Free My Dearest Enemy by Connie Brockway Page A

Lily added, unable to control a mischievous impulse. He looked nonplussed for the first time since she'd met him. Almost shy. "Cuisine de rigueur for gods, I expect. Were they delicious?"
    "Couldn't get enough of the little blighters," Avery said, meeting Lily's gaze and relaxing.
    She was teasing him. He couldn't ever remember a woman actually teasing him. It was a novel experience. Not altogether unpleasant. He took his seat. "I strongly suspect that should Englishmen ever discover the culinary delights lurking beneath their dahlias the sheep industry shall forthwith collapse."
    She laughed. A lovely sound, open and natural and inviting. And then, as if he'd caught her off-guard and tricked her into dangerous territory, her expression grew closed, her laughter faded. She turned toward Francesca, who was attending the conversation with an openly delighted expression. "Will you be going to the Derby again this year, Francesca?"
    Still smiling, Francesca took a healthy swallow of sherry before answering. "I don't know. I'd thought to leave next Tuesday but there's really no reason to rush off. The Derby isn't for three weeks. Don't worry, Lil, I promise I'll find out the names of all the retirees for you."
    "Retirees?" Avery cocked his head inquiringly.
    "Lily collects retired race horses."
    "Horses?" Startled, Avery glanced at Lily. She stared fixedly at her plate. Of course she would collect horses. What else would Lily Bede collect but his bete noir, the one remaining tie to the asthma that had molded and cursed his earliest years? Horses, to which he was amazingly, horribly, disastrously allergic. Of course, he would never allow
her
to know of this weakness.
    "A few," Lily mumbled just as the hall door swung open, framing a woman sitting in a wheelchair. One leg stuck straight out before her, cotton batting cocooning the limb. Her brown eyes gleamed with triumph beneath a broad, moist forehead fringed by gingery curls.
    With a grunt she grasped the wheels, heaved her weight forward, and popped the chair over the threshold. Avery scrambled to his feet.
    "If you would be so kind as to make room for me?" the newcomer asked. Her voice was deep and resonant with the lilt of the northern province.
    "Allow me," Avery said.
    "And who are you?" the woman asked as he went to her aid, her head falling back to take in all of him.
    "Avery Thorne. Miss Thorne's cousin." He pushed her ahead of him toward the table.
    "Avery Thorne?"
    Lily, apparently recalled to her duty as hostess, pushed away from the table and scooted over to the woman's side. Carefully, but with the air of one who is unmuzzling a potentially dangerous dog, she helped to ease the woman's wheelchair into place.
    "Miss Makepeace, I had no idea you would be joining us for lunch," she said. "However did you manage the stairs?
Should
you have managed the stairs?"
    "A woman only does herself and her gender a gross disservice by pretending to be less than she is, or inca-pable of what she is not," Polly said, unfolding her napkin and arranging it on her lap. Her gaze, leveled on Francesca, said clearly that she considered Fran-cesca to be guilty of at least one and probably both of these flaws.
    Francesca yawned. "Excuse me, I was, er, up late last night."
    "But how did you navigate the stairs?" Lily asked.
    "Had the girls carry me down the stairs and I managed the flat parts myself."
    "You must allow me to offer my services in the future," Avery said.
    "Nope," Polly said. "A woman gets soft relying on men to do for her, and if there's one thing I can't abide it's a soft—"
    "Well, it's lovely you can join us," Lily cut in, resettling herself as yet another short pregnant girl— Merry if Avery remembered correctly—bustled in and set another place. "Mr. Thorne, this is our guest, Miss Polly Makepeace. Miss Makepeace is one of the founding members of the Women's Coalition. We had our annual conference here not long ago. Unfortunately Miss Makepeace fell from her podium