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

one that opened onto the back staircase! She raced to it, glancing once over her shoulder, then opened it as quickly and quietly as she could and slipped inside, closing it behind her. She whirled around, then crouched, eye to the keyhole.

It was the Russian, back from Devon. He was searching for her. He must already know that she was the Talisman. He was coming for her.

He was trying doors. They were locked—but in a second he would see that the drawing room door was open and that the Falcott sisters stood like waxworks at the windows, Clare’s fingers curled to grasp a hand that was no longer there.

And there was no key in the lock to the staircase door.

Julia stood up, took a deep breath, and began descending the stairs as quickly and silently as possible. She had no coat, no hat, no money—but she knew she must flee this house. Disappear. Her heart was pounding in her throat and she felt as if she might be sick. Pretend. You shall be Ofan after all. Pretend.

Reaching the floor below, she allowed herself to speed up, and by the time she reached the basement she was flying down the stairs. She wrenched open the door to the stables and saw four horses still hitched to a mud-spattered carriage. The horses were steaming, their mouths frothy, their backs black with sweat. The Russian must have driven them to within an inch of their lives. Julia squeezed past the horses and the shocked grooms. “Please. Don’t tell him you saw me!” She darted out of the stable door, down the mews, and toward the river of men and women streaming into the square. She ducked into the crowd and let it carry her along.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The crowd was waiting for the lords outside the Houses of Parliament. Nick, who was in the center of the pack of blustering aristocrats, watched as those who went before him were accosted. “How did you vote, m’lord?” Refusal to answer or the wrong answer was met with boos and hisses, but the lords were allowed to pass through the gauntlet of disapproval unharmed. Then the Duke of Kirklaw made the mistake of answering angrily: “I voted for the Corn Laws and you are a pack of savages!” The crowd simply picked the duke up and passed him hand to hand over the mob. In his black and gray and white clothing, with his outraged mouth open and shouting, the duke looked like nothing so much as a mackerel, flip-flopping on the top of a heaving pile of fish. He was dumped in a mound of horseshit in the street and had to pick himself up. There was a moment of silence, and then there sailed over the heads of the multitude a great, broad laugh, issuing from the mouth of an enormous innkeeper who towered above everyone, his apron stretched across his chest like a flag. Other laughs made a chord with his, and the contagion was spreading among the crowd; then, all at once, it seized upon Nick, and he sent forth a shout of laughter that echoed through the street. He looked around him and saw that the lords themselves were having difficulty containing their mirth, and even the moon, rising in the still-light evening sky, was tilted at a jocular angle.

When it was Nick’s turn to answer for himself, he said, “I voted against the bill.” His answer was met with a cheer and he was passed through the press of bodies as quickly and as lightly as a hot potato. When he tumbled out on the other side, his clothes disheveled and his hat missing, he cut left off Whitehall into smaller streets and made his way up toward Pall Mall. There were chalk drawings of Castlereagh and Robinson hung in effigy all over the blank walls, and pictures of Robinson’s head on a platter; he recalled that Robinson, the man who had introduced the Corn Bill into Parliament, lived in Berkeley Square, and he stepped out more quickly. But he found another arm of the crowd again in Pall Mall. These men and women weren’t happy; they were streaming away from Mayfair, their faces gray.

“What happened?” Nick asked an old man.

“Two dead in Berkeley Square,” he said, eyeing Nick’s rumpled but fine attire. “You a nob?”

“Yes, but I voted against the bill. Who is dead? Please, tell me what happened.”

“A young man and a widow woman. Shot by those damned tin soldiers from John Robinson’s parlor windows.”

“A woman?”

The man stared at him, the crowd pouring past them. “You voted against the bill you say? And I suppose you think that makes you a hero. Well, answer me this: What if you knew her, and found her dead on the ground?” He turned and began to walk away.

“Wait!” Nick grabbed his arm. “I—”

The man jerked his hand away. “Oh, no, my fine lord. There is nothing you can say. Two lie dead in Berkeley Square, and the only good that can come of it is that the tide will turn now against you and your kind. Now scuttle off home to your wife and children. They are probably cowering like frighened mice under your mahogany dining table.”

Nick pushed, in an agony of fear, against the tide of humanity. When Berkeley Square finally came into view he could see that his house was untouched. The square was almost entirely empty now. The iron paling around Robinson’s house was bent and broken, and pales were scattered across his steps. The door hung open on its hinges and there was broken furniture in the street. A clutch of people stood beneath the parlor window, bending over two poor, huddled forms; Nick could see a woman’s arm extending from beneath the greatcoat that had been tossed over her.

Nick bowed his head. But the gesture of respect was empty; all he could think was, Thank God Julia is safe at home.

* * *

Smedley was waiting to receive his