He smiled virtuously. “I agree. But then, surely you know that matters between our genders are seldom ‘fair.’ What you’ve apparently ignored is that women are not always the ones to suffer from those disparities.”
“Surely there must be some way I can make recompense? If a man were to offer you such an insult—”
“My dear Miss Bede,” he said, “if a man were to offer me an insult similar to the one you have, at the very least there’d be blood on the ground right now.”
“That’s not what I meant! I meant that if a man offended you and then apologized, wouldn’t you accept it?”
“But Miss Bede,” Avery said equitably, “you didn’t simply offend me. You took advantage of my assumption that I would be safe from untoward behavior in your company.”
For a second he feared he had gone too far. Her eyes narrowed, her brow lowered, and her mouth compressed. But then her hand flew out in supplication and he saw that what he’d taken for suspicion was mortification. He almost took pity on her then, her distress seemed so real, but he reminded himself that whatever game she’d been playing, she’d undoubtedly designed so that he would come out on the losing side.
“There must be some way to deal with this!” she exclaimed.
“Well, if a man took a potshot at another man—”
“Potshot?” she asked.
“Yes. A potshot. A blow delivered to one’s enemy when his back is turned or he is unawares. Considered very poor sportsmanship.”
She paled at his censorious tone. “Yes?”
“Well, should I have received a potshot from a man I would simply warn him that he could expect similar treatment from me at some future date. In the interest of fair play, you understand,” he explained. “At least, that’s how we gentlemen would do it.”
He watched her consider his words. Though he’d kept his tone kind, his thoughts were far from benevolent. He’d thought he knew this woman. That four and a half years of correspondence made her familiar to him. Damn it, that one letter she’d written after Karl’s death had spoken to his very soul! He hated being wrong.
He’d expected her to be a girl as unused to male company as he was to female, but her passionate kiss related experience—with how many other men?—which for some reason angered the hell out of him.
“Well?” he said.
She lifted her chin and gave a short, clipped nod. “Fine, then,” she said bravely. “I consider myself forewarned.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lily was mortified. She could feel Avery Thorne’s eyes on the back of her neck and the answering fire of humiliation spreading up it. She pressed her knuckles to her lips to stifle her moan. With each step she had to restrain herself from breaking into a dead run. She gazed imploringly at the heavens.
What in God’s name had possessed her? It had seemed, at least for one instant, to be such a good idea, such a liberated idea. Now it only seemed cheap and tawdry and oh! He’d been so offended by her.
What had he said? That simply because he was a man didn’t mean he couldn’t be offended. True, for a few minutes, he’d responded. Even such concentrated involvement as hers had been could not utterly obliterate the fact that he’d become a participant. Albeit an unwilling one.
She’d spent her life fighting so women would receive the same rights as men and now she’d gone and physically forced herself on Avery Thorne. How shabby. How hypocritical. This time the moan could not be completely stifled.
“Did you say something, Miss Bede?” he asked from well behind her. Which was hardly surprising, was it? He must fear to be anywhere within arm’s reach of her.
“No. Nothing.”
At least she’d done the right thing in agreeing to his right to seek recompense. She worried her fingers together, wondering what form this “potshot” was likely to take. The only thing she knew for a certainty was that it wouldn’t be of a type.
Avery’s kiss had most likely been the result of that compulsive sexual drive which was rumored to rule the male gender. Certainly he hadn’t contested her statement that she’d acted the cad. And if there had been hunger and desire and passion in his kiss, it was of a reflexive nature. She’d have been ill-pleased herself if someone had awoken impulses that only demonstrated her enslavement to her baser nature. Probably only his much vaunted gentlemanliness—which seemed to appear and disappear as the situation required—had kept him from forcibly removing her. Noting his size and strength, she supposed she ought to be thankful.
She didn’t feel grateful. In fact, she wasn’t at all sure she wouldn’t have preferred that he struck her—preferably hard enough to be rendered unconscious.
She kept castigating herself until they reached the converted stone dairy that housed Drummond’s office. She mounted the single step to the worn, poorly hung door and knocked. Loudly. Best get this whole disastrous interlude behind her. She knocked again.
“All right! All right! Curse you to hell you—” The door slit open. One of Drummond’s clouded blue eyes gazed balefully at her. “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t know who it was.”
The old wretch knew exactly who it was. Lily was always punctual for their monthly meetings and Drummond always answered her knocks with vitriolic curses. Today’s had been mild compared to some of the verbal blasts with which she’d been met.
Drummond shuffled back into the dim interior, leaving the door hanging on its hinges. At least this time he hadn’t slammed it in her face and then blamed his “aged forgetfulness.”
Lily pushed the door open, venturing in a few inches. Drummond flopped into a chair behind a scarred desk littered with papers, the chewed stubs of a dozen pencils, and a battered ledger. In spite of the stifling heat in the closed room, he pulled a thin shawl about his hunched shoulders.
The impression of feebleness was a sham. She’d seen this old man carry a calf with a broken leg a mile over rough ground.
“And a good afternoon to you, too, Mr. Drummond,” she said. “You do remember we have an appointment this afternoon?”
She glanced at Avery, who eyed her dubiously. He was probably wondering if he would come into possession of Mill House earlier if he could get her declared insane. And if she continued finding him so damnably attractive—because just glancing at him set the heat racing over the surface of her skin—she wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t be doing her a favor.
“Are you going to stand there like a half-witted cow or are you going to come in?” Drummond demanded. “And who the hell be yon young behemoth lurking behind you? The new farm manager?” He squinted at Avery. “Nah. I couldn’t be so lucky. Besides, you’re the wrong gender to be hired by Missy here.”
The nasty, vicious old codger. She stomped forward a few feet. “Listen, Mr. Drummond, I didn’t come here—”
“Maybe you’re daft enough you’re gonna marry her?” Drummond asked hopefully, jabbing his thumb in her direction. “That’d be almost as good. Then maybe you could keep her out of my way. At least for a few days.” He winked lewdly.
Lily dug her nails into her palm, glad the dim light would hide the blush she felt firing up her face. This was going to be even worse than she’d anticipated.
“I’m not going to take over the farm management,” Avery said, “and I’m not going to marry her, old man.”
“Well then what are you doing here? I don’t give no tours to idlers.” Drummond scowled fiercely, his few strands of gray hair sticking up in wiry spikes from his sunburnt pate.
“I came to see how long a man could live on pure meanness.”
“Listen, boy!” Drummond popped up from his seat, shedding the shawl and the querulous-old-man tone like a snake sheds dead skin. “You might be big. But you ain’t so big I couldn’t thrash some manners into you.”
He leaned over his desk, glowering at Avery until an expression of incredulity crossed his seamed old face. With a whoop he slapped his big gnarled paw down on the desk. “Avery Thorne, is it? Still an outspoken, cussed rude bugger only now y
ou got the meat to back it up.”
“I am never rude.”
“Ha!” Something that looked like a smile but was more probably gas since Lily had never seen Drummond actually smile, passed over the old man’s wrinkled face. He shot around from behind his desk, shouldering her out of the way and grabbing Avery’s hand. He pumped it up and down.
“You’ve come to deliver me from her ignorance and interference, haven’t you, son?” Drummond demanded. “I couldn’t be happier to see St. Peter himself!”
“As though there’s any chance of that happening,” Lily muttered.
“Giving up the game early, is she?” Drummond asked, grinning like a malevolent, gray-haired goblin.
Lord, she hated it when Drummond spoke of her in the third person. Sometimes he did it even when she and he were the only people in the room.
“Well, best for everyone all around.” Drummond finally dropped Avery’s hand. “A woman running a farm. Bah! Never heard such a daft thing in my life—”
“I am not giving up,” Lily declared tightly. “And Mr. Thorne accompanied me here simply to extend his greeting as an old friend.”
“What?” Drummond speared Avery with a questioning look.
Avery nodded.
“Well, damn.” With an air of betrayal, Drummond turned his back on them and slunk back to his desk chair, treading on her foot in the process.
“Ow!”
Drummond flopped down, mumbling disconsolately. “I suppose that means I get to look forward to more ‘appointments,’ then? Pah! Well, get on with it. What do you want?”
“Want, Mr. Drummond?” Lily hobbled forward and gripped either side of the desk, holding on so tightly she was sure she was leaving gouges in the wood. She leaned over it and fixed Drummond with a glare. “What I want is for this farm to be a productive concern. What I need is to know when you plan to wash the raddle off the sheep. All portends suggest that this summer is going to be an especially hot one and—”
“What ‘por-tends’ might those be, Missy Know-All? You been reading them farm journals again? Listen. I been raddling sheep for fifty years, I don’t need no one telling me when the sheep needs they raddle washed out.”
“No. You listen, Mr. Drummond,” Lily said, “if that wool isn’t dry and ready for shearing before hot weather hits, those sheep will sicken and we will be in substantial financial straits.”
Drummond’s face mottled over with livid purple splotches. “I know that, you silly gorm—”
“What is raddle?” Avery asked.
Both Lily and Drummond’s heads spun around. For a minute there, for the first time since she’d seen him, she’d actually been free of thoughts of Avery Thorne.
“What?” Drummond asked.
“What’s this raddle you’re talking about?” Avery asked. “I thought I should know since it seems to have prompted such heated feelings.”
“It’s clay,” Lily said, unsure whether he was having her on or not. “Reddish clay used to mark the sheep.”
“I see. And why is it you mark them?”
“To tell them apart from the other sheep,” Drummond said in disgust. “We got a lot of sheep in this district that graze those hillsides. We gots to know whose sheep is whose now, don’t we?” He shook his head. “You wasn’t a particularly stupid lad as I remembers.”
“Carry on with your conversation,” Avery said. “It’s most informative.”
“You really didn’t know what raddle is?” Lily asked suspiciously, bemused Avery could so easily claim ignorance. In her admittedly limited experience men never owned up to their limitations. Even her father, as enlightened a male as the world had known, had never to her knowledge actually uttered the words, “I don’t know.”
“No,” Avery said calmly. “Why should I? I’ve spent only a few weeks at Mill House and those long ago. It wasn’t exactly my second home.”
From what Francesca had told her, there hadn’t been a first home. She almost said as much but some quality of guardedness in his face made her hold her tongue. She found herself touched with compassion, which was nonsensical. Avery Thorne had every advantage of his gender and his class. He’d even managed to find a way around his limited finances by virtue of his own ingenuity. What did he lack?
She studied him thoughtfully. Perhaps Thorne wasn’t the confident, complacent creature he appeared to be.
Drummond made a disparaging noise. “First a woman. Now another know-nuthin’. Did you have to take a stupid test in order to get into Horatio’s will? Still, I’d rather work for a male know-nuthin’ than a female know-nuthin’. Better yet, give me the good old days, working for Mr. Horatio.”
“Yes, I’m sure the world lost a regular Damon and Pythias when the Almighty separated you and Horatio,” Lily said dryly, making reference to the legendary Greek friends.
Avery burst out laughing. Startled, Lily spun toward him. He avoided her gaze but his grin was wide and appreciative.
“That sounds mighty near blasphemy, Missy,” Drummond said, his face again turning that unappealing shade. “If you think I’ll stand by and listen to your godless—”
“Oh, come now, Drummond,” Avery said.
Lily stared at him. Of all the corners she would have expected aid from, his would have been the least likely. At least not now. Not after she’d—not after that.
“You make it sound as though you and Horatio stood shoulder to shoulder hip deep in the muck,” Avery continued, “battling the foes of animal husbandry or whatever it is farmers battle. The truth is that Horatio spent hardly any time at Mill House and certainly didn’t involve himself in the running of it.”
“Aye,” Drummond said, his eyes misting over nostalgically. “That’s right. Mr. Horatio didn’t ask to be part of the works and he didn’t expect to be. Not like Missy here.”
“And what exactly is wrong with the way I do things?” Lily asked.
“Missy here wants to be ‘involved.’ ” Drummond stabbed the air with one blunt finger. “Pah! You’re either gentry who don’t interfere like Mr. Horatio was or you’re yeoman, working the land right alongside your laborers. There ain’t nuthin’ in between, but Missy here thinks that by asking a few questions and studying a few books she can be ‘involved.’ Well, I’d like to see her involved with a sopping wet three-hundred-pound sheep.”
“You can hardly expect her to bathe sheep,” Avery said.
“Can’t I, now?” Drummond’s eyes sank deeper beneath the folds of his eyelids and he glowered like a basilisk. He turned his attention to Lily. “You ain’t gentry and you ain’t yeoman,” he said. “You can’t manage things from behind a desk and you won’t work in the field. Which in my mind means you’re useless.
“Now, when young Mr. Thorne here takes over the running of Mill House, I imagine we’ll get back to the proper way of things.”
“The proper way is the one I set!” Lily burst out.
“Praise be, I only have to put up with another few months of your jabbering,” Drummond muttered, rifling through his papers.
Her lips curled back from her teeth and her fingers clutching the edge of the desk grew white with her effort to dent the wood. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might end up owning Mill House? That I might inherit it?”
Drummond didn’t even lift his head. “Nope.” He waved his hand, like a king banishing an irksome courtier. “Go away. I got work to do. I don’t have time to humor you today. Unless …” He glanced up. His evil little eyes gleamed with malevolence. “You wants to fire me?”
For the count of ten Lily met Drummond’s gaze. She wished she could do just that but Mill House needed Drummond and she would not do something stupid just for a few ecstatic moments of triumph.
But she might if she stayed here much longer. Without a word, she swung around and paced through the open door, slamming it shut behind her.
Drummond burst out into an evil cackle and rubbed his hands together gleefully. He looked up to find Avery regarding him wi
th a chilling smile.
“Drummond,” Avery said, “I think we need to have a little chat.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Francesca!” Avery shouted through the halls of Mill House just as a peal of thunder sounded far off in the distance. The day had turned unseasonably warm. Since Lily had fled from Drummond’s lair that morning, he’d caught only an occasional glimpse of her, and it was driving him mad. There was too much unresolved between them and he was a man unused to biding his time. He wanted—
Damn. That was the problem. He wanted Lily Bede. So much that he could taste it. Something had to give.
“Where the blazes is everyone?” Avery muttered. Even the perpetually keeling-over trio of maids was conspicuously absent. God alone knew where Lily had hied herself off to. Probably devising some other plan to … to what?
What in God’s name had she hoped to accomplish with that kiss? Distract him from illegal activities? The days of smuggling were long gone. Make him so smitten with her that he abdicated his claim on Mill House? She couldn’t possibly think that would work. He needed answers.
“Francesca!” he roared again.
A patter of footsteps preceded Francesca’s appearance. Shell pink fabric swished around her ankles and her color was hectic. “What is it?” she asked breathlessly. “What is wrong?”
“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. I wanted to speak with you,” he said.
She laid her palm flat against the base of her throat. “You gave me palpitations, you young idiot. Shouting down the house like that.”
“I ‘shouted’ because there was no one here to relay my request that you meet me in”—he looked around—“there.” He pointed at one of the anterooms. “I didn’t feel like running about opening doors looking for you.”
“Fine, Avery,” Francesca said, entering the room. She settled herself gracefully atop a heavy settee covered in somber maroon brocade and tucked her feet beneath her.
“Where is everyone?” Avery asked, glancing around. He saw now why the family didn’t use this room. It was dark, filled with uncomfortable-looking furniture, and there was a draft coming from the hearth.
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