The River of No Return, Bee Ridgway [unputdownable books txt] 📗

how I want it. I insist as your hostess that you return to your bed.”

“Don’t be a fool. No friend worth her salt would let you scamper off in your nightgown after a man. Your steward, Clare, for God’s sake! I’m getting my slippers and my wrap and I’m coming with you.”

“It is you who are being very foolish. . . .”

But Julia was already back in her room, awkwardly shoving her feet into slippers and scrambling into a wrap while trying to keep her upheld candle from lighting her hair on fire. When she came back out into the hall she was relieved to see that Clare was waiting, her face a picture of frustration. “You are a pest, Julia Percy.”

“Good. You clearly need one.”

Clare stalked away down the hall like an angry lioness and Julia followed after, excitement beginning to buzz through her veins. Clare was having a clandestine affair with her steward. And Julia was saving her from her folly. It was like when the Countess of Wolfenbach—

Julia stopped walking. This very afternoon she had been half undressed in Blackdown’s arms, and happier than she had ever been in her life.

Full nakedness. All joys are due to thee.

“Clare . . .”

Her friend turned.

“Perhaps it is better that I leave you alone?”

“I wish you would.”

Julia nodded, once. “I shall, then.” She turned on her heel.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, you ninny!” Clare grabbed Julia by the arm. “Come along. Better you accompany me than that you go back to your bed imagining that I am down in the kitchens among the onions, locked in an embrace with Mr. Jemison.”

“Well, wouldn’t you be?”

Clare pulled Julia along the corridor, so quickly that Julia’s candle guttered out. “I know it is impossible for you to imagine, my dear, but men and women can make more together than babies. I am going downstairs in the dead of night to talk to Mr. Jemison about an impending riot.”

“A riot!”

But Clare said nothing more as they descended the stairs, and soon enough she pushed open the door to the basement kitchens. Mr. Jemison was standing there eating an apple, his lantern and his leather satchel on the stocky kitchen table beside him.

He swallowed hurriedly when he saw Julia.

“I couldn’t stop her,” Clare said, setting her candle next to his lantern on the big kitchen table. “She insisted on protecting me from you. She will keep our confidence, though, will you not, Julia?” It was an order, not a question.

“Yes, of course.”

Julia found herself the subject of Jem Jemison’s consideration, and it was disconcerting. His eyes were as dark as her own, and they scanned her slowly, critically. Finally he sighed. “What’s done can’t be undone,” he said, and bowed. “Miss Percy.”

Julia inclined her head. “Mr. Jemison,” she said.

“Let me help you with that,” Clare said, and Julia watched with some shock as a lady eased a steward out of his coat and hung it over a chair.

Free of his heavy coat, Jemison looked even thinner than before; Julia wondered if he ate only apples. “I brought you the latest,” he said to Clare, opening his satchel and removing a mismatched stack of papers. He held them in his long, narrow hands for a moment and smiled at Julia, including her. “Have you heard of the Corn Bill, Miss Percy?”

“We talked of it only this evening, over dinner.”

“Did you? With Lord Blackdown in attendance?” He glanced at Clare. “I must hear about that. But meanwhile . . .” He divided the pile of papers in half and handed a sheaf to each of them. “You’ll see that things are heating up as the vote draws nigh.”

“When is the vote?”

“It could be any day now. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps next week. It depends upon when all the lords are finished giving their speeches.”

Clare rolled her eyes and began flipping through her stack of papers, scanning them quickly and laying them on the table as she was finished. Julia glanced at her stack. It was a collection of broadsides and sheets from a newspaper called The Political Register. The top one was a broadside with verses printed on it, entitled “British Freedom.”

Clare looked up. “I can see, just from a glance,” she said. “There will certainly be a riot when the bill passes. Listen to this: ‘Bread! Bread’s our right!—Bread’s our need! Like air and water—ours as yet! Bread! Bread! We must—we will have bread!’”

“The tide is turning,” Jemison said.

“What have you got there?” Clare looked over Julia’s shoulder.

“‘And free we’re born,’” Julia read aloud, “‘to sow the corn, and free, when ripe, to reap it. And when we do, the ruling few, are free to come and eat it!’”

Jemison laughed. He had propped his narrow behind on the table and now he leaned at his ease in this kitchen that wasn’t his own. “I hadn’t seen that one. May I?” She let him have it and he read it over, chuckling to himself and eating his apple.

“But the bill might not pass,” Julia said. “Surely if it’s so wrong . . .”

“Oh, it will pass,” Clare said. “No doubt about it.”

Jemison glanced up. “What is ironic is that if we still had an estate to work with, the Corn Bill would have helped our little dream, Clare.”

Ah. So he called her Clare when his guard was down. “What dream?” Julia asked it softly.

Clare shrugged. “A small-scale one. Jemison and I were going to turn Blackdown into a model farm. Soldiers and sailors returning from the war with nowhere to go—a new system of cooperative farm management that would slowly do away with tenancy and put the land in the hands of those who work it. But it was just wishes and horses. And who knows? The Corn Bill might have helped, Jem, but it also might well have squashed our plan. So many things might have squashed it.” She reached out and touched the round haunch of an apple in the bowl. “So many things did squash it. Best perhaps that it didn’t happen.”

“And now here we are in London,”