“Mrs. Kettle is decanting wine for dinner—apparently an arduous and lengthy process and one she takes very seriously—Evelyn is in the sitting room teaching Miss Makepeace to make lace, of all things, and Bernard has gone down to the horse barn.”
“It’s called a stable, Francesca, and do you think that’s wise? What with the boy’s lung condition and all.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked.
“Nasty drafty places stables. And horses are erratic, excitable beasts. Drink, Francesca?” He indicated the crystal whiskey container.
“That would be nice,” Francesca said. “You mustn’t worry about Bernard. Lily’s nags are long past being a danger to anyone and Bernard enjoys riding them tremendously. The only athletic endeavor he does enjoy, to my knowledge.”
“Would that I could,” Avery murmured, conjuring an image of Lily Bede, her black hair flying as she cantered across a field.
He dispelled the image, busying himself with the liquor decanter and considering his young cousin. So, whatever triggered the constriction of Bernard’s lungs it was not proximity to horses, the agent that had so long bedeviled Avery. Perhaps if he and Bernard researched the matter they could discover under what conditions Bernard was most likely to suffer and thus he could do as Avery had learned to do: avoid those places or events that precipitated the terrifying suffocation.
“Avery,” Francesca said slowly, “do horses provoke that congestion in your lungs?”
He’d forgotten Francesca. Curled up on the heavy monstrosity in her filmy, pale draperies she looked like an autumn moth, faded, a bit shabby, but still somehow pretty. “Sometimes,” he said in a noncommittal tone. “Not worth discussing. Never go near the beasts if I can help it. Now, about her.”
“Her.” Francesca’s face went blank for a second before clearing. “Oh! Her. What about her?”
Avery cast about, uncertain how much he wanted to reveal to his cousin. No one else of his acquaintance was better qualified to judge Lily’s proclivities than Francesca. Her expertise in matters of the flesh was a given and had been ever since she’d been a chit.
“Camfield,” he finally said, handing her a glass of whiskey and soda.
“Martin Camfield?” Francesca accepted the drink. “What about him?”
“What is the nature of the relationship between Miss Bede and him?”
Her lips made a moue of comprehension. “Well, clearly Mr. Camfield has a high regard for Lily’s intelligence.”
Avery relaxed. If the strongest feeling Camfield could scrounge up for a woman like Lily was “high regard for her intelligence” the man was either homosexual or a eunuch. In either case Avery felt much more kindly disposed toward him.
He smiled.
“Or that’s what Mr. Camfield would like her to think.”
He stopped smiling.
“Perhaps Martin Camfield is wise enough to realize that a woman like Lily will find a man who appreciates her mind more appealing than someone who simply ogles her.”
“I have never ogled her.”
Francesca looked startled. “Why, Avery, I never said you did.”
“I just wanted to make clear that I’m not that sort of man.”
“More’s the pity,” Francesca said and upended a good half the glass’s contents into her mouth.
“And what about Lily?”
“Lily?”
“Her and him.”
Francesca sighed. “I do wish you would learn to speak in something other than monosyllables, Avery. It’s a habit you had even as a boy. It makes communication confoundedly awkward. And yet, your prose is inspired and I’ve heard you engage in exchanges with Lily that positively scintillate. Now, try again, dear, what is it you wish to know about ‘her and him?’ ”
Avery’s face grew hot. “Does she encourage Camfield?”
“Of course she does,” Francesca said, setting her empty glass on the floor beside her. “Whyever are you looking like that, Avery? Are you ill?”
The thought of Lily in Camfield’s arms, or worse, of Camfield in Lily’s arms, made Avery’s jaw ache. With an effort he unclenched his teeth. “I’m fine. I just dislike finding out that a woman of Lily’s intelligence would stoop to manipulating men in such a brazen and crude fashion.”
“ ‘Brazen?’ ‘Crude?’ ” Francesca frowned. “Just what is it you think I have admitted to Lily’s having done?”
“Used her feminine wiles to beguile men into doing her bidding.”
“I see.” Francesca shook her head. “Men are so fascinating. May I ask what bidding she is supposed to have beguiled Martin Camfield into doing?”
“I don’t know,” Avery responded testily. “How would I know? What has she gotten out of him?”
Francesca lounged back, her expression deeply contemplative. “Well,” she said slowly, “she did rather crow about purchasing seed from him at a good price. I confess, trading one’s womanly favors for a ten percent discount on seeds would never have occurred to me, but if that’s what she’s done, I call it damned enterprising—”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I?” She rose to her feet. “And here I thought you were the one jumping to conclusions. I said Lily flirted with Martin Camfield, not bedded him, you great fool. There is a difference, you know.”
“If you would cease being so damned amused by us lesser mortals and answer my questions in a straight-forward fashion I wouldn’t be jumping to conclusions,” he shot back.
His words had a potent effect. Francesca’s suave expression abruptly disappeared. Beneath its thin powdered layer, her skin flushed.
“Did Lily do something that would lead you to believe that she is, ah, free with her favors?”
“I am a gentleman, Francesca,” he answered coldly.
“Aha!” she crowed. “But I don’t understand, Avery, if she and you … why aren’t you … ?” She peered at him more closely. “You mistrust her … attentions?”
“If,” Avery said, “there were any attentions to mistrust—and as a gentleman I am not willing to cede that point—yes, I damn well would mistrust them. I’d be a fool not to.
“Here’s a woman who appears to actively dislike me, has spent four years trading insults with me, makes no secret out of the fact that she is trying to snatch my inheritance from me, and she suddenly up and … pays attention to me? What should, er, would I think?”
“You poor dear.” Francesca eyed him with horrible fascination.
“Don’t be an ass, Francesca.”
At least his response dispelled that nauseating expression from her face. “Humph. Well. If you don’t want my help …”
“Your help with what?” he asked incredulously.
“My help in—how does one put this delicately?—acquiring Lily Bede.”
“I don’t want to acquire Lily Bede.”
“There’s no need to shout, Avery.”
“There’s every need to shout! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Lily Bede is an obstinate, strong-willed, argumentative troublemaker. She dislikes me. I dislike her. Well, dislike is too strong a word. I don’t trust her. She’s too intelligent by half and too independent by the other half. Why would any man want to acquire such a woman?”
“I can’t for the life of me answer that,” Francesca said complacently. “I’m not a man. Perhaps you can elucidate?”
“Of course I can,” he said angrily, somewhere half-aware that he was just explaining an attraction he’d seconds before been denying. “A kind of magnetism between members of the opposite sex is normal. Just because I’ve never experienced it to its current degree doesn’t mean I wish to acquire Lily Bede.
“My attraction to her is doubtless based on my sudden immersion into the absolutely foreign company of women, a chronological receptiveness, and certain chemicals in the body.” He scowled. “And her eyes.”
“I haven’t any clue what you just said, Avery. Perhaps you’d best stick with the monosyllables,” Fr
ancesca suggested.
“I mean,” Avery said, “that knowing that this infatuation is simply an unfortunate combination of mental, chemical, and sociological coincidences, I know full well how to deal with it.”
“Oh?”
“The mill pond,” he stated, well-pleased. “I looked it over very carefully on my walk with Lily. It appears to be quite deep and I know it to be quite cold.”
“You’re going to take cold swims?” Francesca burst into laughter.
“What else am I going to do?” He knew he was speaking more loudly than he ought, but he couldn’t help it. “The woman obsesses me. It’s unhealthy. It’s ridiculous.”
“You just said it was normal.”
“I was wrong. No. I was right. Blast it! I can’t even make a simple statement where she is concerned. She’s ruined my ability to make a rational judgement.”
He pulled his cigar case from his jacket pocket, snapped it open and withdrew one. “I need to get away from her. This trip to London will do me good. Obviously, I must have entered the time in my life when I should be looking for a wife. I’ll … I’ll arrange to meet a few friends. Some of them have sisters. Fine, docile, creatures. Good wife material. Damn it, she won’t even let me smoke in the house!”
With a savage movement he jammed the cigar back in its case and shoved it back into his jacket’s breast pocket.
“Poor dear.” Francesca didn’t sound particularly sympathetic. “Why not accept the inevitable? Believe me, Avery, I have much experience with your situation. Some things are invincible. It does no good trying to resist them. Such attractions are as strong as an ocean’s rip tides. You may as well just drown and enjoy it.”
“I will not drown,” Avery declared emphatically. “I will take swims. Long, invigorating cold swims. Daily if need be. Twice daily.”
“You’re a fool, Avery.” Francesca sighed. The fact that he suspected she was correct, but could not fathom why this would be, destroyed what was left of his temper.
“Damn it, Francesca, she wants my house!”
Her nostrils flared delicately as if she scented something she disliked.
“Lily,” she said in a deceptively soft voice, “has given five years of her youth to this house. The same five years that other young ladies generally spent being coddled and cosseted and feted, Lily was straining her eyes over accounts, studying late into the early hours of dawn so she could discover a way to eke another penny from the farm, cleaning the floors on her hands and knees—” At his look of amazement she stopped, disgust making her lips thin.
“Dear me, Avery,” she said, “you didn’t imagine three pregnant, overindulged little maids did all the work in this house, did you? Man, look at her hands!”
“Why?” he asked in bewilderment.
She misunderstood his question. “Because that is the only way she will be able to secure the future she wants. I believe that after all she has done Lily considers Mill House her house.” Francesca lifted her eyes calmly to his. “I would certainly not contradict her.”
Her words brought back to him in full force the dilemma that had been plaguing him. He raked his hair back from his face.
“I know,” he said. “I see what she’s achieved. I would never have thought it possible.” His voice hardened. “But, Francesca, I did not present that challenge to Lily. It was through no offices of mine that she was offered my home.”
Francesca watched him silently.
“Mill House was promised to me when I was younger than Bernard, Francesca,” he said. “I dreamed of it, I planned for it. I counted on it when there was nothing more to—I counted on it. It was to have been my home. She knew that when she fell in with Horatio’s scheme. Don’t tell me that she didn’t realize that in securing her future she would be doing someone else out of theirs.”
“I can see how her act might seem callous, Avery,” Francesca said, her look of contempt turning to confusion. “I can only say that five years ago your prospects looked much better to her than her own.”
“I don’t give a bloody damn. She accepted a challenge which, if she won, she knew would result in my disinheritance. Badly done, Francesca. Badly done.”
“Perhaps it was less than gentlemanly, Avery—”
“Damn right,” he said harshly. “If she did that, what else is she capable of? Just what would she be willing to do to secure Mill House for her own? And how can I allow myself to be attracted to her?
“Yet,” he went on, “when I see those dilapidated nags she cares for, I wonder why would she risk her future for some broken-down race horses? What makes a hardheaded, unsentimental opportunist do something so utterly insane? And then, most importantly, nearly a year ago she wrote me a letter that—” that saved my soul, “that meant a great deal to me. It seems impossible that the woman who wrote that letter could be so callous.”
Francesca had no answer for this enigma.
Suddenly Avery felt tired. Tired and drained and bitterly aware that the one woman he wanted was the one who he most mistrusted. “I appreciate that Lily has worked hard and long for something she wants. But I hope like hell that she fails. Simply wanting something does not give you the right to it.”
“Is that what you’re telling yourself when you look at her?” Francesca asked. “That she doesn’t deserve your house? Or are you thinking about other things?”
Avery groaned. Francesca could take a debate on monetary reform and turn it into a sexual one. The fact that her words brought back with renewed impact the hunger he felt for Lily did not make the matter any less ironic. He sighed, rose, and went to the door. “As I said, Francesca, that problem I know just the cure for.”
He yanked open the door. Bernard stumbled into the room. Avery closed his eyes and counted to three, when he opened them it was to find a garishly red-faced Bernard shuffling before him.
“I was passing and I heard Miss Bede’s name,” he stuttered miserably. Yet, Avery had to give him credit. The boy met his gaze squarely, even defiantly. “I didn’t hear much. The blasted door’s too thick—”
“Don’t curse, boy,” Avery chided him severely. “It’s not gentlemanly.”
“Yes, sir,” Bernard bit out. “But as a gentleman, I feel … that is, I have a duty to Miss Bede, an obligation to see to her welfare. I’m naturally concerned….”
Another Thorne male under the sway of that black-haired witch? Avery narrowed his eyes on the boy’s fevered-looking face, trembling body, and heated glare. Damn!
He seized Bernard’s bony shoulder, spun him around, and propelled him out into the hall. “Fine, Bernard. I have just the thing for your ‘concern.’ “
“Where are we going?” Bernard squeaked.
“For a swim, lad. A nice, long swim.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Jump in!” Avery shouted. “It’s six or seven feet deep here, not shallow like the north end.”
“All right.” Bernard dropped his boots and stood up to drop his trousers.
Avery experienced a moment of intense déjà vu. He might have been looking at a photograph of himself taken over a decade earlier.
Bernard’s broad, bony shoulders spread beneath his linen shirt like a clothes hanger. From under his shirttails stuck long white stick-like legs ending in feet that looked like some monstrous duck’s paddles. With a body like that, Avery thought, Bernard should swim like a selkie.
“Come on!”
“I said, ‘all right!’ ” Bernard shouted back irritably. Avery’s grin spread.
His young jaw tensing with determination, Bernard took a step back and then launched himself off the embankment. Limbs gyrating madly, he sailed through the air, landed in the water and promptly sank. A second later he burst from beneath the surface, sputtering fiercely and noisily gulping air. Avery swam closer, concern supplanting his amusement.
“Don’t swim much, do you?” He kept his tone light, remembering how important it had been to him to mask his physical infirmity. Listening carefully f
or the telltale wheezing but hearing nothing besides loud clear gasps, he turned over on his back and floated nearer, ready to give aid if necessary.
“I learned to swim in this pond,” he commented conversationally.
The boy’s breathing was settling back to normal now. He began paddling around inexpertly. “Oh? Who taught you?”
“No one,” Avery said. “I fell in while I was fishing. It was a matter of swim or drown. I decided to swim. Who taught you?”
“Miss Bede.”
The boy’s reply caught Avery off-guard. Bernard, correctly interpreting his expression, laughed.
“I didn’t realize you’d spent so much time with her,” he said.
“I don’t,” Bernard said. “Not at all. Mother likes me to stay near when I’m home.” His brows v’d over the bridge of his nose. “Mother worries. Fact of the matter is that when she found out that Miss Bede had taught me to swim Mother was so distressed that Miss Bede promised not to do anything like it again.”
From the boy’s sigh Avery deduced that further escapades with Lily hadn’t been forthcoming.
“It’s hell, isn’t it?” he said.
Bernard didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “I hate it! The way the deans look at you every time you cough, all frightened and resentful, and how the other lads snicker behind your back, and wondering if you’ll ever be well enough to do anything.”
Avery nodded. The usually reticent lad had found his voice. He knew how cathartic that could be.
“And how it feels when your chest is all collapsed-feeling, like some invisible monster is sitting atop you, and you’re sure you won’t be able to draw enough air to live?”
Avery nodded. He knew.
“Sometimes”—Bernard’s head bowed but then he looked up defiantly—“a few years ago, I used to think that it wouldn’t be so awful if I didn’t.”
“Bernard—”
The boy looked up, his face angry. “I know. It was cowardly. But I got so tired of worrying Mother and Miss Bede, of being afraid myself.”
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