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

that he was about to make. He hadn’t cared much for the blustery old earl, and Julia, at twenty-two, would certainly be married and gone. But still. It was easier to think of visiting Castle Dar than Falcott House. Which did still exist, and which he would soon be facing. The thought made him feel slightly sick.

“We are here,” Arkady said, slowing and turning the car. Nick kept his eyes closed, feeling the tarmac unroll beneath the car wheels. This must be the long drive up to the house. He pictured it in his mind, the beeches his grandfather had planted, the sweeping lawn dotted with sheep, the windows reflecting back the afternoon sun. . . .

“Stop it.” Arkady slapped Nick’s thigh. “Do you want to pull us back out of a moving car?”

“What?” Nick opened his eyes. There it all was. Falcott House, its Palladian symmetry unmarred, its graceful marble dome glowing almost pink in the afternoon light. The trees much bigger, the lawn sheepless, but otherwise . . . “Stop the car.”

Arkady pulled over. Nick opened the door, leaned out, and vomited his pub lunch onto his ancestral land.

“Nice,” Arkady said. “Classy.”

Nick straightened up and closed the car door, took the handkerchief Arkady held out, and wiped his mouth. He waved his hand in a lordly fashion. “Drive on.”

* * *

Arkady parked the MG and together they walked up the broad steps leading to the grand entranceway. A gray-haired woman of about seventy opened the door before they could ring the bell. “You must be Mr. Davenant and Mr. Altukhov. I’m Caroline. I have your keys here, but I’m off duty in half an hour, so if you want a tour of the house you’ll need to come with me now.”

“We will take tour,” Arkady said, at exactly the same moment that Nick said, “No thank you, we don’t need a tour.”

Caroline looked back and forth between the two men. “Well, which is it? Tour or no tour?”

“Tour,” Arkady said, his voice implacable.

Nick sighed.

“The tour isn’t so bad,” Caroline said to him. “It will only be the two of you. Interest in the Second World War is declining, I’m afraid.”

The Second World War? But Nick breathed a sigh of relief when Caroline ushered them into the grand hallway. The graceful staircase remained but thankfully looked unlike itself, since it was flanked by glass cases filled with war memorabilia. Caroline began talking with exaggerated animation about the role the house had played as a nerve center of intelligence during the hostilities, and when she opened the tall doors that led to the formal rooms, Nick relaxed. The walls and moldings were all painted a sickly mint, in the thick, industrial paint common to the 1940s, and the rooms were laid out with a series of exhibits about spy activity, local involvement in the war effort, and the like.

Arkady and Nick listened politely as Caroline told of Churchill’s visit in 1942, of the time a German parachutist landed nearby and tried to burn the house but was caught and kept prisoner in the cellars, and of the annual reunions of the men and women who had worked there across those years, sadly dwindling in number now. Arkady asked a question or two about the neighboring Castle Dar: Had it been torn down before the war, or had the government used it, too? Nick couldn’t have cared less about the answers, and soon their voices were washing over him like so much meaningless chatter.

It was the rooms themselves that Nick was listening to now. They were whispering to him. Their proportions, the quality of the light, the intricately carved moldings, still beautiful beneath their layers of nasty paint, all begged him to recognize that he was home. While Caroline talked about how Castle Dar was pulled down for its stone and fittings in 1955, he looked over at the marble mantelpiece. One corner was still ever so slightly chipped from that time he played with his catapult indoors. He closed his eyes and felt the blood rushing to his head. Then a sharp pain as Arkady slowly and deliberately stepped on his foot. His eyes flew open. Caroline was talking about the techniques the government used to recruit spies. Nick stood on one foot and listened intently.

Caroline told them that, in the upstairs rooms, the National Trust had honored the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history of the house, and even had a few objects that had been in the Falcott family at that time. “I don’t know if I can do this,” Nick whispered as they began to mount the stairs.

“You can.” Arkady put his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “You must accustom yourself.”

Nick let his hand trail along the banister as they mounted the stairs. At the top, beneath the dome painted with glowing clouds and pouting cherubim, was a glorious Palladian window, the centerpiece of the house’s whole design. Nick knew it showcased a view of Blackdown’s famous gardens sweeping down to the banks of the river Culm. Except that when he looked out, there were no gardens. The intricate series of interconnected beds had been cleared, and now there was a broad lawn that stretched unbroken right down to the river. In the exact middle of the lawn, his father’s Grecian folly, once overgrown with roses, stood out like a lonely tooth. But it had always stood off to the right. Whoever heard of sticking a folly in the dead center of a view?

Caroline came up behind him. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Were . . .” Nick cleared his throat. “Were there gardens?”

“Oh, yes. Glorious gardens. But after the death of the last marchioness they went to wrack and ruin. When the house was requisitioned during the war, they plowed them under. Too easy a target for bombers, you see. And they painted camouflage on the roof. It’s still a little hard to find the house from the air,” she said proudly.

“I . . . see. Was the folly always there? I mean, was it always in that spot?”

“You are a garden buff! No,