My Dearest Enemy (36 page)

Dawn arrived armed with doubt. Avery watched its approach stoically, his heart a doomed sentry set against legions of inescapable facts.

Lily lay nestled against him, sated on passion. The dark threads of her hair spilled over his shoulders and arms, her breath fanned his chest and her hand lay relaxed upon his thigh. He closed his eyes against the sight of her, as sequestered in slumber as she would be in her constancy to her mother's cause.

For hour upon hour he'd devised speeches and refutations, anything that would make her his wife. Because he could accept no other relationship and he feared there was no argument that could persuade her to marry him.

The laws governing the disposition of children were as atrocious as the thought of voluntarily making one's own child a bastard. She would not stand for one and he could not consider the other. God help him.

Bitterness spiked his grief for her dead mother, the woman Lily loved so well she was willing to sacrifice her life—no,
their
lives—in a memorial to her mother's bereavement.

As if she felt his animosity, Lily stirred in his embrace, a shadow crossing her features. He gathered her more closely, careful not to wake her. He opened his mouth against the cool rumpled veil of black hair, breathing deeply the scent of sleep and sexual satiation, intensely aware that this moment may well be the last of its kind. How could he lose her, his sweet antagonist and carnal fantasy, his adversary, his heart? Yet what could he say to win her?

From the depths of the house unrolled a long, piercing cry of frustration, like a bad-tempered imp thwarted in its haunting. One of Teresa's babes was hungry.

He felt Lily wake. The very air seemed to take on a shroud of watchfulness, destroying his vigil. He trembled under the weight of an execrable choice.

"Stay," he heard himself say. "Stay with me, Lily."

She rustled, her arms withdrawing from their casual intimacy, her head turning as she gathered the sheet about herself. She'd heard the baby, too. Just as he heard in the innocent cry a reproach for his willingness to bastardize his own children, she would hear a warning sent by her mother.

She wound the sheet around her shoulders, her cheeks flushed delicately, her eyes averted demurely against his nudity. He sank back against the pillows, his physical exposure an incidental thing compared to the monumental nakedness of his soul. She rolled away and sat on the side of the bed, lowering her long legs. Even now desire, like some separate beast occupying his body, prowled close.

The baby wailed again, louder, demanding. Lily's head lifted and in profile he saw the frozen look of recognition on her face. He flinched from her withdrawal, understanding it to be the precursor of a far more mortal wound.

"We should wake every morning like this, close in each other's arms," he said, unable to keep the slight desperation from his voice. "We should be wed and spend the next decade waking to the sound of babies—"

"Avery, please… I can't marry you." Her words came out in a rushed whisper. "You know I can't."

"Yes, you can," he said with tamped anger. He caught her wrists, demanding that she at least face him. "Tell me, Lily. What can I say? What words can I utter which will make you believe that I am not going to ever leave you, ever stop loving, that no power on earth would cause me to hurt you by stealing our children?"

She swallowed, a look of intense longing on her face. "There are no words, Avery. There are laws and if those were different—"

"Damn it, Lily!" he exploded, releasing her wrist and pushing away from her. "You trust a set of laws more than me?"

She shook her head. "It's not for myself. It's for any children I may have."

He snatched his trousers from the floor and thrust each leg in, stood and buttoned the fly, refusing to look at her. But he couldn't abandon so easily what he'd found and treasured so late. He'd learned to fight when he was young and now he'd fight for her. "Then just stay with me, here, at Mill House."

Her head turned quickly in his direction and all the gorgeous corkscrew curls danced across her shoulders, settling along her spine like a black river.

"Not as my wife, if you refuse that, but in any capacity you want, as my companion, my housekeeper, my lover, my mistress. Any role you wish to play, but be in my life, Lily." His voice was strained, pleading. "Don't go."

Her eyes were soft with pity and unfathomable tenderness and a deep sadness. But she was mute and while she was silent, he had a chance. "You want Mill House. I want you. We can both have what we want, what we need. We'll spit in Horatio's eye," he said with a fierce grin, "damn his soul for placing us in this position."

She clutched the bed linen closer. Her eyes were huge in her face. "And children?" she asked through stiff lips. "What of them?"

He could give her anything of himself, but he could not harm any children they might have, could not deny them his protection and name and the wordly benefits that came with it. And no matter how desper-ate he was, he could not promise her that, he could not lie to her. He sat down beside her and took her hand and brushed his finger across the knuckles. "We won't let there
be
children."

She recoiled, rose, and backed away from him. Pain made her eyes black embers.

"Stay with me and I promise a full life, Lily. A rich and rewarding one." He stretched out his hand, flicked his fingers in a commanding gesture, calling her back to him.

"I can't. You want children, Avery. A huge, rambunctious family. One for each bedchamber in this house, remember? I can't…" She shook her head violently. "I won't do that to you."

"Yes. We can—"

"No!" she nearly shouted the word. "Don't tempt me. Don't! At first maybe you would have recompense in my company, maybe for a few years, maybe for many. But eventually, with the birth of your friends' children, the christening of Bernard's first child, the emptiness of this house would grow into a maddening din. You'd come first to resent and then hate me for it."

"Never." But his tone lacked some depth of assurance, some ringing truth, because the anxious watchfulness in her eyes bled away, leaving only calm despair.

"Yes," she said softly. "And I could not… I would not live if I'd made you hate me."

"Lily." He stretched out his hand pleadingly.

"I must leave," she whispered, gathering the enveloping sheets and twisting them about her. "I must go today."

Even Karl's death had been less wrenching, an appetizer compared to the heaping platter of pain before him. "No," he clipped out. "I'll leave. I could no more stay here now than a charnel house. It reeks of the death of my dreams."

"Forgive me, Avery!" With a sob, Lily turned and bolted from his room, disappearing into the pale, dim hall.

Lily turned the key in the lock and stumbled into her room. Tears coursed down her cheeks and her hands, engaged in the task of pulling on her dressing gown, shook violently. With a sob, she gave up trying to fasten the silk frogs and sank blindly to the floor.

She'd woken to the feel of his hand gently winnowing through the hair at her temples, heard the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear, and been suffused with contentment. She'd raised her head and seen a tender lover who'd spent the long night hours worshiping her with his body.

For the space of a minute, she'd considered answering yes to his proposal that they create a life together without marriage or children. But then she'd looked at him and known she could not ask that sacrifice. Avery should have a family, a brood of tall children with gem-colored eyes who would adore him.

And, truth be told, she did not know if she could live with him knowing that the potential for those children existed, but was never realized. For the first time, she questioned her mother's choice, looked at it coolly, as an adult, examining her motives objectively, and not as her mother's companion in a life of remorse.

She still understood her mother's choices. She just wasn't as sure as she'd been yesterday that she agreed with them. And wasn't that simply a convenience to give her permission to do what she wanted to do? Marry Avery Thorne?

She didn't know, God help her, she didn't know. She had only her past to guide her and right now that seemed a very suspect guide indeed. Alas, the only one she had.

And he was leaving. Perhaps forever.

Lily lowered her head into her arms and when her tears began, they flowed like an ocean of regret.

With the only carriage being in Cleave Cross, Avery chose to walk to Little Hentley. Merry, her brows rising like gulls on an updraft, offered to send his valise and trunk later on her brother's wagon. He accepted, thanking her before going in search of Lily.

He found her in the library, bent over the ever-present ledger. He reached up and knocked on the lintel. She lifted her head. He could not stand to see her so hurt and know that there was nothing he could do to alleviate it; that, in fact, he was the source of her pain.

"I'm going now," he said, stopping just inside the doorway.

"Yes."

"I'll be at the Hound and Hare in Little Hentley for a few days should it be necessary to reach me."

"Yes." She studied him carefully. "What would you like me to say to Evelyn?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Whatever you'd like. Tell her my wanderlust is once more in ascendance." His gaze touched the thick ledger opened near the last page, reminding him of their relationship as contenders for Mill House; he as victor, she as loser. He did not feel like a survivor, much less a victor. "I expect I'll see you at Gilchrist and Goode next month."

"Where?" she asked, momentarily distracted from her wary pose.

"At Horatio's solicitors. The end of your 'test' is near, remember?"

"Oh." She scanned his face for some sign of the man whose muscular arms had held her buoyed above him as he thrust deep within her body and saw a man clinging to the frayed edges of self-control.

"In London, then. I bid you good day—"

"No," she said, panicked by the thought. "I don't think we will meet in London."

He raised one dark brow askance.

"There's no reason for me to go there. I've lost the challenge and I certainly have no plans to make a public statement disclaiming my association with the suffragists."

"Of course not." His smile was desperately unhappy. "Now, if you'll pardon me?" His bow was perfectly courteous, a gentleman's bow, as if he were taking leave of a stranger.

He turned, preparing to walk away from her forever.

"Wait!"

His back stiffened.

"Bernard," she blurted out. "What about Bernard? He'll wonder… would you have me tell him, too, whatever I like?"

It looked to her as though he took a deep breath but when he faced her, his expression was composed. "I'd forgotten about the boy," he murmured.

In the habit with which she was well-acquainted, he withdrew his gold timepiece from his pocket. Idly, he snapped the lid open and shut with the rim of his thumbnail, his brow lowered in concentration.

Watching him carefully consider the best way to deal with a sensitive boy, she felt her heart overflow with love and understanding.