Page 68 of Wild Lily
She couldn’t move.
“Come with me, Lily. Don’t listen to this creature.” Julian turned her wooden body toward him, his mouth a taut line of anger as he tucked his riding jacket around her more securely. “I’ll escort you back.”
“You need to tell her what we agreed to, boy.”
Her heart fell to her feet. “Julian?”
If looks could kill, Julian would have struck his sire dead. “We had no agreement.”
The duke laughed and walked forward so that he could capture Lily’s gaze. He seared her with his menace. “He lies.”
“I don’t believe you,” she got out. Could Julian have struck a bargain with his father about courting her? She’d become enchanted with him. But did he care for her, truly? “He couldn’t…”Wouldn’t seduce me.
“But he has no money.” The duke extended an arm toward the appointments in the room and hall. “Not enough to support a wife. With his titles and his looks, he could have any woman. Why would he choose a gauche American? The daughter of a dockside brawler and a thief.”
Much she could bear, but insult to her father was not one. She broke from Julian’s grasp, headed for the hall and the servants’ stairs.
“Wait! Lily!” Julian tracked her.
She scrambled down the steps and reached for the kitchen door, a way out of this horror.
Julian caught her around the waist, pressed his body flush to hers, his lips in her hair. “Darling, don’t believe him. You mustn’t.”
“Let me go.”
“Why he plays this game, I can only guess.”
“I won’t.” She rested her forehead to the wooden door. Despair drained her of strength.
“Lily, please. Let me tell you what he really wanted from me and you.”
“He’ll say,” said the duke from the head of the stairs, “that he forbade his son marry a woman of loose morals.”
That slur gave her new vigor. She wrenched out of Julian’s hold and managed to pry the door open.
But she had one foot out and came smack up against the Duchess of Seton.
The woman wore a smirk. “See here,” she said and stepped aside to reveal a giant of a man, “your daughter, sir, is truly in an unacceptable condition.”
“Papa,” Lily said as she beheld the forbidding countenance of her father. Trapped in a maze of conflicting people and emotions, she stood her ground. But her hope to escape withered.
The duchess folded her hands before her, self-satisfaction in every line of her form. “I’m sure your father is outraged.”
“Madam,” said he to the lady, “I’ll have none of your interference. Lily, what goes on here?”
“I came riding with Jul— Lord Chelton. He showed me his home.”
Her father lifted his eyes to Julian. No good will greeted that man. “Why take her out in the middle of the night?”
“Sir, I acknowledge it was foolish. This is my fault because I—”
Julian should not take the blame. “He was being kind, Papa. I wanted to ride—”
The duke snorted. “Oh, aye! In more ways than one.”
Killian Hanniford was at his most ferocious when countered by one who wished to take him down in scurrilous ways. He set his jaw, his black eyes flamed.
Inside, Lily cringed.
