Enemy of Mine (2 page)
In fact it is Brooklyn, September 12 in the Lord’s year of 1776
A
scream rent through the manor, much the way a musket shot could whiz by. It was beyond startling. It crawled into Lord General William Hill’s skin and settled there, forcing him to repress a grimace, while he raced to his chamber’s door. Unlatching it with a jerk, he rushed into the elaborately decorated yet stark white hallway, to be met by two maids and his own man of business racing toward him.
“Sir, I—” Paul, Will’s personal man, stammered.
Muffled sounds emerged from the closed door across from his own. Surely Paul hadn’t put the visiting lady so close to him? For some odd reason her letters of introductions and even her entrance into his rented house seemed beyond his recollection. He knew she was to stay with him, but much more than that he couldn’t remember.
Will stared at the door as he heard a husky woman’s voice repeat, “No, no, no...oh no.”
When had she arrived? At the dead of night?
It didn’t matter. His guest was obviously in need of something.
He looked down to the eldest of the maids. “Mrs. Jacobs, would you please see to our visitor. I will gladly assist in any way.” Formalities being what they were, he couldn’t barge into the strange woman’s chamber. Although he wanted to. The frantic way her silky voice kept repeating the word “no” made him want to run to her.
Mrs. Jacobs nodded, quietly knocked, then quickly entered the chamber, closing the door behind her.
Will heard a gasp, before Mrs. Jacobs’s hushed Irish brogue. “Lady Ferguson, is everything all right?”
Silence.
“Dear me, you look affright, ma’am. Where is your maid? I might seek her for your—”
“I don’t have a maid. At least—I don’t think I have a maid.”
That was odd. Why didn’t the lady bring her own maidservants? In fact, Will thought the younger of the maids, the one standing beside him still, belonged to the lady. He didn’t recognize the tall woman who seemed not at all perturbed by the lady’s distress.
Lady Ferguson’s lowered voice asked, “What—what’s the date?”
Silence again.
Will was about to yell through the door when he heard Mrs. Jacobs finally tell her. The lady gasped again.
He couldn’t stand idly by while the lady was obviously upset. But he couldn’t break down the door either. Or could he? Finally, he relented to just shouting through the damned thing.
“Does the lady need my assistance?”
“Does the lady need my lord’s assistance?” Mrs. Jacobs almost parroted.
Silence once more.
That was it! Although Will by nature was a taciturn man, he would never let a woman wait for help if he was close by. He didn’t think, but burst through the door, forgetting the latch and all.
Wood splintered around him, which made him momentarily distracted by his tactless efforts. But the goddess standing in the early morning’s sun, letting dandelion beams bounce off her long loose light blonde hair, took him aback. He didn’t see her bed, the floor, the windows, nothing, other than the vision before him. She had fashioned a bed sheet into an odd toga around her thin frame and was most decidedly uncovered. Will easily made out one of her ankles, a thoroughly feminine calf, one shoulder, and just the slightest wisp of a waist. The sight of her made him realize why the Greeks and Romans worshiped female deities. He’d bow low to her.
If he weren't thoroughly humiliated by his antics, that is.
She, for her part, didn’t seem affronted that he stared at her in her Greek garb but gazed upon him with the tiniest trace of a smile on her full pink lips, as if surprised, but happily so.
“It’s you,” she whispered.
He swallowed and looked at the floor. Ah, there was a floor in her room, and it was a dark oak. Staring at a notch in the wood, he forced his eyes to stay there. “I beg your pardon, my lady. I—I fear my anxiety at knowing what disturbed you got the better of me.”
Slowly he tried to walk backwards from the wholly lovely image, from her.
“Were you reading your correspondences? It’s the morning. Isn’t that what you do first thing?”
He halted, wondering about the odd question. Not being able to help himself, he stole another look at her. She bit her lower lip, as if confused or mayhap humiliated.
“Yes,” he said slowly. His voice rasped. He realized then that many people read their letters in the morning, and she was perhaps trying to make small talk. But of all the bloody times, when he’d like to step closer to her, only a foot away to behold her better. Nay, perhaps six inches. Two?
Will swallowed again.
“Heavens, just look what you’ve done to this door, my lord,” Mrs. Jacobs reproached.
He turned and saw the damage. The lady would never be able to close her door. He looked at Paul still in the hallway. “Please see to a carpenter immediately. The lady needs this fixed.”
Paul blinked, his dark brows cast down for a second, then he bowed. “Yes, my lord,” and left before Will could say anything further. That was why he preferred Paul. His man of business seemed to understand him better than most. But that look Paul had given him a moment before he’d left...it was just on the cusp of incredulous.
Indeed, Will surmised, he was acting like an idiot, breaking through doors for a lady. Who did he think he was? Some knight in shining armor, come to rescue the damsel? No, he told himself, he’d never amount to something so virtuous, not after all he’d done. Or didn’t do, in his case.
Mrs. Jacobs moved beside him, offering her unflappable calm. “My lord, seeing as how the lady’s not...attired. Perhaps you could visit later? I think her fine now.” Mrs. Jacobs’s spirited eyes danced as she leaned even closer, then whispered conspiratorially, “Just your presence appeased the lady. I will dress her and have her ready for you soon.”
Will blinked and nodded, unsure what to make of Mrs. Jacobs, of that comment, as if she were presenting their guest to him like a...like she was a...Lord, what was happening with his staff—and him!—this day?
He’d have to leave. After all, the lady was naked. Damnation.
He wouldn’t turn back to her, but said to the broken door, “I hope all is well with you, my lady. When...after...perhaps in a few...minutes...an hour, we may eat? Breakfast?” God, he hated how he stammered when nervous.
“Yes, I’d like—oh! But I don’t have anything to wear.”
He spun back toward her. It hadn’t been a good idea, for there she was, beautiful creature, bedecked with the sun, looking even more radiant than just moments before. Her cheeks took on the heat of spring’s cherry blossoms, and he wanted nothing more than to touch her visage.
Mrs. Jacobs opened a bureau. Silks of varying colors and woman’s linens were stacked or neatly hung.
Lady Ferguson blinked at the dresses. “Are those mine?”
Mrs. Jacobs nodded. “I would think so, my lady. My lord doesn’t wear this kind of finery.”
The lady giggled and drew delicate fingertips to her chest.
From the feminine chuckle to the toga, images floated behind Will’s eyes, making him feel too hot. His solar plexus exploded with aching pleasure. Lord, he was already infatuated. That was so like him to be attracted to a woman, a glorious one at that, who more than likely would never look at him as he did of her. She was divine. He was an old army hand, scarred in so many ways. Although only thirty-four, he felt his age well beyond his years. Not necessarily from warring, but because love had never been kind to him.
It was this thought that gave him fortitude. He could finally turn from the vixen and trudge his way to the door. There, he said, “At your leisure, my lady. We will have breakfast whenever it suits you. Take your time.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but found a nearby book and placed it on the inside of her door. With the weight of the novel wedged against the broken wood, the door hinged as shut as it ever would be. In the hallway he glanced at the maid before him, the one he didn’t recognize.
He tried to brush past but could have sworn he’d heard her say, “The lady is quite fetching, eh?”
“Pardon?” he asked incensed.
“The curdled cream, would you like me to fetch it for breakfast?”
He sighed and nodded. “Thank you.”
The maid left with a wide grin, and he could have sworn he’d smelled lavenders in her wake. Mediterranean lavenders.
P
inching was supposed to wake a person from an all too real dream, right? Erva bore down on her forearm, while a flock of maids came into her room to clean and dress her. Bruising herself, she winced, then looked up at her surroundings. They were the same as a second ago—shiny oak floor, huge four-post bed with orange and soft pink floral duvet, butter-colored couches and chairs close to a fireplace, a huge bureau, and a few small wooden tables here and there. Sunshine spilled in from wide-open windows, and nothing about this room was familiar.
She swallowed. Hard. It wasn’t a dream. This was one hell of a time to go crazy. She had classes to teach, papers to grade, her life.
Panicking should have commenced. She should scream again. Or close her eyes really tightly and hope to wake up to her own reality. But...it was him, William, the Hill, the second first earl—supposedly his father had gotten the earldom because he was the illegitimate heir to King George I. Oh, and William was a general. God, the man had more titles than she knew what to do with. She’d spent more time studying him than she’d been in any relationship with a man. She knew every detail, except that he was so handsome in reality, so tall and broad and muscular. Still, it was really him!
She supposed this was what it would be like to have a crush on a rock star and wake up in his house, have him so close she could smell him. God, she still could. Clean, he was so clean, like soap, but also masculine, like a spicy forest. She thought again of how striking he was. His likenesses hadn’t been close to capturing his squared jaw, the cleft in his chin, his slightly flared nose, and his clever blue eyes. And there was something a bit naughty about breeches, wasn’t there? Pants tight enough to make out thigh muscles, yet the crotch covered with...what was that thing called?
Erva was a military historian. Wanting to know what people wore two hundred years ago had been fascinating, but not needed for her career. Most everything she did know about the fashion was from reading novels. For her studies, however, she learned wars, battles, strategy, tactics, stratagems, and intelligence. This was the dawn of the spy, and William had several. She had so many questions to ask.
But the maids told her to stand in a basin, then the bed sheet was stripped from her, while a flurry of hands scrubbed her body. Mortified, because she never liked being naked in front of a group of strangers—who did?—she stood as still as she could, trying to cover her breasts. She tried not to whimper and protest, but this was really weird. In her own time, she wasn’t an aristocrat. Not even close. But it did make her wonder what it was like to have been a lady a couple hundred years ago. No privacy apparently.
Wait, she thought as her stomach dropped and fluttered, she was here, a couple hundred years ago.
Erva vaguely remembered the dream, where two beautiful, dark red heads dressed in gold had woken her from her drunken slumber and said that she would be given a
glimpse.
She could study William to her heart’s content, and come back to write even more about him.
The maids ordered her to leave the basin, dried her off, then began to get her dressed. Yes, she must have just snapped and gone insane. That had to be it, since she couldn’t wake up from the strange thought that two toga-wearing chicks had sent her here. Maybe she should fight off the madness. But she sighed, almost as if resigned to it. She had been so stressed for the last couple years. Dr. Meredith Peabody kept holding onto her dissertation, not letting her graduate. Meanwhile, Erva taught most of Dr. Peabody’s classes and her own. Add to that, a week ago Erva had found an article of Dr. Peabody’s, which had been outright plagiarism of her work. Then yesterday the dean had sat in every single one of her classes, and, yep, she was officially in Crazytown.
Erva was only slightly aware of the maids tugging at her. She’d never remember the order of how to get dressed. There were the stockings and petticoats—so many, the giant light blue dress and stomacher, and—geez, no wonder it took major help to get dressed. But her tornado-like thoughts kept returning to General Hill.
On a personal level, she knew next to nothing but the barest of facts about him. However, she knew his tactics. He was surprisingly bold. Aggressive. And calculating. In his altogether too short life, he’d never lost a battle. Not even the battle he died in.
Erva turned to the elderly maid who had come to her room earlier. “Excuse me, erm, pardon, but what date did you say it was?” For a second she worried that she appeared like an idiot asking
again
, but she had to know.
Mrs. Jacobs didn’t stop from tying something together at Erva’s waist and told her in a soothing voice. “My lady, it is September 12 in our Lord’s year of 1776.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry—”
Mrs. Jacobs waved a hand in the air. “’Tis no bother, my lady. I’ve only traveled the once from Ireland to here, and when I did, I felt I was in a fog. Seemed to do tricks with my memory, it did.”
Try traveling a little over a couple hundred miles and two hundred years, Erva thought, while she held in a fit of giggles. This was lunacy, for sure.
But to hell with it. She was in the house with the one man she knew better than any other. Her ex-husband didn’t even compare to the hours she’d slaved over finding primary documents about General Hill. With a rueful grimace, she wondered for the millionth time if that had been the reason for the divorce. She’d think about that later.
For now, she was insane, and with the man who history had ignored or tried to vilify or, worse, tried to make him out to be a drunkard and incompetent. But she would prove history wrong, even if she were arguing with figments of her imagination. Again she wondered if she should be trying to buck free from her psychosis. Then, she thought about Dr. Peabody stealing her work, the way she lived day in and day out in a drab apartment, overworked, undersexed, underappreciated, so little to offer her—well, she was willing to swallow the red pill please.
“Am I ready to see him? Er, to have breakfast?”
Mrs. Jacobs stood from straightening the gigantic blue silk skirt that Erva wore.
“Aye, my lady. You’re ready.” The maid bit her bottom lip, keeping a smile to herself, but Erva caught it nonetheless.
It didn’t matter if she appeared like a groupie. She was! This was the one man who could have changed the war for America’s Independence. If he had survived, that is. As it was, the clock was ticking. General William Hill had less than a week to live.
*
B
est not to appear too eager, Erva thought as she entered a gigantic dining room, or whatever it was called back then. Spending so much time learning how gunpowder was made, transported, and distributed did nothing for her knowledge of everyday things, like what a dining room would be called.
Immediately, William stood in the white walled and white marble floored room and bowed to her. Strips of happy sunshine poured through four tall and wide windows, illuminating the general in his red uniform, making him appear even more masculine and powerful. His black hair, tied neatly at the nape of his neck, radiated silver from the sunlight. And, God, his blue eyes emitted the brightest color of cobalt. He was mesmerizing. Erva internally shook herself to stop staring at him.
For two years when she was a teenager, she had been a ballerina—one of many hobbies she’d tried to perfect to please her mother, but she’d never curtsied outside a stage. She tried very hard not to giggle at how silly she felt as she reciprocated William’s manners. But this was so much fun.
“I trust you’ve had a good morning, my lady?”
William’s voice was much deeper than she had imagined it to be and rasped. She had thought it would be similar to her memories of her father’s, masculine yet soft, calming, nurturing.
She smiled. “Yes, my lord.” She almost laughed again at the titles. This was so inane.
A muscular man in black formal garb scooted back a seat at the other end of the table, indicating she was to sit there. It may as well have been a mile away from the general.
“May I please sit closer to the lord?”
The man bowed and walked like a pent tiger closer to William, whose shock he wore openly with arched dark brows. Oh, she’d probably overstepped etiquette by asking to sit closer to the man, but who cared. This was her craziness. She would do whatever the hell she wanted. For once.
After she sat, William lowered himself to his chair, almost unsteadily, appearing to tame his surprise.
Another man in stiff black appeared and bowed to her. “Would the lady care for some collared tongue this morning?”
Erva bit her bottom lip, trying not to burst out laughing. Again. But after the elderly man had made his offering, she’d glanced at William’s high collar. Now all she could think about was tonguing it. Not the collar. The general’s neck. God, could she act more like a lusty loon? She gulped down her fun and shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“Perhaps kidneys on toast then, madam?”
She wasn’t much of a meat eater, let alone an organ carnivore. Taking a glance at William’s plate, she discovered figs glazed with honey and plain toast. She beamed up at the general.
“I’ll have what he’s having, please.”
The servant bowed and began to take his leave, when Erva called out, “Thank you!”
The man turned to her again, bowed once more, then left.
Servants, she was not used to. Weren’t there supposed to be more of them, she wondered, as she skimmed over the room again. The maids who had dressed her had disappeared like a wild flock of doves, once she was clad in her costume. The only servant in the room was the man who had helped her into her chair. He was young, about William’s age, with warm brown hair and eyes that matched. Stocky like a wrestler, Erva thought the man could be intimidating. But maybe she thought that because he stood close to a white wall, staring at her, it seemed. Well, she probably didn’t quite fit in. After all, she’d insisted on not wearing that over-the-top pannier, which would have made her skirts as huge as Texas. Further, she knew she was glancing at everything like a wide-eyed teenage girl, meeting her rock-star crush.
She had to make it clear she was professional and only wanted to know more about William. His tactics, she meant.
“You feign frontal attacks when really you outflank and outmaneuver your opponent,” she said. “Who taught you how to do that?”
The general coughed from sipping coffee, grabbed a napkin, and covered his mouth. After recovering, he placed the cloth back on his lap, his eyes furiously studying his plate. “Pardon?”
Erva took a breath. Her own social tactics were less than desired. A nagging thought occurred that if this was merely a dream, then why wasn’t he doing exactly what she wanted? Why even have servants at all? Why wasn’t she in some studio like Oprah would have, interviewing William?
Oh, right! She was insane now. May as well go along with her madness, right?
“I’m sorry.” She tried to laugh. “Perhaps we need to get to know one another a bit more before you share how and where you learned your tactics.”
William’s dark brows drew down and when he finally stole a glance at her, he looked perplexed. “The lady wishes to know tactics? Military tactics?”
Ugh. How she detested being referred to in the third person, no less. And had she detected a slight macho, condescending tone? Surprisingly, she’d never gotten flack from her classmates, most of whom were men. Nor had she gotten that tone from her professors, again most of them were males too. It was usually women who gave her that patronizing tone. They’d say, “Why would such a pretty girl like you want to know more about war?” At least so it was in her time, but this was the eighteenth century. Women had places that made Erva almost shudder in disgust.
She studied the young general, realizing that he might be a prick after all. She’d defended him to her classmates and professors, because his tactics were calculated, but never conniving. Deep down Erva thought that William had been misunderstood, like her father, gone too soon to defend himself. But now...
The general’s face broke into a quick smile. “After breakfast, would you care to watch my men drill? We could talk of tactics then. There are daily parades in the afternoon as well.”
Erva nearly squealed. She held it in though. Barely. This was exactly what she wanted! She reached out and held the general’s rough and calloused hand. “Yes, please. But why wait? I’ll eat in the car—in the carriage.”
Then, the general did the most terrible thing. His smile widened, and he laughed. God, he was so much more handsome than any painting she’d seen. He was beautiful like that, laughing, carefree. Erva felt a zip of desire run through her stomach, breasts, and between her legs.
Maybe to herself she could admit she had a wee bit of a crush on him. But her papers on the general had always been professional, educational, academic, sterile. While here, she had to remain detached. After all, she knew the man’s time of death. There was also his reputation as a rake to think about. The man was supposedly a real slut with not one but two mistresses. Yes, Erva definitely didn’t need to let her infatuation run any further than just a zip at the dinner table.
She just hoped her body understood, especially as William squeezed her hand as his chuckles faded.
