Page 35 of Wild Lily
“I did.”
“It’s demeaning.”
“But accepted.”
“Among your set, yes.” Julian gave him that.
“Yours too. Look at Marlborough’s boy. At Waldron’s heir. It is done,.”
“But I won’t,” Julian spat. “They may care for those girls now, but later?” He scoffed.
“Live by pride alone and you will starve,” his father warned.
Pride was not the problem. Fear of a shrew in his house. Irrational, demanding. One who turned on him or worse, turned on their children like Medea. No, he’d not take a woman unless she was malleable. “I’d like to solve my own problems.”
“Good intentions?” his father asked with a strained smile. “Noble. But you cannot eat them. Nor pay our taxes or your mother’s gambling debts.”
“I keep trying.”But my skills at the table are just as bad as my mother’s.
His father shook his head. “I tell you, I married for love. A tender bit, but it passes.”
Julian quelled the urge to laugh. That was how the man explained his and his mother’s screaming matches, the crockery that flew, the insinuations that shook the rafters. “Passes, oh yes. Falls into—what did you term your relationship with Mama—disrepair?”
“No matter,” the old man said and flung out a hand. “You tilt at windmills. Meanwhile we are soon to become known debtors. And there are options for you. Bright, comely options.”
Julian stared at him. “Let me guess. You have suggestions.”
“One in particular. The American Lily.”
The American Lily, yes. That’s how she’d come to be known in London. The tall, graceful girl with the perfectly oval face, the pile of midnight curls and those uncanny blue eyes that bore right through a man. She’d been photographed, her pictures copied and redrawn,The American Beauty, once maligned by cartoonists, now glorified by anyone who could catch a glimpse of her.
And Julian had tried not to follow suit. But yesterday, he’d succumbed and gone to tea at the house in Piccadilly.
“Well?” his father asked. “I understand you’ve met her.”
His stomach churned. Julian didn’t want an arranged marriage for himself and he would not wish one on a young woman he liked. Or this one who favored him one minute and not the next. “I won’t marry her.”
“Does she have warts on her nose? No. On the contrary, I understand she is quite lovely. And you like her.”
Who had told him that? Elanna knew his reaction to her. His mother, too, had witnessed the scene at the opera in Paris. He’d been careless to allow anyone to see it. But he’d been entranced.
“You like her quite a bit.”
“And I would predict you have more than one reason to suggest her,” Julian said with bitterness filling his throat.
“She has thousands of reasons to commend her. More than that Van de Putte girl.”
Julian had met the American, Priscilla Van de Putte, last spring and had spent the next few months escaping her clutches. Selfish, spoiled, Priscilla was the epitome of a woman he would never take to his arms, let alone to the altar. “I’ve avoided marriage so far. I intend to extend my run.”
He rose from his chair and headed for the hall.
As he reached for the door, his father called to him.
He paused. “Yes?”
“I must tell you Killian Hanniford sent a request around yesterday to meet with me.”
That spelled trouble. His father had no head for negotiating. “And?”
“He still wishes to buy shares of Cardiff Shipping.”
“I see.” Julian had refused to continue talks with Lily’s father in Paris. He’d informed his father of it as soon as he returned to England.
“I must try because you couldn’t get a decent price out of him.”
And neither can you.“The company is decrepit. It needs new ships, repair of the old ones and new management. It’s nigh unto bankrupt. Give over, sir. I wish to hear no more about it.”
“But his daughter is worth so much more.”
More than you know.Julian ground his teeth. “Sell your shares, sir, if you wish. But do not think you can barter away my marriage bed in the bargain.”
