia contemplated the painting, too. She usually avoided looking at it, for she did not like what the artist had done with any of the subjects. Bella and Clare were all hair and flowers, and the seventh marquess looked like a kindly, if dreary, vicar, when in fact the man had been a self-congratulatory bore who never took notice of anyone but himself. The dowager marchioness was painted to look like a long-suffering angel, which must have flattered her opinion of herself. But the worst part of the painting was the youthful Nicholas, who, as the new marquess, was the center around which all the movement of the painting swirled. The artist had made him far shinier—hair golden, eyes blue—than he really was, but it wasn’t that which repelled her. It was the way the painted youth leaned forward, grasping at attention, his too-pink lip curled in smug self-congratulation. That was not, had never been, Blackdown. Or perhaps it was Blackdown, but it had never been Nick.

Julia glanced at Clare and saw that she, too, was unimpressed. “My mother loves this painting,” she said.

“I was just thinking that it must be a comfort to her,” Julia said.

Clare rolled her eyes. “Please. Be honest. It represents the family she wishes were her own. Her dead husband appears to worship her, her daughters are beautiful ninnies, and her son is a smug Adonis. Not a single one of us looks like ourselves, nor appears to have any character at all. Each of those painted people looks