Page 5 of Wild Lily
“What’s it worth to you?”
“Sir?”
He considered her with the gaze he trained on adversaries.
She fought to suppress a shiver.
“You heard me. What will you promise me for the courtesy to deal lightly with these men?”
Lily knew enough of her sire to understand that she held few advantages in bargaining with him. She had only one card to play. And she’d already dealt it.
“Well? What say you?”
Lily lifted her chin and stared him in the eye. She had obligations to Marianne who had eagerly anticipated living in Paris, going to the opera and art galleries while she perfected her French. Lily had also made a promise to her younger sister, Ava, who finished her schooling in Manhattan and would arrive in London next June along with their older brother, Pierce. “I promise to be polite, act properly and cause no more scandals.”
He barked in laughter. “That’s what you were supposed to do anyway. What’s in this for me, for what I want?”
She stiffened her spine. “I’ll do this for you and Marianne. I’ll do it for Ava and Pierce to smooth their way in society. I’ll do the Season in London, curtsy and simper and—“
He put up a hand. “Stop. Get to your wager.”
If this were any lesser issue, she would have smiled that her father knew her so well. “I will stay for one year.”
“One year?” he asked with skepticism.
“To the day.”
“And during that time?”
She stood on the precipice of her freedom. “I will entertain any man you deem fit for me to consider as my husband. I’ll keep an open mind and an open heart.” She swallowed hard and fought to speak the words of her next condition.
He waggled his fingers at her. “Yes, yes, come on. The rest of it.”
“But you will not influence me to one man over another. You will not meddle. And you will not buy me a husband.”
“And if I refrain, what then?”
“If I find a man I can love, I will tell you and you will approve. No matter who he is, his wealth or lack thereof, or his connections.”
He cleared his throat. “I see. And your threat, should I not abide by your condition?”
She had pin money she’d saved. Frugal all her life, she had accumulated more than five thousand dollars of her own. Before she’d left Baltimore, she’d arranged with a bank to extend her a line of credit in Paris and London, should she ever need it. If the banker had ever told her father of this, she didn’t know.
But she was ready to reveal the depth of her commitment to directing her own destiny. “I will return home on the first ship I can book passage.”
He flexed his square jaw. “And do you think to return to your status as my daughter in my home?”
She had always known how hard Black Killian Hanniford played to achieve his own ends. In business, he was ruthless, driven. But not merciless to his children. His forgiveness of Pierce’s folly years ago was her best proof that his love for his family was his Achilles heel. Lily had seen how to hinder him by attacking him there.
She shook back her long dark ringlets over her shoulders. “I would return not to Baltimore but to Texas. Open the ranch that my mother left to me, rebuild the house and live there.”
“Alone?”
She considered her clasped hands. “I’d hire a foreman andvaqueros. Take my maid. Raise longhorns and quarter horses.”
“You wouldn’t return to Corpus Christi to marry that doctor you both worked for?”
Marianne and she had volunteered in a small hospital in the small town on the Gulf of Mexico and nursed poor workers afflicted with cholera and all sorts of infections. But their tenure had been short-lived when Hanniford learned of their actions and demanded they come with him to Baltimore and on to Europe.
