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

a long time,” she said, “though the war has aged you more, Brother.” She pursed her lips as she looked at him, in that funny way she had that he had forgotten. She handed him his cup, her eyes on the scar across his eyebrow. “It must have been terrible, the war. And terrible to lose your memory.”

“It was.”

Clare stirred sugar into her own tea. “We grieved for you. There is a monument in the churchyard in Stoke Canon.”

“It will have to come down.” Nick was surprised to hear the resolution in his voice. And of course it shouldn’t come down—he was only going to disappear all over again when this task was done, and break her heart once more.

“Yes, tomorrow.” Clare smiled. “We will smash it to pieces, you and I.”

“You can wear a chip of it in a locket, to remember how I conquered death.”

“Arrogant! As if I would carry it around like a fragment of the one true cross.”

“I don’t see why not.”

Clare’s smile became a grin. “Of course, Mother must be informed that you are returned.”

“I shall send for her in the morning.”

“Yes . . .” Clare appeared to consider it, but Nick knew his sister and could see she had already come up with a plan. “It would be a shame to ruin Bella’s Season, though, wouldn’t it?”

Nick shrugged.

“Well, it would, even if you don’t realize it, man that you are. If Mother knew you were here she would pack Bella up in the space of an hour and kill three teams of horses in her rush to get to you. Best to simply inform her that, by the time she is reading our letter, we are already on our way to her. It will take me a few days—maybe four—to ready the house and myself for a trip to London. Will Count Lebedev be disappointed to turn around and return to London so quickly?”

Nick straightened his cuffs. “Lebedev will do as he is told.”

“Oh, will he, my lord?”

“Yes, he will.”

She beamed at him over the edge of her cup. He had missed her, deep in his marrow. “Clare,” he said.

“Do I look older to you?” She said it lightly, but he knew it was an important question. She was twenty-nine years old. Back in the twenty-first century, that was still considered young. Here and now, she was well past her youth. Her beautiful hair was bundled up beneath a frilly white cap: His sister was a spinster.

“When did you put on caps?”

Clare took a delicate sip. “Last year.”

Nick was silent, not knowing what to say. Would his old self have been silent, too? Clare seemed to think so.

“I can see what you are thinking, Nick, and I assure you, I want to hear no words about it.”

He nodded. “As to whether or not you look older,” he said, “I always think of you as a kid, dragging me behind you into trouble.”

“A kid?”

“I’m sorry.” He had slipped up already. “A kid. It’s . . . it’s soldier’s cant for a child. I meant that I always see a young girl when I look at you.”

“That’s kind of you. But I know my age. And I no longer expect to be married.” She looked at him closely. “I can comfort myself that my little brother looks years older than I do.”

Nick knew that his face told its own story. He had been three years her junior when he went off to war. Now he was four years her senior.

“Your scar. How did you get it?”

“This?” He touched his eyebrow, the ramparts of Badajoz looming in his memory.

“Yes.”

“A taproom disagreement.”

Clare frowned but said nothing.

“I think you are beautiful,” he said, both to break the silence, and because it was true.

“Thank you. I suppose I should learn that when you ask for compliments, the compliments you receive always sound like false coin.”

“You never used to be this self-doubting.”

“Your death changed everything. We have not known how to be happy for three years.” Between one breath and the next Clare was crying.

Nick gathered his sister into his arms, pushing the wretched cap from her head and stroking her hair. “Hush,” he said. “Hush now.”

She gripped his shoulders and wept for a moment, then she pulled away and rearranged herself on her chair. With her face turned from him, she replaced her cap carefully back over her hair. “Oh, dear.” She wiped her eyes with her napkin. “I am sorry. It is such a shock.” She looked at him again, her eyes a little red. “Such a lovely, lovely shock to see you, Nick. I’m afraid I lost control.”

“I am glad you could show me your tears. It makes me feel . . .” He stopped, surprised to discover that the feeling was pride. It was in relation to the emotion that had surprised him a few moments ago, when Clare had been flirting with Arkady. Except that he wasn’t angry now.

“It makes you feel like you’re home again? To have your sister dissolve into tears like a ninny?”

Yes. It had to do with being home. He realized it now. These feelings had been waiting for him. Waiting here in this house, like ghosts. These were the emotions of that man he would have become, had he never jumped. He had left home so young and gone to the wars and then to the future. He had become someone else entirely. A modern man. Half an American. Yet here they were, that other man’s emotions, roiling inside him. The Marquess of Blackdown. A proud man. Inflexible. Competitive. Like his father.

Nick didn’t care much for his nineteenth-century self but he smiled into Clare’s eyes, even as he tamped the marquess down. “Yes. It makes me feel that I am home.”

“I am sorry to welcome you in such a fashion. I haven’t wept, oh, in years. Mother has been desolate without you. She lost all her vigor. She never entertains anymore, and it took all my ingenuity and Bella’s combined to get her to take our sister to London.”

“Why aren’t