Page 4 of Wild Lily
“Did you now? How kind of you.”
“Papa, I—“
“Enough! This,” he thundered as he put his fist down on the newspaper, “is not to occur again. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Marianne?”
Her cousin bowed her head. “Yes, Uncle Killian.”
“My order is to use this time in Paris wisely. Go to the shops. Buy clothes, perfect your French and make a name for yourselves as the refined beauties you are, not as ladies of the night!”
“Oh, Papa, we wouldn’t,” Lily rushed to add.
“You think it’s fine to drink and dine with artists and riff raff?”
“Oh, sir,” Marianne said, “they are poor but happy.”
“And very polite,” Lily added.
“Dear God.” Her father sank to the chair behind him.
Lily kneaded her hands. When her father reached the end of his patience, he would become quiet. Terribly so. Then burst forth with an ultimatum that would end all hope of compromise. “I didn’t like the cartoon, either, Papa.”
“Oh, really?” He stared at her. “Offended you, did it, that he portrayed you holding up your skirts to show your ankles?”
She nibbled her lower lip. She hated to admit her vulnerable pride. “I hated that he drew me with dollars spilling from my skirt pockets.”
Killian Hanniford’s swarthy complexion turned livid. “And I suppose we must be grateful he didn’t show you lifting your skirts higher like those dancers?”
“Quite so.”
He ground his teeth. “Nonetheless, this is not acceptable by you two, the cartoonist or his publisher. For this artist’s miscalculation to make fun of my daughter, I have sent for the owner of this rag.”
“To come here?” Lily felt as if the air had left her like a pricked balloon.
“Where else?”
“Already?”
He arched a dark disdainful brow. “Would you have me dally?”
“No. No, of course not.” She was gratified he’d act to quell the insult to her. But he was known to overreact. “I’d like the artist reprimanded. Warned, you see.”
“Not the publication set to ruin?” Hanniford was smiling ruefully, his electric temper masked by his self-deprecating humor.
Lily didn’t like people destroyed for their follies. She preferred them scolded. Shown some mercy. Some hope of redemption. “Exactly.”
“I’ll deal as I see fit.”
Oh, my. The publisher might lose his paper. At the very least, the cartoonist would be turned out on the street. Cartoonists in Baltimore and New York had toyed with Black Killian Hanniford’s image and paid the ultimate price for their aggression against the man who’d first come to public fame as Baltimore’s Black Irish Blockade Runner. Her father had even bought up half share in one of the newspapers who lambasted his actions, silencing any controversy over him.
“Please, Papa. Be kind.”
He eyed her. “You mean that?”
“I do.” She hated vindictiveness. “I really do.”
