Page 115 of Wild Lily
‘Julian!’With a clatter, the woman had dropped her fork to her plate.‘For the love of heaven, forbid her this, will you?’
‘No. He cannot.’
He had put up a hand to stop their argument.‘Mother, Lily, please—’
The woman had stared at Lily.‘Your job is to remain strong. Bear an heir. A spare. You are not to go traipsing off and become ill yourself. You might already be increasing.’
Lily had considered her hands in her lap. She would not give her mother-in-law any insight into the passion that bound Julian and her together more than once every night.
She had lifted her face and met the lady’s gaze.‘I hear your rationale.’
‘Good. That’s settled then.’
She had let the woman think what she wished.
She would anyway.
* * *
Hours later, Lily trudged her way back to the stables. The walk to the village had been longer than she expected. The work to nurse the sick there had been more than she’d expected, but rewarding. She needed another medical kit filled with instruments. She’d order it tomorrow and keep one kit here, one at Willowreach. Today, she’d learned how necessary such items could be. She’d taught two women how to build croup tents and tend kettles for constant hot steam. Tomorrow, she’d return to them. But when she did, she’d ride.
Inside the stable block, Lily saw no one. At four in the afternoon, they should have been heading back. But then she wasn’t familiar with English farming ways. Perhaps they let their animals out for more of the day. The searing Texas heat demanded ranchers send their animals out at dawn and bring them in by noon or one before the sun fried them to a crisp.
Resigned to returning to the house, she took a step. And stopped.
Someone was here. She heard them. Two men with bass voices. In the far stall.
Her feet fell on tampered earth and scattered hay so she made no sound as she strode toward them.
But she stopped.
She cocked her head to listen.
One of the men was Julian.
“The sale of that land in Tipperary was profitable.”
She smiled to herself.I know it was.
“Indeed,” Phillip Leland agreed.
Discreet about it too. As I asked him to be.
“A stroke of luck, I’d say, to find a buyer so quickly.”
Not very.
“I’d like to thank them for their purchase,” Julian said.
“Not a good idea, Chelton. Anonymity is what they asked for.”
“That’s the one bit of good news I’ve had in weeks, Leland. But I must press upon you that tomorrow, I don’t want the will read aloud. I wish to heaven you could change this. Overlook it.”
“I’m bound by ethics as His Late Grace’s executor. I must do as instructed in the written will.”
“Whydothat? To read these clauses aloud will only irritate my mother.”
Lily stopped breathing. More trouble from her mother-in-law? Was she not causing enough already?
