Page 15 of Wild Lily
“No, sir. You should not.” She gave him a blithe look.
“And what of the Frenchman, Marianne? Was he so handsome you must flee without explanation, too?”
“Yes, sir. He was. But you mustn’t worry, Uncle Killian.”
“No? Why not?”
“He is too—“ She paused, unusually stumped for words, one hand dancing in the air.
“Well? What?”
“Overwhelming. He is huge. A giant of a man.”
“And? So?” her father urged.
Marianne blinked, her gaze suddenly dreamy. “His blond hair hangs to his shoulders and his hands are callused and scarred.”
“Chelton has a friend who’s a laborer? Yet he offered you his own carriage?” He arched his brows high. “Damned intriguing.”
“No, sir,” Marianne objected.
Lily caught her eye and shook her head in warning.
But Marianne missed her cue. “He’s a duke.”
Oh, lord.
“That is intriguing,” Hanniford replied with gusto.
Lily rolled her eyes at Marianne who had not been intrigued with Remy, the Frenchman. No, not by a long shot. If there were a word for Marianne’s reaction to Remy, it was mesmerized.
Marianne, flustered, shot from her chair at once, then came around the table and hooked her arm in Lily’s. “Escape with me.”
“Tell him no more,” Lily pleaded as the two of them hurried from the dining room.
“I heard that!” he called out, but they took the circular staircase up to their suites. “I need details.”
“We’ve no time, Uncle.”
“We don’t want to be late, Papa,” Lily called down.
“We don’t want to change the fashion.” He came to the foot of the stairs.
Lily took hold of the hall banister and peered over the side. “Not on your life. It’s de Bourg’s small soirée. Then the opera, dear Father. And for that, you’ve paid good money.”
“I have not paid a penny. We’re guests!”
“All the more reason. Get dressed yourself,” she told him, sailing off to shut the door to Marianne’s sitting room.
She faced her cousin, shaking a finger at her. “You realize that now he knows Remy is a duke, Papa will investigate his family all the way back to the dark ages.”
“He can do what he wants,” she said. “I’ll not have another husband, ever.”
Marianne’s vehemence about the subject of taking a husband was a mystery that no amount of cajoling could influence her to reveal. But Lily had seen her cousin’s interest in the impressive French nobleman. Never before had Marianne shown any attraction to a man. And her recent declarations that she would consider taking a lover sparked the possibility that, given a chance, this Remy might fill that need for her.
Her cousin strode to her dressing room, turning her back on Lily and thereby hiding her expression. “Besides, I most likely won’t see him again.”
“And if you do?” Lily was quick to ask.
