My Dearest Enemy

by Connie Brockway

  “Drummond’s allure is rather elusive,” she said with that throaty chuckle.

  His own smile widened. She leaned forward, as though to say something more. He tossed his cigar away and sat up to hear her better. Her lips still held the shadow of her smile. Her expression was genial and unguarded. A wisp of raven hair that had escaped captivity danced across her smooth brow.

  With the slightest effort he could bridge the distance between them, curl his fingers around her slender throat, and pull her mouth down to his and—

  What the hell was he thinking? Abruptly he recognized the silence surrounding them. He looked around. All eyes were turned in their direction. Expectancy vibrated in the air. Lily, shaking her head like a swimmer coming up from too long underwater, sank back against the tree.

  Evelyn sighed, Francesca closed her eyes with an air of disgust, Polly Makepeace snorted, and Bernard divided anxious glances amongst them all.

  Avery’s instincts were clamoring again. Something was going on. Well, he had a few plans of his own. “Drummond’s probably the last person still here who worked on the estate when I was a boy. I wonder if he remembers me.” He paused. “Mind if I tag along after you tomorrow?”

  Lily eyed him warily. “You’d be bored.”

  “That’s right. She does have an estate to run, you know,” Polly said with grudging pride. “She can’t play hostess all the time. Besides, I’m sure you wouldn’t understand half of what they’ll be discussing.”

  “I’m confident I would cull the essentials from their discussion,” he replied with forced calm. The truth was he knew next to nothing about farming. The realization that Polly Makepeace did was irksome in the extreme.

  “You’d be better off visiting this man later when they have finished their business,” Polly went on in that off-putting tone. “Then you and this Drummond can reminisce about rabbits to your heart’s content. No need to interfere with important work. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Thorne?”

  Evelyn gulped and nodded.

  Stonily, Avery regarded Polly Makepeace. Now she’d crossed the line from advising to patronizing—which was intolerable.

  Evelyn took a deep breath. “If you’re bored, Mr. Thorne, perhaps Mrs. Kettle will pack you a nice lunch. You could eat by the river. Perhaps even fish. I’m sure Bernard would be happy to help you dig worms in the morning.” She finished her little speech in a breathless rush and slumped down in her chair as if near fainting.

  “Ah.” Bernard’s head snapped back and forth between his mother and Polly Makepeace. “Of course. My pleasure.”

  Fishing. Picnics. Digging for worms. They even thought they’d found the useless male a playmate in old Drummond. Next they’d be suggesting a rousing game of badminton so he’d sleep well tonight.

  “That’s settled then,” Lily said, clapping her hands together and rummaging into one of the oversized wicker baskets. “Now, how about a nice game of badminton?”

  Francesca shrugged. Bernard nodded eagerly. Even Evelyn’s wan face lit up as she rose to her feet.

  “No.”

  The women, in the process of handing out rackets, stopped and blinked at him.

  “It’s quite an enjoyable game, Mr. Thorne,” Polly said. “You shouldn’t have any trouble learning the rules.”

  He struggled to keep his voice level. “I meant ‘no’ it’s not settled. Not ‘no’ to your game.”

  “What’s not settled?” Lily asked.

  “Whether or not I accompany you to Drummond’s office tomorrow. Unless there is something you specifically wish me not to know, I see no reason why I shouldn’t go along with you.”

  Lily drew a hissing breath. “Are you suggesting I—”

  “I’m suggesting that there is no reason at all why I shouldn’t hear what you and Drummond discuss. I already have plans to leave for London the following day.”

  “Oh? Why?” she asked.

  “To order some”—he glanced down—“clothes.” Triumphantly he indicated where his shirt stretched tightly across his chest. “Unless you object?”

  Point to him. Lily regarded him with an unreadable expression. Rather like a desert rat held in the mesmerizing sway of a cobra, though the reason why she should suddenly look so threatened eluded him.

  “No,” she said in an odd, stilted voice, “no objections. Suit yourself.”

  Francesca, who’d been uncharacteristically silent during the entire exchange, laughed. “I may have to foreswear the Derby entirely this year. The entertainment at Mill House promises to be far more diverting.”

  “Yoo-hoo!” A girlish voice trumpeted from somewhere between them and the house. A second later Teresa, the most pregnant of Mill House’s three maids, trudged into view. Spying them, she stopped dead, clutched her chest, and fell over flat on her back, stiff legs poking dramatically above the grass before dropping out of sight.

  “My God!” Bernard exclaimed. Before Avery could act, Bernard took off across the field, his long legs and flapping coat conspiring to give him the appearance of a giant stork attacking a mollusk.

  “Oh, my,” Evelyn murmured.

  Without a word, Avery headed for where he could see Bernard attempting to hoist Teresa. It didn’t look to be going too well. Bernard had Teresa under her knees and around her shoulders. If she hadn’t been swollen like an October pumpkin she would have folded in the middle. As it was, she looked like a fat octopus perched on a piece of coral. Legs and arms wheeled madly as the boy struggled to carry her.

  Avery tapped the struggling Bernard on the shoulder. The boy’s head swung around. “I’m … fine … sir.”

  “No, he ain’t,” complained Teresa, apparently quite conscious. “He’s gonna drop me!”

  “Maybe I should carry—” Avery started to say, but the wounded expression on Bernard’s face stopped him.

  Teresa, however, was not quite so sensitive to Bernard’s role as her knight-errant. “Yes, sir,” she said eagerly. “I think you should. Wouldn’t do to injure the poor boy’s back now, would it? Not when a strapping fellow like you could carry poor wee me without raising a sweat.”

  “Hmm,” Avery said. Sweat was indeed beading up on Bernard’s forehead, and his breathing had developed a familiar rattling quality. Much more of his present exertion and Bernard would succumb to a full-blown attack. And yet, Avery all too well remembered the humiliation of being physically inadequate. Of feeling ineffectual, powerless … less than a man.

  “Perhaps she might proceed under her own power?” Lily suggested.

  He hadn’t heard her approach. She stood very tall, eyes as piercing as a member of the Spanish Inquisition about to begin an examination. Behind her came Francesca, Evelyn, and Polly Makepeace being shoved along by a grumbling Hobs.

  Teresa smiled weakly. “I swear I don’t know what come over me, Miss Bede.”

  “Really?” Lily’s cool gaze encompassed them. “I wonder if I could guess? Bernard, put her down. And, no, Mr. Thorne, your services won’t be needed. The girl is fine. Aren’t you, Teresa?”

  Bernard lowered Teresa awkwardly to her feet. She gave a sickly grin and nervously wiped her hands on her apron. “Yes, ma’am. I’m fine now. I think it was the heat, ma’am.”

  “Heat? Pshaw! Women are far too frail these days,” Polly declared. “I think it is because of those unnatural contraptions they wear beneath their clothing. Corsets and bustles and such. What do you think, Mr. Thorne?”

  “I?” Thorne echoed, confounded by the turn of the conversation. He’d never given any thought to women’s undergarments. Well, actually, as a boy he’d given it quite a lot of thought, but never in concert with health considerations. “I don’t think anything.”

  “As suspected,” Lily muttered.

  “I meant,” he said with formidable calm, “that I do not have an opinion.”

  “Well, I do,” Miss Makepeace said. “If women stopped wearing all that rubbish they’d find themselves capable of much more. In fact, I suspect corsets were created
by men to keep women from discovering that except for certain unavoidable procreative functions men are by and large unnecessary.”

  “That,” Avery said, “is the most ridiculous piece of bull—of vanity I have ever heard.”

  “I think Miss Makepeace makes an excellent point,” Lily said. “Except for cruder matters requiring bulk and brawn, a woman can do anything a man can.”

  “Please,” Avery said, “don’t embarrass yourself.”

  “Would you like me to prove it?”

  “This is not worth discussing.”

  She tossed her head. “Ha! Men always say that when they are about to lose an argument.”

  He’d had enough. “How would you know what men always say, Miss Bede? I’d thought that hitherto you’d dedicated yourself to living as independently of men as possible.”

  “Oh!”

  “Women always say that when they’re about to lose an argument,” he purred.

  Arriving last, Francesca flopped down on the grass and cradled her chin in her palm. Evelyn, after a confused glance around, sank down next to her and folded her hands. Teresa, forgotten, shuffled uncomfortably.

  “Are you afraid to accept such a challenge?”

  For ten long heartbeats, they faced each other, energy, frustration, and pure, unadulterated heat burning up the space between them.

  “No,” he finally said, “I am a gentleman. I will not accept a spurious dare that would only make us both look foolish.” He turned.

  “Coward.”

  His head snapped back a fraction of an inch, but he did not retaliate. He would be a gentleman.

  “Why did you come out here?” he addressed Teresa.

  “Huh? Oh. I came out to tell you there’s guests arrived. A gentleman and two ladies. Quality. For Mr. Thorne.”

  “A gentleman, Teresa?” Lily asked in a patently false tone of awe. “And Quality to boot? For Mr. Thorne? My, we are blessed!”

  With her chin high, she whirled and headed for the house, leaving Avery to pull Francesca to her feet while Bernard performed a similar gallantry for his mother and Hob resumed shoving Polly’s wheelchair.

  They arrived to find Lily in the sitting room greeting a dark-haired, mustachioed young man and two pretty, fresh-faced blond girls.

  “Excuse us, Miss Bede, for being so presumptuous but my sisters and I were driving by and decided to chance you would be at home and willing to receive us,” the man was saying.

  Well-fed, well-groomed looking chap, thought Avery. Silly mustachio. Nice boots.

  “Your sisters?” A hollowness in Lily’s simple query struck Avery. “But how kind, how very delightful that you would think of us,” she went on, tripping over her words. “I wasn’t even aware you had—I mean, your sisters! My. This seems to be a week for unanticipated—albeit happy—arrivals. Bernard has been restored to us for the summer.”

  He’d never heard a false tone from her before and it irritated him to hear the supercilious accents now.

  “ ‘Restored?’ ” Avery muttered. “You make it sound as if you found the lad packed in mothballs in the attic.”

  The two pretty girls snickered behind their gloved fingertips. Lily’s back stiffened.

  “Allow me to introduce Avery Thorne.” Without a glance his way, she wiggled her fingers in his general direction. “He’s visiting. Mr. Thorne, our neighbor, Mr. Martin Camfield.”

  The two men nodded at each other.

  Camfield? The man who wants to expand his farm, Avery thought, by acquiring mine.

  Avery studied him more closely. His jacket was tailor-made, his eyes light colored, his hair thick, and his mustachio too extravagant. He’d never noticed how facial hair made a man look fatuous, though from the way certain ladies were oggling him, his opinion was in the minority.

  Camfield smiled; at least Avery assumed he was smiling since his teeth appeared briefly beneath that brush. “Miss Bede,” he said, “you are looking in extremely fine health.”

  Health? Lily looked stunning, not healthy. A dimple appeared in her cheek. He’d not known she had a dimple. Damn it.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The man simply stood smiling. Lily smiled back. During all this inane grimacing Avery noted Bernard’s expression. Really, it was unfeeling of Lily not to notice how difficult a time the lad was having being forced to watch her make cow’s eyes at this Camfield fellow.

  “Who are those girls?” Avery asked, coming to Bernard’s aid since Lily obviously was too smitten to note the lad’s discomfort.

  “Hmm?” Camfield echoed dumbly. “Girls?”

  “Yes. The girls that followed you in. I assume you didn’t simply find them on the front doorstep?” Avery said.

  “Oh!” With an abashed air, Camfield gestured toward the two younger women. “Pray forgive me. Miss Bede, may I introduce my sisters, Molly and Mary?” he said pleasantly.

  The young women exchanged cool pleasantries with Lily before Camfield ushered them off to be introduced to the rest, finally finding their way back to Avery. As soon as he’d made the necessary introductions, Camfield abandoned his sisters to Avery and headed once more for Lily.

  “Oh, Mr. Thorne,” one of them said, “we must own, we are so delighted to meet you.”

  “Hmm.” Avery’s gaze drifted toward the corner where Camfield was monopolizing Lily’s attention. Poor Bernard stood nearby looking as glum as a puppy who’d been shouldered from the teat.

  “Do say you’ll come to our little ball next Monday,” the other said.

  “Yes, do!”

  Lily leaned closer to Camfield, as though listening. Really, there was no reason for the man to speak so softly Lily needed to strain to hear him.

  “Please?” the blondest of the girlish pair implored.

  “Please, what?”

  “The party!” Her sister shook a little pink-nailed finger at him. “Naughty fellow. Say you’ll come.”

  Camfield had moved even closer to Lily now. Bloody impertinence.

  “If you come we’ll be quite the envy of our little society.” This one’s yellow ringlets bobbed with enthusiasm.

  “Whatever for?”

  They giggled in unison. “Fie on you, sir,” one of the pair said.

  Confound it, he thought, pretty they might be but he wished they’d make some sense. “Pray enlighten me, Miss, er, … Miss?”

  “Well, sir, you are quite the last word in exclusivity, aren’t you?”

  “Miss Camfield,” he said in exasperation, “whatever are you nattering about?”

  More giggles. He cast about for some way to extradite himself. Lily wouldn’t help. She was too busy simpering over the hairy-faced, would-be owner of Mill House.

  “You haven’t accepted any invitations!” one said.

  “Not even the one from Lord Jessup!” the other added.

  “Oh. Those. I don’t answer invitations. Miss Bede does. If she’s been remiss, I suggest you take it up with her. In fact, that’s not a bad idea. Come along, I’ll—” He stopped. The two little blond bits of indiscretion were staring at each other in dismay. “What is it?”

  “Well”—the younger Miss Camfield tried on a smile—“it’s just that, well, you see, I’m not sure Miss Bede would have the opportunity to be remiss.”

  “Say again?”

  The other one winced. “The invitations may not, specifically that is, have included her.”

  His expression hardened immediately into forbidding smoothness. The two sheltered young women stepped back, driven by some instinct that though buried under generations of privilege and pampering was still alert enough to recognize danger.

  He forced himself to smile. “I see. That wouldn’t be the case with your invitation though, would it?”

  “Oh, well,” the blondest said breathlessly, “we were discussing that very matter on our drive over, I mean by, our drive by. You must understand that Miss Bede’s circumstances, aside from the misfortune of her bir—”

  “I wouldn’t cont
inue,” Avery advised.

  She gulped, looking around for their brother, uncomfortable yet unwilling, even after he’d frightened her, to forfeit the coup he represented. At least they’d stopped giggling.

  “I should very much like to attend your ball.” Their faces lit up. He didn’t give a damn if they saw him as a feather in their social caps. He’d only cared that they paid his price. “Of course, I could not attend without my cousins.”

  “Of course not,” one of them immediately agreed.

  “Or Miss Bede.”

  Not a second’s hesitation this time. “Oh, yes. Of course. We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Good,” he said, “because neither would I.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “What have you done to your cheek?” Lily lifted Bernard’s chin with her fingertips, peering at the nasty red abrasion.

  Standing in the hall in the light of the front door window, Lily watched Bernard’s tallow-colored skin turn pink.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I mean, we were climbing the cedar tree last night and I lost my grip for a second and scraped my face against the bark.”

  “We?” She released her hold.

  “Cousin Avery and I.”

  “And why were you and Mr. Thorne in the cedar tree?”

  His blush became more pronounced. “He was showing me how he used to get out of the house after the rest of the household was asleep.”

  “Hm. Sneak out, you mean.”

  Bernard’s abashment suddenly dissolved and the grin he gave her was one hundred percent roguish boy. “Yes,” he said with a cheeky self-assurance she’d have thought impossible, “I guess we did.”

  For Bernard’s one moment of unfettered roguishness Lily silently thanked Avery Thorne.

  Avery treated Bernard not as an equal, but yet not like some empty vessel waiting to be filled with manly wisdom. Yesterday, several times, Lily had seen Avery listening intently to Bernard as well as talking to him. The boy was expanding under the attention.

  She’d always thought men were little use in child-rearing. Though her father had been loving, he’d not spent much time alone with her, discussing his interests or discovering hers. It was always her mother she’d turned to for comfort and conversation and guidance. But seeing Bernard with Avery she could begin to imagine the benefit a father might represent.