My Dearest Enemy (4 page)

"Except for Avery Thorne," she murmured. She'd spent a great deal of time thinking about the would-be heir to Mill House. Unpleasant thoughts, as his name always brought a tincture of guilt with it. And guilt, she'd discovered, often was trailed by suspicion. "He's up to something. I know it."

"I didn't hear you, Miss Bede," Francesca said.

"I believe Avery Thorne is attempting to preempt my bid for Mill House." Curse her penchant for speaking her thoughts aloud.

Francesca, however, didn't appear offended. "And what makes you think that?"

Lily considered prevaricating but then, this woman might provide some insight into Avery Thorne. "His desire to see not simply the world, but the most inaccessible part of the world," she said. "I believe that by putting himself beyond my reach Avery Thorne is attempting to make me lose Mill House."

Francesca looked baffled. "But how?"

"By making it appear that I am negligent in my duty to provide him an adequate living during the tenure of my guardianship. By making it impossible to deliver to him the allowance I am compelled, by the terms of this will, to provide." Lily folded her hands primly at her waist, her smile grim. "He shan't be successful. My parents had friends throughout the world. I assure you, if Avery Thorne is within a day's march of one, he'll get his allowance."

"I think you're mistaken." Francesca sounded sincere. "Avery is not the type to bother with plots."

She sighed, her expression fond if rueful. "He would never do anything underhanded. For whatever unaccountable reasons, Avery has always labored under the delusion that he is the quintessential gentleman. He's not. He's had scant experience with polite society and it shows, sometimes to a lamentable degree. Indeed, his 'gentlemanliness' is a matter of honor not etiquette—though he'd be the first to argue that point."

"He is a man, Miss Thorne, and as a man," Lily instructed, "he is capable of anything when it comes to getting his way."

Francesca turned her hands up, defeated, as Lily knew she must be, by the weight of such unassailable logic.

"Forgive me, Miss Thorne," Lily hurriedly said, "for speaking so insensitively about your home. I realize it must be difficult to see it 'put up for grabs' as it were and I think you're being splendidly gracious about it."

Francesca swung around. "Oh, dear, no. It isn't and never has been my home. Nor Evie's, really. As I said, she's lived here only since her husband Gerald died."

"I'm sorry."

"You'd be the only one." Francesca hooked her arm through Lily's and led her up a curving staircase. "My dear brother spent years trying to get poor Evie with child—a male child. Upon hearing he'd succeeded, old Ger promptly drank himself into a standing stupor, insisted that his stallion be saddled—because a man who has just produced a son can hardly ride a gelding, can he?—and rode off to inform the neighborhood. He broke his neck before his son's first wails had died away."

"But that's tragic," Lily exclaimed.

"Gerald was a great bullying monster. Evie is still recovering from her marriage to him. You might as well hear it from me rather than the servants. Oh, dear. I've shocked you, haven't I?"

"Not really," Lily answered.

She'd heard the same story countless times before. Women seldom sought divorce on the grounds of abuse. Proof of such rarely fell short of physical disfigurement. And few women took the option of leaving their spouses, since it often meant leaving their children as well. As her mother had left her children.

She forced her chin up. It had been a long while since she'd thought of her half-brother and sister.

Francesca glanced at her curiously but Lily forbade comment. They'd reached the top of the stairs and arrived on a landing with halls shooting off from either end.

"Here begins the grand tour," Francesca said and then began in a false, clipped accent. "Mill House has twenty-two rooms. Or maybe more. Perhaps fewer. I've never counted them. I do know, however, that there are eight bedrooms. I'm sure that at one time or another I've slept in them all." Her glance was purposefully suggestive.

Lily returned her look complacently. Despite her mother's diligent shielding, she'd still been raised amidst a very loose society. Francesca would have to do better than that if she wished to shock her. "Then perhaps you might advise me on which has the best mattress?"

Francesca's startled glance turned abruptly into a burst of laughter. "Yes, I shall definitely have to stay."

Francesca ushered her through an arched doorway into a small gallery. A number of portraits faced the windows, a distinct family resemblance declared itself in intense, improbably blue-green eyes and sensualist's lips.

They stopped before a recent oil of an adolescent male built like a scarecrow. He had the Thorne eyes and the Thorne lips and a large nose with what looked like a break to it. The artist had chosen—in Lily's opinion unwisely—to position him in an aristocratic pose, one large-boned hand on his hip and one leg forward. Unfortunately, it only accented his spindly calves and knobby wrists.

"Who is that?" Lily asked.

"
That
is the only Thorne who really has any attachment to Mill House.
That
is Avery Thorne."

That skinny, large-nosed,
boy
was Avery Thorne?
That
was the other contender for Mill House?

"This was painted five years ago," Francesca went on, "when he was seventeen. I haven't seen him for a few years now, but I have been told he's filled out."

"That's nice. Is he very… bright? I mean he looks a sullen sort of weed—" She broke off abruptly, blushing profusely.

"Here now," Francesca chuckled, "that's my darling cousin you're speaking about. But, to answer your question, yes, if the infrequent letters he wrote my father were any indication, he is bright. Decidedly bright."

Lily studied the portrait warily. The boy's nose had probably been broken being thrust where it had no business. His eyes were too deep-set… hooded. His mouth was sneering.

The thought intruded that perhaps she was being harsh on Avery Thorne for no other reason than she fully intended to beat him out of part of his inheritance. She dislodged it. Being a man, he'd have any number of opportunities to secure his future. She had one.
This one
.

The French Congo, Central Africa March 1888

Avery picked up his pace, swatting at the mosquitoes draining blood from the back of his neck. This deep into the interior, the damn things grew as big as songbirds. He withdrew the gnawed stub of his cigar from between his teeth and blew a thick bluish cloud, hoping to discourage the less committed bloodsuckers.

As Avery entered the camp, his former college classmate, Karl Dhurmann, looked up from where he stirred a noxious-smelling stew. Propped against the trunk of a mahogany tree sat John Neigl, the American leader of their expedition. In spite of the heat, he was wrapped in blankets, the trembling in his body pronounced, his eyes half-closed.

He'd contracted malaria six weeks ago. The sunken-cheeked apparition he was now mocked any resemblance to the burly young man who'd led them so confidently forth. Luckily, they were only ten miles from Stanleyville, where Avery had spent the day booking John's passage back to Europe.

"How goes it, old man?" Avery asked.

"Simply grand," John said around his chattering teeth. "Did you get things arranged? Am I to go home?"

"Yes," Avery said. "You're going home." Noting the tension draining from John's taut face, Avery wondered for one moment where he would have been shipped had he been the one to succumb to malaria. Certainly no home awaited him, no haven where he had the right to be and where he would always find welcome. Not yet.

"That's not all I got." Avery withdrew a parcel from his pocket
. "I
have a package from England."

"From whom?" John asked and Avery was gratified to see a spark of interest in his dulled eyes.

In answer Avery tore open the wrapping. An envelope fell out, his name scrawled in a decisive hand upon its surface. On the back was written the name "Lillian Bede, Mill House, Devon, England."

"It's from that woman," he said.

"What woman?" Karl asked, his interest engaged. "You don't know any women. You're not a woman's sort of chap. Never were. Unless you were leading a secret double life during college, one as frail cantankerous scholar and the other as a debonair lady-killer."

"Wouldn't surprise me," John murmured. "Old Avery's some sort of damned human chameleon." His face gleamed in the camp light with oily perspiration.

"This Godawful journey doesn't seem to have done
him
any harm. I hate to have to remind you both, but
I
am supposed to be the vigorous, hirsute leader of this expedition. Avery's role was to have been the consumptive, albeit witty, chronicler."

Avery shrugged uncomfortably. There was no mistaking the bittersweet flavor of truth. Avery hadn't anticipated taking to such a dangerous existence. He'd certainly never expected to flourish in it.

"I'm sure the proper order of things will be restored once you're back on your feet, John." Uncomfortable with the turn of conversation, Avery held up the letter. "What I'd like to know is how in the bloody hell she managed to get this delivered out here?"

"Women have ways," Karl said mysteriously. He scraped the last of the tinned beef into the blackened pot with his knife and then wiped the blade clean on his tongue.

"Don't they teach simple table etiquette where you come from?" John asked petulantly.

Karl's only answer was the clicking of his pocket watch lid as he flicked it open and shut. He'd once told Avery that it reminded him that no hour was promised, no tomorrow assured. And that name and family and home, all a man owned, all a man held dear, could all vanish in minutes.

A civil war had resulted in the dissolution of Karl's country—and that of his entire aristocratic family.

As if he had read his thoughts and would not suffer his pity, Karl said without looking up, "Why don't you read the damn letter."

Avery sliced open the envelope, puffed into the opening, and upended the packet. Eighteen ten-pound bills fluttered to the muddy ground. "What the bloody hell?"