Wild Lily (Those Notorious Americans Book 1)(3)

“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 smiled with a rueful twist to his mouth, 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.”

“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.