My Dearest Enemy (25 page)

In fact, a lot of muscles were working. His biceps bulged beneath the sheath of slick mud, and his belly muscles rippled beneath his glistening tanned skin. It was like watching an oiled bronze statue come vibrantly to life and it took her breath away.

"Thank you," she said.

He didn't even turn his head to look at her. She was alive. He'd done his duty. Instead of answering he rose, deliberately turning his back on her and took a step before hesitating and looking out across the pond. She followed his gaze.

Off in the distance the workers had begun to stand. "Let me help you up," Avery said, reaching down. She ignored his hand, struggling to her knees. "I—I suppose I can carry you back to the house if you can't walk," he said.

He could not possibly have made a more grudging-sounding offer.
Touch her? Carry her? Like Merry and Teresa and Kathy and God knows how many other women in that house
?

As much as she wanted that—and Lord, she was beyond self-deception—she would not steal his impartial touch through trickery. She still had some modicum of pride left.

"No," she said, shaking her head.

"Don't be an ass," he grated out thrusting his hand out to help her up.

"No!" She slapped his hand away.

"Fine," he snapped out. Without another glance, he snatched a shirt from atop a nearby bush and took a step. He stopped. Froze.

"Damn it all to hell!" she heard him say under his breath.

"Did you say something, Mr. Thorne?" she asked sweetly. He spun on his heels, bent over, grasped her arms, and jerked her to her feet. His mouth descended on hers like a falcon on a dove.

It made their previous kiss seem fraternal. His stance broadened, his arm coiled with steely strength around her ribs, crushing her to him and bringing her hips into the lee of his wide-spread thighs. His tongue swept between her lips, greeting hers in a deep, lush carnal stroke.

Nothing had ever felt so good. She opened her mouth further, letting his tongue play against her own, and his hands roved her back with long sweeping caresses she wanted desperately to return. She strained to get closer.

Abruptly she was free. He practically thrust her from him. For a second he faced her, breathing deeply, his extraordinary eyes glittering behind their lashes.

"Now we're even," he said and retrieving his shirt, turned around and strode off across the field toward Mill House.

Confusion and sensation making a muddle of her thoughts, she watched him go. The dramatic sun rays slanting from beneath the storm clouds glazed his torso with gleaming light, revealing each detail of his long, lean body, every ripple, every sinew, the prominence of heavy arm muscle, the lean hardness with his belly, the breadth of—

She looked down and immediately slammed her eyes shut. Her sodden muddy shirt made her own body just as public. Anyone—her head snapped around.

The men were returning from lunch and were halfway to the pond. With a gasped oath, Lily scrambled to her feet and, hampered by the heavy wet material of her mud-weighted bloomers, stumbled off in Avery's wake. If she could just catch up, she could use his shirt to cover herself.

"Wait! Avery! I say, wait!" she called, looking over her shoulder at the goggle-eyed men. Avery kept eating up the distance with his ground-covering stride and she kept tripping.

"Wait!" she wailed as laughter and catcalls followed her across the field.

He didn't wait. He didn't even slow down. That kiss… that had been his "potshot." His revenge.

Her steps slowed as she approached the house and started round toward the servant's door in back. She stopped. He mustn't ever know what that kiss had meant to her. To him it had been nothing. He probably kissed women all the time. He mustn't suspect that what he'd doled out as a punishment had been to her something wonderful.

She wouldn't slink through the back doors like his… his doxy, like she'd done something wrong.

She marched up to the front door, stepped through, and gave it a good hard shove. It slammed closed with a gratifying sound. She smiled grimly just as the front door reverberated with a loud crash.

Alarmed, she opened the door again to see what had happened. There, on the granite steps, lay thousands of shards of brilliantly colored glass, all that was left of the oriel window from high above.

"One hundred pounds? Is that all?" Francesca took a sip of her port and laid her head back against the divan.

"That's what the glazier said," Lily answered from the deep overstuffed chair across from Francesca.

The lighted candelabra between them guttered in a sudden draft, making shadows leap across the sitting room wall. The storm that had been brewing all day had arrived, disrupting the house's lighting. The relative darkness had driven Evelyn, Polly, Bernard, and Avery to their separate apartments soon after dinner.

Lily, unwilling to retreat to her room and thoughts best left untended, had spent the evening in the sitting room where Francesca slowly and steadily and silently made her way through what wine was left from their meal. She'd recently started on a decanter of port.

Francesca gave a little snort of amusement. "No wonder Horatio didn't have it wrenched out and sold as salvage."

"Thank heavens, it wasn't more expensive," Lily said. "I can find a hundred pounds. I couldn't find a thousand." The shutters outside banged noisily in a fresh blast of wind.

Francesca cocked her head to listen to the wind moan in the chimney and then snagged the crystal port decanter from the pie crust table beside her. "How long is it before the bank vultures swoop in and start tallying up your capital?"

"Six weeks."

"You'll make it?" Francesca asked, pouring a healthy dollop of liqueur into her glass.

"If nothing else untoward happens. Two potential disasters in as many days rather challenges one's belief in a benevolent deity."

"Doesn't it though? I wonder"—Francesca tilted her glass back and took a long draught—"if those incidents were accidents? What if someone deliberately broke the vase and shattered the window?"

Lily shook her head. The storm, the dark, and the port were giving the older woman fancies. Lily had seen Francesca yield common sense to her imagination before—mostly when she drank and was feeling "sentimental."

"What if someone broke the vase on purpose and then crept up to the attic and loosened the casements around that oriel window so that a good rattle from say, a storm or even a slamming door, would send it crashing down?" Francesca mused.

"Why would anyone do such a thing?" Lily asked reasonably. "Who would even
have
a reason to do such a thing?"

"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 im-ages 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 naive."

"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.