My Dearest Enemy (11 page)

Female voices filled the halls from dawn to dusk with noisome music, trilling, warbling, croaking, laughter as light and incidental as a stone skipping on a mirrored pond, quarrelsome voices as harsh as a faulty brake. Or, sometimes, a murmur as fluid as a night bird's low call, like Lily Bede's—damn!

The woman sneaked into his thoughts, catching him unawares at the most improbable moments. He'd once seen a shaman employ a crude figurine likeness of a man to curse him. The shaman had sent demons to visit his enemy, demons only the cursed man could see. Drove the poor blighter stark raving mad. Avery was half tempted to search Lily Bede's room for his own waxen image because he could not get the blasted woman out of his mind.

Bloody hell. He was a gentleman, the penultimate example of self-control. God knew he'd spent his first two decades training himself in that discipline. He would
not
want her.

He rounded the corner and slowed, noting anew how the Mill House of his memory compared to the reality. He remembered acres of wainscoted hallways and cavernous rooms with cathedral height ceilings, a million esoteric tomes stocking the library shelves, and a battalion of footmen cleaning hundreds of glass windows.

In fact the rooms had two windows each; their ceilings were a uniform nine feet high; and the library was stocked with the overwrought sensations of forty years ago, not the lost Shakespearean folios he'd imagined. Mill House was simply a large country home with few pretensions and those it had, he found amusing. A stained glass oriel window, a Sevres vase; if he recalled correctly there was even a ballroom in one of the wings of the second floor. He liked the reality of Mill House, the uncluttered, relaxed atmosphere better even than he remembered.

"Mr. Thorne, sir?" A girl with red hair waddled up to him, her arms loaded with sheets, her face bright with her exertions.

"Yes, Merry?"

His query drew a burst of unwarranted hilarity. The housemaids' reactions to his simplest words were so universal that had he been in Africa he would have assumed this was some sort of ritual greeting.

"Oh, sir!" she gasped, pressing her hand to her belly. "Bless you, sir, you remembered my name!"

"Of course I did. You're the only redheaded preg— redheaded Merry employed here." This brought on a fresh onslaught of giggles.

Avery glanced worriedly at the girl's stomach. He'd once attended a birthing in an igloo. His only other choice had been to stand outside in -40 degree gale winds, an option he'd happily elected until he'd lost the feeling in his feet. The ensuing hours had been instructional. He'd no desire to ever repeat them again.

Avery scowled at her. "What do you want?"

"Miss Bede says I was to find you and ask what you wanted done with the invitations."

"What invitations?"

"The invitations from the local gentry," she explained, "for parties and soirees and fetes and balls and dances and musicales and picnics and such."

"I haven't any idea of what to do with the bloody invitations. Give them to Miss Bede." He started past her. She stepped in his way.

"I did," she said, "and she told me to give them to you, sir, so's you can decide which ones to accept. She said they're already piling up and 'as to be answered."

"She did, did she?"

What sort of game was Lily playing now? And where the blazes was she anyway?

Yesterday, she'd been his shadow. If she'd looked in the least bit happy about it he would have suspected her of nefarious purposes, but she wore an air of such pained resignation he could only guess she kept close to make sure he didn't nip off with the silver. She obviously disliked men—a fact made clear by her political associations and her letters.

"Merry—quiet girl," he growled as she started up that incessant giggling. "If I'm missaying your name just tell me. No? Fine, then listen. I am unacquainted with anyone within forty miles of Mill House. Therefore, in spite of Miss Bede's touching determination to include me in her entertainments, please inform her that I have no interest whatsoever in which parties she attends or does not attend. I certainly have no intention of accompanying her—what the bloody hell is that sound you're making?" he asked in horror.

"Ohmigawd!" The girl's eyes bulged and her knees buckled. She teetered over. Avery caught her and swung her up in his arms. Her stack of linens hit the ground with a thud. "Now I'll have to take 'em down to the laundry again!" she wailed.

"Good Lord, girl, are you daft? You ought to be with a midwife, not huffing around hallways. Has Miss Bede no decency? How can she force you to work in your condition?"

The girl blinked. "Miss Bede," she said in a solemn tone, "is a bleedin' saint. I wouldn't have no home at all if it weren't for her and neither would some of the other girls here."

And hires you cheaply, too. The cynical thought appeared.

The more he saw of Lily's economizing the less he liked it. They dined like kings yet Lily kept only three pregnant maids to do the work required by twice as many. Francesca dressed in the latest fashions and yet Lily dressed like an impecunious… squire. She should at least wear dresses. The once lovely rose gardens had gone wild through neglect yet twenty retired race horses ate oats in the stables.

Self-indulgence and parsimony abided hand in hand in Lily's management of Mill House, the estate getting the parsimony, Lily's favorites getting the indulgence. He had to admit that it had been a shrewd move to hire desperate girls. Each would do the work of two, happy to have any job at all.

He'd never doubted Lily's intelligence. Now he found himself suspecting her ethics. He didn't like it, particularly as his doubts didn't cool his ardor. What sort of gentleman had a preoccupation with such a woman? Yet he found himself unwilling to believe the worst of her.

Grimly, Avery hefted Merry higher against his chest, as he looked around for someplace to set her. Not a chair or bench in sight.

"Coo!" The girl's eyes went as round as her mouth. "Teresa said you'd be as strong as a young bullock."

Young bullock
? He was being compared in the servants quarters to a young
bullock
? His mouth flattened. "Do you think you can stand—"

Before he could finish his question her arms wound around his neck in a stranglehold. Another groan escaped her lips. Dear Lord, she couldn't be—

"Is it happening?" he demanded. Where the hell was Lily? He needed to get Merry down to her room.

"It?" Merry asked blankly. "Oh!
It
. No, sir. Bless you, sir. The little bugger just rammed his foot into me bladder is all.
It
isn't going to happen for a while yet."

Avery stared at the enormous belly so close to his nose. Ridiculous. No one could go about like that for "a while yet." There were certain laws of physics that demanded obedience and gravity was one of them.

"Just give me a moment more to catch me breath, sir. Now let me see, what was it I was sent to tell you… ?"

"Something about invitations," he prompted.

"Right you are, sir!" Merry beamed up at him. "I was just about to say as how the invitations is all for you, sir."

"Impossible," he said impatiently. "I just told you. I don't know anyone."

"But Mr. Thorne, you're
Mr. Thorne
. That's all you'd need be, but you're also Mr. Thorne what folks round here is been reading about for years. The gentry is mad with curiosity." Merry's head bobbed up and down. "Every last card is addressed to you. Miss Bede never gets invitations. Occasionally Miss and Mrs. Thorne do, but not Miss Bede. Not from the locals."

For some reason this set fire to his already exacerbated temper.

"I'm not surprised," he ground out. "Given time that woman could alienate an entire nation what with striding all over the countryside in those ridiculous bloomers and her arms swinging like a navy's. Did you see her yesterday morning?" he demanded. Merry's eyes grew round. "She was outside. Walking down the drive. And her hair was down.
Down
. For the whole bloody world to see!"

"Yes, sir," Merry said meekly.

"For God's sake don't cringe, girl. Do you see Miss Bede cringing? You do not. And why should she? I'm the gentlest of men!"

"Yes, sir," Merry agreed.

"
A. gentleman
," he went on forcefully, "a breed I'm sure you're unfamiliar with living under Miss Bede's regime, you poor creature."

The girl glanced down at the huge mound of her stomach. "Oh, I assure you," she muttered, "I've known my share of gentlemen."

"And as for the damned gentry around here not inviting her to their little parties," Avery shouted, "we'll bloody well see about that!"

"Really, Thorne," a familiar female voice rose from the stairwell, its clarion challenge as easily ignored as a train whistle, "you must learn to control the volume of your bellows. I could hear you from all the way upstairs."

Lily Bede appeared at the top of the stairs. Her gorgeous black eyes widened a second.

"Miss Bede," Avery said, facing off with her, "I do not bellow. I speak in a clear, easily heard voice. I was speaking to this young woman"—he bent his head at Merry—"
trying
to make a point."

Lily paid no attention to the little maid. She strode toward him, her chin held up in that entirely provocative way. "Some people make their point without shouting down the rafters. Were your travel companions by any chance deaf or is it you who have a hearing impairment?" she asked serenely.

"My hearing is perfect," he said, "as was my companions'. Indeed, I do not remember ever having raised my voice during the nearly five years I spent in their company."

She lifted one eyebrow in patent disbelief.

"And," he went on, determined not to increase his volume by so much as a decibel, "
if my
voice is raised it is only because I am sorely tested."

Primarily by Lily. Her hair was down again, and her collar was open, as though she'd forgotten to button it and he could see the fragile, shallow indentation that delineated her collarbone and the end of her lovely, long throat.

"Do I dare ask what so sorely tested you
this
morning?" she asked sweetly. "Last evening it was your wardrobe."

"None of my clothes fit," he replied, pleased with his calm tone. "I was merely expressing my exasperation with the situation."

"You were shouting," she said flatly. "This morning you were 'sorely tested' by my request that you limit smoking those filthy weeds to the outside."

He glowered at her. Perhaps he had protested her unreasonable request a shade more strenuously than a gentleman ought.

"And after luncheon you were 'sorely tested' because you misplaced some book—"

"My journal," he growled. "And I did
not
misplace it. One of the servants secreted it away!"

"
She put it on the bookshelf
," Lily shouted back. "I'm sure she thought putting your book on your bookshelf wouldn't pose too great a challenge to your deductive capabilities."

"I didn't
leave
it on the bookshelf," he shot back. "I left it on the desk, which is where I wanted it. And I'd thank you to relay this information to the woman who does my room."

"Do it yourself." Her eyes flashed. "You're holding her."

Throughout this entire exchange Merry, cradled in Avery's arms, had maintained absolute silence. Now she produced a sickly smile. "Won't happen again, sir. I'll just leave everything right where you puts it." She looked so miserable, he couldn't remain angry with her.

"Fine then," he said kindly. "I'm sure you meant no harm."

"Is there anything else you wish to tell Merry?" Lily asked.

Avery glanced down at the girl. "No."

"Then why don't you put her down? Unless, of course," she said turning her gaze on Merry, "you object, Merry dear."

Merry squirmed. "No. Not at all. Not me," she said. "You can put me down now, sir."

Avery lowered her to the ground and stepped back, keeping one hand at ready in case she lost her balance.

"I feel much better. Thank you for your kindness." With amazing agility, Merry squatted, gathered up the pile of linens and scuttled away.

Lily watched Merry go with a sense of amusement mixed with relief. Merry was, to put it bluntly, incorrigible. But for one horrible instant, coming upon them, she'd thought she'd interrupted a tryst. Until she'd seen Avery's face. He'd been completely oblivious to any impropriety. Even in Lily's admittedly limited ex-perience men did not look blankly oblivious unless they were.

No, Avery was simply doing what the situation demanded. The fact that others might not think well of him standing about a hallway holding a pregnant maid would never have occurred to him. Avery Thorne, for all his insistence on being a gentleman, was about as conversant with social niceties—and social prejudices—as a magpie was with Latin. And God help her, it only made her like him.

She couldn't afford to
like
Avery Thorne. He'd come to claim the home she'd worked five years to obtain.

She turned around. Bad idea. He was standing right beside her, so close her shoulder brushed his chest, sending tendrils of electricity coursing through her.

Luckily, he was scowling at Merry's departing back and did not notice her interest. She studied him.

He still hadn't acquired any new shirts and this one pulled tightly, clearly revealing the muscles of his chest. He'd dispensed with collars altogether—none came close to closing around his neck. He wore a pair of loose, much-laundered khaki trousers that did absolutely nothing to dampen her intrigue. They draped low around his hips and hung from his legs, hinting at the powerful muscles.

Lily bit her lip in frustration. This proximity thing was not working. She'd spent all of yesterday following him around waiting for the brain fever to break.

Her infatuation hadn't dimmed; it had grown. She had to do something about it.

"Should she be working this close to her… to her… now?" Avery suddenly turned, leveling an accusatory gaze upon her.

"Now?" Lily echoed, lost in contemplation of his newly shaved skin.