My Dearest Enemy

by Connie Brockway

  “Who do you think?” Francesca said owlishly.

  “Avery Thorne?” Lily asked incredulously and burst out laughing. Francesca’s knowing expression crumpled in indignation.

  “I never suggested him.” Francesca slouched further down in her chair and nursed her glass close to her chest. A sly, conspiratorial look came over her face. “But Avery Thorne, in case you’ve managed to forget, has a vested interest in seeing that your expenditures far exceed your ability to pay. Maybe you should go and have a little talk with him.”

  Lily tried not to laugh again—after all, Francesca had her best interests at heart—but it was difficult. “I’m sorry, Francesca,” she said, “but the idea of Avery Thorne creeping anywhere is absurd. He can’t even walk without the floors shaking and really, sneaking about is hardly his style.”

  She held up her hand to still the protest she could see forming on Francesca’s lips. “I do not deny that Avery Thorne has a good motive to vandalize this house, but if he decided he wanted to break a window in order to gain Mill House, he’d simply pick up the nearest piece of furniture and heave it through the glass. And be damned to who witnessed it.”

  “Hmph. I still think you should confront him. Right now.”

  “In the middle of the night?” Lily asked. The thought of Avery Thorne and darkness made illicit images leap in her mind. “Besides, I tell you, Avery Thorne would never do such a thing.”

  Francesca shook her head, blowing a gusty little sigh. “So much faith. So much confidence in a man’s honor. I was never so naïve.”

  “I know the man’s temperament,” Lily assured her.

  “Or his heart,” Francesca suggested.

  Her words sobered Lily. She didn’t know anything about Avery Thorne’s heart. She knew only about her own. His kiss had destroyed her peace of mind and given her a glimpse of her own unsuspected capacity for passion—and perhaps something even more improbable.

  She’d fought a losing battle with her infatuation, except she wasn’t certain she could call it infatuation anymore. Now, her only defenses against Avery were his own lack of interest in her and his aggressive, self-assured masculinity, something that fascinated her almost as much as it provoked her.

  What must it be like to be so confident, always certain you were right, never doubting yourself, your place in the world, or your ability to hold it? Who wouldn’t find such power seductive? She sighed and caught Francesca watching her with a sidelong glance.

  “You’re a romantic, Francesca,” she said, winning a crooked smile from the older woman.

  “Am I?” she asked.

  “Yes. A rather tired romantic right now,” Lily added.

  Francesca held her glass up to the light and stared at the candle through the faceted surface as though it held the mysteries of the universe.

  “Why don’t you go to bed?”

  “Why don’t you?” Francesca rejoined absently.

  Lily rose. “Because I’ve ledgers to balance and bills to pay and numbers to juggle.”

  “And I’ve a past to balance and debts to repay and memories to juggle.” She glanced fleetingly toward Lily. “The business of being a failed romantic is an arduous one.”

  “I never said you were failed,” Lily said softly.

  Francesca smiled. “I know. I did. Be off with you, child. I like my own company tonight. Something rare enough that I think it warrants investigation.”

  “You’re sure?” Lily asked, not wanting to leave Francesca here alone with a full decanter and an empty past.

  Francesca waved her away and Lily finally left her, walking the short distance down the hall to the library and the stack of waiting bills and accounts that never seemed to grow smaller.

  Avery couldn’t concentrate. He flung down the magazine that carried his latest serialized story and stared broodingly out of his bedroom’s rain-lashed window. She danced through his thoughts; she overwhelmed his sanity; she played havoc with his reason. She was simply there. In his mind, in his blood … in his heart.

  When she’d lain beneath him today, her eyes devouring his soul, her hips pressed intimately between his thighs, and asked him in that throaty, breathless little voice if he was going to take his potshot, he’d almost done it. Only his stellar code of conduct had saved her—for all of three minutes.

  Because as soon as she’d whispered her taunt, he’d taken that flimsy excuse and the equally bogus one of reciprocation and taken his kiss. Her body had been as good as naked. His own had been rock-hard with urgency.

  As soon as she’d struggled he’d let her go, afraid of what he would do next, of what he would say, and fled.

  He never did see the Camfield chits and their dear friends. He’d been on his way to clean up in the kitchen sink when he’d heard an enormous crash heralding Lily’s arrival. He’d raced to the front hall where she stood wild-eyed and dripping mud, then the others had arrived.

  At dinner she’d avoided his eye, keeping her lovely, fierce countenance lowered to her plate, testing his resolve to behave in a civil manner. She was in his blood far more intimately than a mere fever. She was like malaria, lying dormant and seemingly harmless for weeks, months, and sometimes years before recurring with virulent, devastating intensity. And like malaria, he doubted he’d ever be cured. He could only hope for some measure of control.

  He rose from his chair and prowled restlessly to the window, looking out. Two stories below light spilled from the library window. He pulled Karl’s gold watch from his pocket. Even this, which should have been a reminder of his dear friend, reminded him more of her.

  He closed the gold lid. Who would be up at this hour? Bernard? The boy had once mentioned how he liked to read late into the night. Perhaps he wanted company. Avery would welcome some distraction from the uneasy path of his thoughts.

  He pulled his shirt on without bothering to button it and headed out the door and down the staircase. He didn’t light a candle. He’d excellent night vision.

  At the bottom of the stairs his attention was drawn to another, fainter light coming from the sitting room. He frowned. Was the whole blasted family nocturnal? Perhaps it was Lily. Cautiously, so as not to startle her, he looked in.

  Francesca lay half-sprawled in the corner of the divan, one arm tucked beneath her cheek, her mouth open, gently snoring. On the table before her two candles flickered uncertainly in a pool of wax. Her hair had come undone and her expensive gown was crushed and twisted. On the floor next to the divan stood a half full decanter and beside that a crystal wineglass lay on its side, a small dark stain on the carpet beneath.

  He angled his head, studying her. Even in sleep she looked worn and exhausted. Once, not so many years ago, she’d stood up to Horatio’s expectations and criticisms and stipulations with a valiance he couldn’t hope to emulate. Now he saw what it had cost her and he wondered if she counted the price worth it.

  Oddly, in her faded dishevelment he found her much more appealing than he ever had when she’d played the naughty, wild, and irresistible siren even his schoolmates had whispered about.

  He approached quietly and bent down and picked her up. Gently, he bore her down the hall past the library and into the apartments she used. Even more gently he deposited her on the big down-filled bed and lit a candle so that if she woke disoriented, she wouldn’t be afraid. He pulled a blanket over her shoulders and brushed the hair from her face.

  “Good night, Miss Thorne,” he murmured and turned.

  Lily stood in the doorway, her dark eyes reflecting the candlelight. He raised a finger to his lips and moved by her, taking her wrist and pulling her into the hall. Quietly, he closed the door behind them before leading her back into the library.

  “Is she like this often?” he asked.

  His voice was soft, not a whit of censor to it, only sadness. She’d never known, never even imagined, that a man could have so kind a heart. She’d watched as he looked down at his cousin. She’d waited for the sneer of contempt for someone o
lder and weaker than himself, at the very least an expression of frustration or disapproval. But there had been only tenderness.

  He filled her with dread. Power and compassion.

  “Is she?” he asked again. He was standing close, so close she could see the tiny flecks of copper forming a starburst at the center of his eyes.

  She shook her head, as much to clear her thoughts as to answer him. “No. Not often. The summer storms seem to bring on these moods.”

  He ran his hand through his hair and for the first rime she noticed that his shirt was undone and hung open over his chest. It said much about his preoccupation with Francesca that he himself did not appear to notice his unclad state.

  He was beautiful. His chest was broad, covered with an inverted triangle of fine dark hair. The skin cleaving tightly to hard muscle beneath was fine-grained and clear except for four thick, ragged purple lines running roughly parallel up his left breast and disappearing beneath his shirt.

  She touched the scar before she realized what she was doing. He flinched back as though she’d stroked him with a white-hot poker, his hand flashing up as though to ward off an attack. She ignored his hand and his step back, moving forward and touching the raised, damaged flesh again. This time he went utterly still.

  “There really was a tiger.”

  “What?” He looked down at her fingertips pressed lightly above his left nipple and prayed for composure. “Tiger. Yes. There really was a tiger.”

  “And he really did maul you.”

  “Yes. She. It was a she.”

  She had to take her hand from him. He couldn’t think. The scent of her, always a pleasant, illusive thing, thickened in his nostrils, making his head spin. He could damn near taste her scent. It filled the small space between them, using up the air, underpinned by another subtler fragrance. He backed up again and this time she didn’t follow.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked, returning to her desk chair and sinking down on it wearily, as if she’d just given up a fight.

  He shrugged, finding her problematic and enigmatic and wholly desirable. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “There was nothing much else to do. It was a way to fill the time, I guess. I couldn’t see sitting around London for five years waiting for Mill House. I’d already waited long enough.”

  She clasped her hands between her knees, allowing the guilt she’d held at bay for five years to finally surface. She’d known, of course, that somewhere in England a young man’s inheritance had been ruthlessly wagered away by an old, egocentric man. But she’d never let herself think of what he must have felt when he heard what Horatio had done to him. She did now. Even if she still had every intention of fighting for and ultimately attaining this house, her home, she had to acknowledge the monumental unfairness—no, the wickedness of it. If only there were some way both of them could win.

  “I can’t … I won’t let you have it, you know,” she said tiredly, meeting his eye.

  “I know,” he said. No ranting, no invectives, a simple acknowledgement of their positions on opposite sides of an unspannable breach. “And I wouldn’t let you have it if I could possibly stop it.”

  She nodded. He began buttoning his shirt as he wandered toward the desk, his gaze traveling over the furnishings and paintings with the same tender expression with which he’d looked at Francesca.

  “You love it, too,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “Mill House is like a friend you knew as a child and aren’t sure you’ll still like, but then you meet again and you discover that the changes the years have wrought in both of you rather than separate you, draw you even closer together. When I arrived, it wasn’t to the house I remember visiting as a boy. That was a palace set in a green park. But the Mill House I’ve discovered since I’ve been here is even better than a fairy tale castle.

  “It’s real.” He glanced at her to see if she understood. “It’s like a person, with quirks and oddities—the ivy that refuses to give up its place above the front door, the way a northeast wind causes the sitting room fire place to hum. It even has its own affectations like the oriel window and that ballroom on the second floor.” His smile was wry.

  “It’s simple and well-built, solid and enduring, without the weight of too much heritage pressing down on its tenants, or the sheen of newness masking its underlying quality. It’s a place where one can live and work and rest.” He shrugged. “A home.

  “I never had a home. I never had a family,” he went on. His tone held not the least bit of self-pity; it was a simple recitation of the facts. “Mill House is going to be both. My home and my legacy. A place to raise my children and for them to raise theirs.”

  She didn’t take umbrage with his assertion. She would have used the same words. “You want a family?”

  “That surprises you? Oh, yes. I want children. Many children, enough to take the dust covers off all the bedrooms up there.”

  She smiled.

  “Every child should have an older brother to emulate and a younger one to teach,” he went on, “one sister to admire and one to tease and a baby to coddle. I used to listen to the lads at school complaining about their siblings and I’d curse them for fools I was so jealous. I wanted a family so damn much.”

  He looked over at her. “And you? You’re an only child, too, aren’t you?”

  She spoke before she thought, the words, like her guilt, finding voice after what seemed a lifetime of silence.

  “No. I have a brother and a sister I’ve never met.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “I don’t understand,” Avery said.

  It was too late to recall the words, too late to smother the hurt that came from a lifetime of witnessing her mother’s torment.

  “My mother was married when she was sixteen.” At Avery’s expression she shook her head. “Not to my father. To Mr. Benton, a bookbinder. She had two children with him, a boy and a girl, Roland and Grace. She left him when she was nineteen.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. There was so much she didn’t know. Too much she did. “My mother wouldn’t say other than she could not live with him. If you knew my mother, her strength, her commitment and principles, you would accept that her reasons for leaving must have been good.”

  He nodded. He did not know the mother, but he knew her child. If Lily had inherited her character, her mother had been a woman of courage.

  “Where are your half-siblings?” he asked. “Why haven’t you ever seen them?”

  “I don’t know where they are.” The emptiness with which she spoke those simple words bespoke a void of long standing. “After she left, Mr. Benton found her and took the children. He swore she would never see them again. He didn’t lie.”

  He could not conceive of a mother allowing her children to be taken from her. “Why didn’t she care enough to fight for them?”

  “Care enough?” she echoed. “She broke her heart with caring. She stood outside the door to his home each day for weeks and each day the police came and took her away and each day she came back. She kept coming back until Mr. Benton found a magistrate and had her committed to an asylum.”

  She placed her folded hands on the desk, too carefully. “My father was among the directors overseeing the asylum. He met her there and immediately realized she was not insane, or perhaps insane, but only with grief and he made it his cause célèbre to have her released. But by the time she’d been freed, Mr. Benton had immigrated to Australia with the children.”

  It was inconceivable, barbaric. “They can’t have put her in asylum simply for wanting to see her children.”

  Lily’s sad, answering smile was much wiser than her years should have allowed.

  “Laws have changed,” Avery protested. “Today a woman has the right to sue for divorce, she can enter contracts, she can own property—”

  “But not her children,” Lily broke in. Seeing his uncertainty she continued. “Legitimate children are property, p
roperty a man owns. Should a man decide his wife is unfit he can remove her children from her and the law stands behind that decision.”

  Yes, he thought numbly. How could he have forgotten? The long school months, the even longer weeks of vacation when he and other aristocratic orphans haunted Harrow’s empty yards. He’d been property, all right, paltry property. Dross goods.

  Lily’s gaze was fastened on her hands. They were clasped tightly now, with the white-knuckled fervency of a religious zealot at prayer.

  “There has to be something she could have done,” he insisted.

  “No. A woman can’t even seek redress. She has no recourse except—” She broke off abruptly, flushing.

  He understood then, as clearly as if Lily had explained. He recognized in Lily’s confused abashment the legacy of sadness and bitterness left by her mother, a woman falsely imprisoned in an insane asylum, her children stolen from her. He looked at Lily and knew as certainly as if she’d told him her mother’s mode of revenge. She had made sure that Mr. Benton never had a legal relationship with a woman again.

  Outside the rain fell softly. Inside the candle lights studded the night-dark room with stars. “They were never divorced.”

  She shook her head. Didn’t Lily understand what had been done to her? The selfishness of it appalled him.

  “Why not?” he asked. “She could have easily rid herself of him on the grounds of abandonment. Why didn’t she marry your father?” He had no right to ask these questions, no right to demand answers.

  “Can’t you understand?” Lily lifted her gaze. Her eyes caught the candlelight, reflected back the golden flame like a cat’s. “An unwed mother retains sole custody for her child. My mother had already lost two children. She’d never risk losing another.”

  “But your father, surely he must have wanted—”

  “My father was an extraordinary man. He accepted her decision.” Her words cut coldly through his passionate renunciation of her father’s consent to such an intolerable situation. “He understood.”