Page 2 of Wild Lily
“Such as ‘appalled’?”
“Regret. That’s a better word.”
“It is. But it does not match my sentiment.”
“No, sir.” She was certain it didn’t.
He stared at her. “I won’t debate this with you any longer, Lily.” Her father threw the scandal sheet on top of his desk and peered at her over his wire-rimmed glasses. “I want only a good marriage for you. Last week it was riding in the Bois de Boulougne without an escort. The week before, trying a bicycle on the sidewalk. Now this. Why must you fight me with these escapades?”
Yes, she’d gone to the Montmartre café and watched those women throw up their skirts in thecancan. Shocking as that was, her night had been thrilling. But she did have two defenses. “I didn’t go to embarrass you, Papa.”
“You did anyway.”
Still. What was she? His to dispense with? Order about? She was his daughter, almost of age. Almost. And she countered him with her other weapon. “No business dealing of yours depends on my behavior.”
He arched a black brow. “You are not so naïve as that.”
She wasn’t. But she’d gone for another reason. One her father repeatedly refused to accept. “I don’t want a husband—“
“Eventually, every young woman has one,” he countered. “And I have the money to ensure you—“
“Get one.Anyone!” She flourished a hand.
“Not true. I would not marry you off to any man unworthy of you.”
“I hope not.”
“I take that as an insult, my girl.”
“I don’t mean to be ungrateful.”
“You are, sadly. But in the meantime,” he said and punched a finger into the paper, “your antics will not endear you to any man, rich or poor.”
Lily Hanniford held her ground. She had twenty years of practice standing up to her sire, a wizard of finance and a ruthless shipping magnate whose wealth stunned many on both sides of the Atlantic. But how could she predict that a Parisian artist might find it amusing to caricature an American girl visiting a cabaret? “I wanted simply toseethecancan, Papa. Not doit.”
He set his jaw and glared first at her and then her cousin by her side. “I hold you responsible, Marianne. You are older and should be wiser. I told you to be prudent. Keep Lily in hand.”
“It’s not Marianne’s fault.” Lily sent a consoling look at her pretty blonde cousin who always withstood Black Killian Hanniford’s outbursts more stoically than she. “I said she could remain home if she preferred.”
“Ah.” Hanniford focused on his niece. “So will you tell me you went to thiscabaret, an innocent to the slaughter?”
Marianne tipped her head to and fro, the look on her face whimsical amusement. She was older than Lily by nine years, a widow, worldly and witness to the savagery of a civil war that had sent her husband to his grave. Because of or perhaps in spite of that, Marianne had a zest for living and a ripe sense of humor. “I may have shown some enthusiasm for the adventure.”
“Some?” Hanniford snorted. “You probably wanted to learn the dance yourself.”
“Hmm. Yes. It is rather difficult,” Marianne proclaimed.
Lily suppressed her laugh.
But her father was not amused. No.
Hands on his hips, he glared at Lily. “Who escorted you inside this—this Café de Abbesses?”
Lily winced.
“Tell me, please, you did not go without a man in attendance.”
“He was kind.” A fellow who had a fancy for her, Lord Pinkhurst, was a sweet man, rich in his own right and therefore without reason to fear Killian Hanniford.
