My Dearest Enemy (8 page)

Your cousin, Bernard Thorne

"So, she intends to sell my home, does she?" Avery's slight smile faded. "And what the blazes does the boy mean,
if I
were a gentleman?"

Absently he pulled Karl's gold timepiece from his pocket. The five years of his "hiatus" were nearly up and, as he'd expected, apparently Lily Bede was in desperate straits. Flooded out the spring crop, had she? It would be a wonder if there was anything left of his estate to refurbish after she was done with her tenancy.

Perhaps he ought to return to England early, see just what sort of challenge awaited him before he took over. Truth be told, he was tired of wandering. His longing for a home had never been more pointed or more insistent. Just a month or so early. What harm could it do? Besides, he could then sort out what should, or in her case
could
, be done with Lily Bede.

Yes, he thought pocketing the watch, there were any number of reasons why he should return to England now. He strode off down the wharf.

Mill House, Devon May 1892

Lily raced down the hallway, muttering imprecations against Evelyn for having left that very morning for a week in Bath.

Why now of all times had that blasted school bowed to her repeated demands and allowed Bernard to come home? And how had Bernard made the long trip alone? She'd been dumbfounded when Teresa, as swollen as an October pumpkin and still two months from lying in, had grinned toothily that a
Mister
Thorne was waiting to receive her in the library.

Mister
Thorne, indeed, and
receive
her? The boy was giving himself airs.

Blast Teresa anyway. She knew how the boy discomforted her. Last time Bernard had been home he'd dogged her footsteps from dawn to dusk. Lily recognized the signs of an incipient crush; she just had no idea what to do about one.

She didn't want to destroy his youthful, masculine confidence—and frankly Bernard, with his tall lanky body, narrow chest, and dark-ringed eyes, was going to need as much bolstering as he could get. She mustn't treat him like a boy. But not a man. Maybe a boyish man or a manly boy—

Blast! Now Lily, she thought, pausing at the threshold of the drawing room and patting her hair, he is twelve years old. Surely you can handle one boy-child barely into his double digits. Banter. Be avuncular and warm. But still, above all, refuse to acknowledge a soulful stare. Or anything else soulful, for that matter.

She took a deep breath, entered the library, and looked around. There he was, sitting in a big wing-backed chair turned toward the window. Dark, tumbled locks appeared above the back of the chair. The poor lad must have added even more inches to his ungainly body.

"Darling!" she greeted him. "I see you're making yourself comfortable. Excellent." There was no response.

He was shy, perhaps bolstering his courage before facing her. She pitied him. He'd arrived to find his mother gone, his aunt who-knows-where, and his only greeting from a woman on whom he had a crush. She remembered crushes. They hurt.

"Come now, m'lad." Her tone oozed with bonhomie. "What say you and I raid the larder? You must be starving after your journey and I know where Francesca hides her best bonbons from Bon Street." She waited. Not even a titter of laughter at her weak sally.

"We've been discussing what you might like for your birthday. It quite occupies our evenings of late." She edged closer. "Lead soldiers? Too childish. One of these new camera boxes? How about a fishing pole? Mill House boasts a most promising creek." She pulled out her trump card. "I hear your cousin Avery is a rabid angler."

He wouldn't be able to resist. Bernard's worship of Avery Thorne was a matter of record. Sure enough, she thought she detected a slight stirring from the chair.

"I know we haven't spent much time together lately and I regret that," she said softly. "But we can soon set that right. What better place to become reacquainted than on the banks of a pretty creek? What say you, sir? Come and let your auntie Lil greet you with a hug."

And now at last there was definite movement from the chair. Strong tanned hands, a thick gold signet ring adorning the smallest finger of the left, clutched the chair arms and pushed. A tall figure—exceedingly tall, broad-shouldered, straight, and masculine—rose and turned to face her.

"As pleasant as a hug sounds," the man drawled in soft, sardonic tones, "I'm afraid I'll make do with the bonbons… Auntie Lil."

Lillian Bede was stunning
. The shock of her appearance capsized all his preconceptions and left Avery floundering for words.

Thank God, he'd already schooled his expression to blandness before turning. He wasn't sure he would have been able to say anything halfway intelligent had he seen her first and then, not two minutes into their first meeting, Lily Bede would have had the upper hand. Stunning or not, the one thing nearly five years of correspondence with this woman had taught him was that Lily Bede ought never,
ever
, to have the upper hand.

Broad across the cheeks and brow, her face narrowed to a small, squared jaw. Exotically tilted eyes studied him, fringed by such a wealth of lashes that they shadowed the clear whites. Her mouth was as full-lipped as an Egyptian's and as red as though she'd been sipping a cherry cordial. Clouds of tightly coiling, inky black hair had been pulled atop her head, accenting her long, slender throat and adding height to an already impressive figure.

Stunning
, Avery thought once more.
Lily Bede
. It wasn't right.

She lifted her hand to her throat, in a gesture both alluring and defensive, drawing his attention to her garb. She wore what looked like a man's plain linen shirt and a dark, gored wool—by God, she was wearing bloomers! In spite of—or maybe because of—the severe, masculine garb, she looked exotic and out of place, like an odalisque in sackcloth.

Abruptly he realized that he'd been dumbly eyeing her for a full minute. Of course, she was taking her time studying him, too. But the expression in her eyes was hardly appreciative.

"You'll forgive me," she said at last, "I thought you were someone else." Her charmingly precise upper class accent only emphasized her foreign appearance.

He must be mad. Lily Bede, first stunning, now charming. "I'm delighted to make your ac—"

"Is there much luggage?" she asked.

"No. Not much." He crossed the room toward her. Her skin was the color of Tahitian sand and when she tipped her head to look up at him he could see a scar beneath one straight, dark brow. "As I was about to say, I'm delighted to finally meet you, Miss Bede. I appreciate your—"

"I don't think you and I need waste time with social niceties." She took a step back. "Where's Bernard?"

Play lady of the manor with him, would she? "I don't know," he answered. "Have you misplaced him?"

"I?" Startled, her eyes widened. They were as black as Turkish coffee, clear and rich. Abruptly they narrowed. "Listen, sir. I don't appreciate familiarity from Bernard's escort and I doubt Harrow's deans will either. Who are you, anyway? The football coach?"

Good God. The chit didn't know who he was. He felt as though she'd struck him. True, he would never have picked her out of a crowd as the author of the astringent letters that had followed him through four continents, but he'd only an ill-remembered newspaper caricature to guide him. She had no such excuse. His damn picture hung in the upper hall—he went still. At least, it had.

Forgetting his resolve to remain cool, calm, and impeccably polite, he strode past her into the hall. Behind him, he heard the rustle of her blasted bloomers.

"I say, you can't just—"

He ignored her, bent on discovering the whereabouts of his portrait. It was the only portrait of him in existence, done at his uncle's insistence. True, it had never meant a bloody thing to him before but it had lately—very lately—gained considerable importance. It was the principle of the thing. How dare she have it taken down?

"Just who do you think you are?" Lily panted, struggling to keep up, her heavy bloomers swishing angrily. "I'll have your job for this!"

He stalked down the central hall, vaguely aware of a certain elegant paucity in the rooms he passed, a bare but gleaming ebony table, the well worn oriental runner with the frayed binding, the smell of beeswax and lemon oil. He mounted the curving staircase and turned into the wing where some of the family's countless pictures had always hung. There, right beside his great grandmother, Catherine Montrose, it should have—

He stopped. There, where it had always been, clear as day, hung his portrait. It wasn't even tilted.

With a scowl, Avery turned. Lily Bede stood a foot behind him, hand on hips, spots of carnelian edging each cheekbone.

"If you're not out of my house in two minutes, I shall have you thrown out." The upper-crust accent still rode high, but the imperious Lady Bountiful attitude had fallen into the ditches.

Throw him out of
her
house? Her gaze locked with his as he moved closer. She didn't retreat. She would, Avery realized, go toe-to-toe with him rather than back up.
This
woman he had no trouble identifying. Combative, curt, self-sufficient—

"How you ever got through the front door in the first place…" Her voice trailed off as her gaze swept past him to his portrait, paused, and snapped back. She had an exceptionally expressive face, ridiculously easy to read. Right now horror suffused every feature. Good.

He took up the pose he'd held for the months of the painting's creation. "A good likeness, don't you think?"

"Thorne." Her voice was flat.

"Yes."

"What
are you
doing here?"

"Now is that any way to greet your faithful correspondent after so many years?"

"Faithful?" she echoed tartly. "It seemed to me that I was the faithful one since I maintained the burden of discovering your whereabouts for five years. I felt like I was on some ridiculous scavenger hunt, what with the clues and hints you wrote me about your next location. If it hadn't been for the friends my parents had scattered about the globe I doubt I'd have succeeded in ever finding you. Sometimes I didn't. Not once did you inform me of where—last winter I was sure you were dead." She broke off and shook her head as though angry she'd been sidetracked. "
What
did you say you were doing here?"

"I didn't." He held up one hand. "I should think my presence here is self-explanatory. Your five years tenancy is nearly up, I had no pressing desire to further my travels and I thought I'd come here and scout out the terrain. See what sort of situation you're leaving me. One is always advised to do decent reconnaissance before heading into new territory."

"You're making an awfully large assumption," Lily Bede said stiffly. "What if Mill House is making a profit?"

He smiled. Presumably it looked gracious. It did not feel that way, however. "Well, then if I'm proved wrong, I shall simply use these weeks as a welcome respite from my travels. There's really no need to look so suspicious."

"I am naturally suspicious. God willing, I shall remain that way." She kept looking at his portrait and back again at him, as if by doing so she would discover some anomaly that would allow her to have him thrown out as an imposter. But with each glance her expression just grew bleaker. "Where will you be stay-ing?"

"Why"—he looked around and opened his hands in an encompassing gesture—"here. At Mill House. It's still up for grabs, isn't it? I mean its ultimate ownership won't be decided until August, will it?"

"Correct." The word came out between stiff lips. Lips that looked much better soft and relaxed.

He looked away.
Not wise to think that way, Avery old son, he told himself. Not at all wise
.

"Good," he said. "I just wanted to make sure I understood the situation. Besides, Bernard invited me. As Mill House's
current
occupant you can, of course, refuse me." He tilted his head, mockingly recognizing her authority.

"I wouldn't dream of it. You're more than welcome to stay… as Bernard's
guest
."

"Thank you."

She scowled, her consternation evident in the tension of her face, the color staining the skin of her throat. The sight riveted him.

He'd had little experience with women. His parents had died when he was seven. Having lived already several years in the care of a boarding school, Avery's life hadn't changed appreciably. One absentee guardian had simply replaced another, his parents' for Horatio Thorne. It certainly hadn't brought him into any more contact with females.

He recognized his own deeply guarded susceptibility to beautiful women, just as he recognized the reasons for it. At the same time he realized how absurd the ugly looked yearning for the beautiful. Luckily, he had no masochistic tendencies.

So he'd traded clipped comments with a few young women at the fewer parties he attended and contented himself with admiring from afar. He'd never allowed himself to want. Never.

But on the passage to England a pretty blond heiress had sought his acquaintance. She'd been on the first leg of a world tour and had, he'd realized within an hour of their introduction, decided he would be her first stop.

She'd been warm and willing and she'd sighed dreamily that she'd never been with an adventurer before. If she hadn't wanted
him
, she'd apparently wanted something he'd represented—though God knew what that was—and he'd had no intention of questioning too carefully what. After they'd parted he'd thought of her only in a fond and remote way, as he well knew she thought of him, because the blond darling had never represented a danger to his heart. Or he to hers.

This,
her
, Lily Bede, was another matter entirely.

Lily Bede had read his words for over four years. He had for her a deep respect, one reserved for worthy opponents, and a certain bizarre appreciation for her undeniable wit. Dangerous enough without having her look like the distillation of his every carnal dream. And very dangerous—not to mention stupid—to give that sort of power to a woman who had stated quite openly that she intended to rob him of his inheritance. Clearly, she mustn't be allowed to know what weapons she had in her grasp.