Chapter Nine
“You arrive and immediately demand to see me?” Julian confronted his father as he crossed the threshold of Carbury’s library. “Rude, to say the least. What is the matter?”
The Duke of Seton was a man who loved his precedence in society, his noble name too. Once he had loved his wealth, but that was gone and so the other powers were ones he used often. Even at a gathering like this one which he had always detested for the forced intimacy of strangers. “I’ve had a meeting of some importance to our future.”
Julian stepped forward into the musty library. He disliked this room, dark and dusty, needing a good swipe with vinegar and soap. The rest of the house seemed bright and spanking clean, so this dingy room was out of character. He often wondered why. “Tell me what it is.”
“Hanniford has made a better offer for the shipping company.”
“How wonderful. Did you take it?”
“No.”
“I see.” Julian swung himself down into a high-backed Chippendale chair and examined his nails. “Well, then. Since you have taken over the negotiations, why tell me?”
“I need your help.”
Julian glanced up. “How so?”
“I want you to argue him higher.”
“I withdrew my presence from this discussion. It is yours now.”
Seton flared his nostrils. “Absurd!”
“No.” In the past few years, Julian often had refused his father’s demands. It had become easier each time. As their fortunes declined, he’d done what he could to soften the financial blows. He’d curtailed his own spending, even cut back on gambling playing only against those from whom he knew he could win. Too bad his winnings from those friends were meager. To boot, he’d ended his relationship with his mistress. He’d cut staff to four at his own residence here in Kent. He’d also advised his father on how to trim staff at Broadmore, but of course, the old man had rejected his advice. Julian had learned to keep his own council and do for himself.
Now he had reason to do more. Since last night, Julian had pondered what his future might hold. His fascination with Lily was a living breathing being, far more vital than any dalliance he’d ever fancied with another woman. Their midnight ride and their enchanting entanglement had aroused more in him than he ever anticipated. He wished to protect her. From himself. But he also wished to possess her. For himself alone. That meant more kisses and more caresses. Her compliance, her need of him too, meant he could not walk away from her.
Furthermore, he would not hurt her feelings or her reputation. Nor would he collude with his father to persuade hers to do anything concerning their business dealings. He wanted Lily Hanniford. Efficiently. Totally unconnected to her father, his own and any business dealings they might or might not conclude.
He meant to pursue her, too. Learn if her lust for him—for that was what last night was—might be the kernel of a more tender emotion. Learn if his own was irrational longing, some idealized imagining of her as charming and daring, wild and carefree.
He’d not meddle in his father’s affairs.
He had too much interest in settling his own.
“I say, boy, you refuse me this?”
Julian stood. “Yes, sir. I do.”
“Even at the cost of Elanna’s future—”
How dare you. “You gave her until June.” His father was a right bastard. Especially since the estate began to lose thousands of pounds at the turn of the decade. “I expect you to honor that.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll help Elanna run away.”
“Don’t be foolish, boy.”
“Don’t be unprincipled, father.”
Seton flared his nostrils. “We are at an impasse.”
Julian nodded and headed for the door. “Right you are.”
Worried about Elanna, he headed straight for the main salon. But the doors were open and no one was inside. Whatever the conversation was that Carbury had intended with her, they had finished.
Julian turned for the stairs and strode to his sister’s bedroom door. He knocked—and knocked again. With his hand to the knob, he was ready to enter, when the door fell open. Facing him was Elanna’s maid, her tiny eyes circled white with fright.
“What’s the matter, Bess? Where is—?” But he saw Elanna in silhouette beyond her sitting room, standing before the window in her bedroom. She stood deathly still, her hands clasped before her but her posture sagged, so unlike his elegant little sister.
“Go away, Julian.” Her voice was a rasp.
“I wish to talk with you.”
“I don’t wish it. Please leave.”
He checked Bess’ stance. The servant assumed the posture of an animal on guard, terrified.
“What’s happened?” he asked Bess.
But the gray-haired woman bit her lip.
“Elanna?”
She stiffened, defiance in every line of her body. “Go away, Julian.”
“Let me help you.”
“You can’t. I love that you’ve tried. But you must let me go now.”
What does that mean? “Did something happen in the salon? Tell me.”
“No. Meet Miss Hanniford in the garden.”
“I must know—”
“No, you will not. Seize happiness for yourself, Julian. Do it. For me.” And then she turned to one side and walked out of his vision.
Roiled, defeated, exhausted, he made his way downstairs and out to Carbury’s orangery.
When Julian caught sight of Lily again, she was bent over a camellia bush in the huge glass house filled with sunlight and plants of every size and shape and fragrance. The sun shone on her hair, turning her dark tresses to glistening midnight.
And when she raised her face to welcome him, her countenance was aglow with an emotion so tender, he wished he had a portrait of her as she was in that moment when he knew—yes, he knew—he must have her as his wife.
But she searched his expression. “What’s wrong?”
He took her hands.
“Tell me if you wish. I won’t pry.”
He led her away from the door of the glass edifice where tall evergreens obscured the view from the house and anyone who might look out upon the splendid wealth of the gardens. At a white wrought iron bench, he urged her down.
Still holding her hands, he smiled briefly, painfully. “I worry about Elanna.”
“She wasn’t happy to talk with Lord Carbury.”
“You can see she doesn’t care for him.”
“Yes.” Lily nodded. “And that he is—well, not as charming a suitor as one might hope for.”
Julian lifted her hands, turned them over and kissed each one in the center of her palm. “How sweet you are.”
At his touch, she gave a little frisson. “I am honest, as we said we would be.”
He pulled her hands so that she circled his waist. So close, she smelled of lilacs. So near, she gazed up at him with admiration that he hoped one day to merit.
He wrapped his arms around her and brushed his lips on hers. “What should I do if I find myself addicted to your kisses and you are not near me?”
Her blue eyes veiled with sadness. “Don’t kiss another.”
“Never.” He sent the tip of his tongue along the fullness of her lower lip. “I must have you or no one.” He seized her mouth, the power to claim her going to his head. She came against him, trusting and eager, her lips opening to his beseeching tongue. She inched closer, a small moan marking her desire to match him.
He broke away, his hand to her cheek. The need to have her here on this bench was a violent fire that spread to his blood. “I must stop. Tonight, you’ll meet me?”
“At the stable doors?” The rapture he saw on her face told him she would come to him anywhere, any time. How wonderful. How dangerous. “Yes.”
He stood, pushing her hands to her lap. “After dinner. When all are abed.”
“I’ll teach you how to play poker some other day then?” Hope and disappointment mingled in her features.
“Many other days. I promise. Forgive me, but I must leave you.”
“Propriety calls, does it?” she teased him.
“That,” he said with a sad smile, “and I have urgent family matters.”
* * * *
Dinner was a nightmare. Carbury was an animated host, his attention on Elanna nigh unto oppressive. Julian’s father was either surly or pleasant beyond bearing. His mother seemed radiant. Elanna who had once more refused to see Julian that afternoon played the part of a featherbrained debutante and flirted with the three eligible men. The two eligible women cast disapproving eyes at her, to no avail. The three men appeared to love the attention. Killian Hanniford and his niece Marianne Roland attempted their part with lively introductions of subjects, which fell to Lily and him to take up. Meanwhile, Carbury’s older female guests chatted on, filling in the numerous holes of the conversation.
Julian frowned at his soup.
His plans for the day had become mincemeat. No talk with Elanna about Carbury or any other matter. A warning that Father was getting itchy. Hours pondering his own finances to divine if he might afford…yes, a wife. A wife. This wife for himself.
He sat back, his appetite gone.
He knew the answer. Of course, he did. He didn’t have to put ink to paper. He’d examined his ledgers over and over again. He’d already cut staff at Willowreach. Months ago, he’d reined in his spending on tailors and wines. He’d given up his small house in Paris last autumn, the need for it gone along with the dismissal of his kind but unexciting French mistress. With frugality, and even without acquiring any dowry from Lily, he could afford to feed her. But clothe her? Hire a maid for her? Allow her parties and at homes? No. There would be no cash for any of that. And he loathed the idea that she’d do without all those niceties she so obviously enjoyed.
How could he ask her to marry him and do without the comforts she deserved?
He’d be a cad. Perhaps not as bad as Randolph Churchill, the duke of Marlborough’s younger son, who had met, fallen in love and proposed marriage to the American heiress Jenny Jerome within two weeks, only to find that her small dowry of two thousand pounds per year would be all he’d have to live on. The difference between Churchill and him was that he wished not to take any of Killian Hanniford’s money. None at all. He would not be beholden to him. And not so connected that Hanniford might wish to use him as a negotiator with his father, the duke. Certainly Lily’s father would grant her a dowry. Any father of title or wealth had done so in England for centuries. But poor and needy as he was, it belittled Julian to take it. If he married an English girl, she’d come with money. Chances were she’d come with even less than Lily, but before he’d ever set eyes on Lily, he’d intended no marriage for many years, anyway. Not until he’d improved his lot, shored up his pride with some achievement and solvency. And he’d never expected a woman to fund his life, either. He’d expected her to provide an heir and organization of his house, period.
He wanted just Lily. Unencumbered with her wealth or her father’s influence. Only one matter stood like a wall between them.
He did not wish to be purchased. Not by her. Not by her father. He’d lived his whole life holding his head above the crowd because his parents were notorious gamblers and libertines, caught in their cups more than once.
He’d told himself he’d never allow himself to become a laughing stock, too. There was deplorable behavior among his parents, but he’d remained discreet. Not a drinker or a known gambler or a debaucher, he’d been an unremarkable aristo. But married to a wealthy American girl who’d come lugging her dollars in a carpetbag? ‘The Dollar Girls’, the scandal sheets called them. Could he bear the slurs without cringing?
Still he had to reconcile his fear with his need and his desire. His conundrum was that he wanted her more than he despised what she represented.
Across the expanse of the table, she caught his gaze and solace warmed in her clear blue eyes. Was her sweet regard not worth more than money or scandal or shame?
“I have a toast to make,” his father said and raised his wineglass. “It is with pride that I announce the engagement of my daughter, Elanna, to our good friend and neighbor, Lord Carbury.”
Gasps of suitable delight went up from the assembled guests. Congratulations followed with much consumption of wine. Carbury beamed as he grasped Elanna’s hand and squeezed it so that her blood drained the skin white.
What in hell?
“Elanna accepted him this afternoon,” the duchess declared.
This is why Elanna had avoided him earlier. The earl had proposed and she, trapped by time and looming poverty, had accepted.
She’d been sold.
He fisted his hands. That would destroy any woman or man’s composure. The worst had happened to her. She’d taken a man she did not want.
He shot a look at Lily. But she was offering up her own blessings to the match and drank with the others to health and welfare of the new couple.
Fear stabbed Julian like a knife.
Would Hanniford sell his daughter to a man she did not want? The American had no reason to. But when a man was ruthless, it was possible. Would she agree?
Julian doubted it.
But then, he could not take the chance.
* * * *
The moon glowed brightly as Julian stood before the stable doors, the two horses already saddled. Across the yard, he examined the path from the house. Anyone who gazed out of the windows at the right time and the right place could see her cross.
He patted the noses of the restless animals. “She’ll arrive soon. Be assured.”
A flash in the dark caught his eye. He spied her dashing toward him. His survey of the windows showed him no need for alarm. No one stood there.
“Hello.” She ran right up to him, breathless. Tonight she wore her riding jacket and her usual hip-hugging man’s pants, but no hat. Her hair curled over her shoulders in rich dark waves. “Have you waited long?”
Eternities. “I occupied myself and prepared the horses. No need to call Colin tonight, I thought. Come. Mount up.” He wished to be alone with her. Away from here and the turmoils of the day. He helped her up on the mare. “Those trousers of yours are certainly an aid to riding.”
“Not good for a lady’s reputation, however.” She watched him climb up and directed her horse toward the far lane and the woods where they’d gone last night.
“I won’t tell.”
“I know you won’t.” She narrowed her gaze into the road ahead. “Others would. Many would rejoice to ridicule me or Marianne and especially my father.”
“For profit, yes, I know.” All too well.
“So much of your society is built on propriety and yet so many hide their foibles. Even your Prince of Wales carries on with women at house parties.”
Julian sighed. His horse kept pace with hers. “Those parties are arranged by many who wish to curry his favor. It’s disgraceful on everyone’s part.”
“You wouldn’t ever do that,” she said with conviction.
“No. I wouldn’t. I cultivate other aspirations. Some new, others older and not so well accomplished.”
“I like a man with ambitions. Tell me about them.”
“I’d improve the yield of our farms on the estates. Though I’m no farmer. I’d like to see my tenants better fed and healthier. Though I’m no expert on diseases.”
She dropped her jaw and the look on her face stopped his breath. “Truly noble. Unlike some I’ve met.”
What other men had caught her fancy or merited her disdain? “For example?”
“I’d be impolitic to reveal them.”
“Do. For me.” When she demurred, he said, “I won’t tell.”
“Let’s say of the three other men who visit with us this week, I like only Lord Pinkhurst.”
“Pinkie?” Why did that man pique her interest? “He’s a good fellow. In want of a wife.” He’s got two thousand a year. Not much. Barely enough to put a lady into his bed.
“He’s pleasant. Funny. Kind. But—”
“But what?”
“If I tell you, that gives you too much information.”
“To do what?”
“Make fun of me.”
“I may be cold, solitary, even sour, but I doubt anyone has ever said I was critical of others.”
She cast her eyes away, her shoulders flexing in discomfort.
“Please don’t think me capable of ridiculing you. Far from it.”
“Why would you ask about my feelings for Lord Pinkhurst then?”
“I’m curious because—” Oh, hell. “I want to learn what kind of man does appeal to you.”
She stiffened in her saddle, as if she girded for battle. “That’s very personal.”
“Of course it is. It gives me an advantage.”
“Do you need one?” she threw back at him.
“Do I?” he persisted, undiplomatic as that was.
Her eyes locked to his, she considered that a long moment. “He’s asked for my hand once.”
Julian stiffened, alarm winging through his blood. “I would assume because you’re here with me that you refused him.”
She sniffed. “I did not.”
No? “What then?”
“I told him I was not considering any proposals until June.”
“Why?” he blurted, in frustration and fear.
She rolled a shoulder. “I want to take my time to consider such a momentous decision.”
“I’m pleased.”
“Are you?” She faced him, her brilliant gaze locking on his and searching for truth.
I wish to God I had Pinkie’s income. That sum could commend me, if only a little. But he couldn’t tell her that, lest she link his finances to his desire for her hand. “Very pleased.”
She said nothing but only nodded and rode onward.
He sought to bridge the gap. “I’d like to show you the house. It’s old, filled with treasures and totally mine.”
“Wonderful.” She followed his lead.
At the kitchen entrance, he dismounted and reached to help her down. Looping the horses’s reins over the iron rail, he opened the door, took her hand and led her inside. He’d spent most of the afternoon rehearsing a speech about marriage and money and a future they might build together. But as he escorted her through the scullery and up the servants’ back stairs to the first floor and the pink marble foyer, he felt lost. His mind went blank.
“Oh, my,” she exclaimed as she turned in a circle to view his ancestors whose portraits hung in the massive hall. “My relatives are not so many.”
“And not so dour, I’d bet.” He hurried to the butler’s closet, found two candles in holders and lit them with a flint.
She lifted her taper to illuminate one painting and pointed toward one male peacock in vermilion velvet doublet and black codpiece. “Who is this gentleman?”
“Ah, Randy Roderick Ash. No gentleman at all. A courtier to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. A spy for the Crown. A seducer of many women. Father of too many children, all illegitimate but one.”
“Good for the family,” she said with humor. “And who is this lady?”
“The fourth marchioness, Lady Ann Ash. A terror they say. Ruled her husband with an iron hand, saved the estate from the clutches of Oliver Cromwell and bore her husband ten children.”
“A lioness. Was she never Duchess of Seton?”
“The marquessate was given as a land grant separate from the duchy. The estate has remained in the family as the support of the marquess, run separately.”
“So, this house is really yours?” She seemed surprised.
“It has always belonged to the next marquess of Chelton upon his twenty-first birthday. Along with the sixteen thousand acres of rich farmland. Half as grand as many in this county, but good soil.”
“Does that mean you are self-supporting?”
Good God. The things she asked. Thank heaven he had answers. Sound ones. “Slightly. We have hopes for a good harvest this season. But bad weather has taken its toll.” He paused.
She tipped her head. “And what else has?”
“Over the past few years, I’ve poured most of my winnings at the tables into new plows, younger horses and new seed. But I’m not as skillful a gambler as I thought. What I’ve contributed has meant some improvement.” But it needs more. And damned if I want to marry and use my wife’s money to make it so.
“Pinkie tells me his own estate fails to produce what it did even last year. You are not alone in your predicament.”
He stared at her. Pinkie would want her dowry to shore up his failing income. The bugger.
She caught sight of something in the parlor. “Might we go in there?”
He nodded, pleased she diverted the conversation, while he searched for a way to move the conversation to his main goal.
“Whose is that?” she asked when she stood beneath the massive silver sword crossed with a straight saber.
“My grandfather’s sword on the left. He fought with Wellington and took the saber on the right from a French Cuirassier whom he relieved of his life. He insisted my father become expert at fencing and so my father bade me learn the same value of a good thrust and parry.”
“I’m glad you need not use it.”
He put a hand to his heart, pained. “But if you should, I am prepared.”
“I’m impressed. My relatives are an even more ragtag bunch. My father comes from the wharves of Dublin. My mother was born to poor farmers in Baltimore. The fights they fought were to eat and stay alive.”
“And done very well, I’d say.”
“My father has. I’ve no claim to ingenuity.” She waved a dismissive hand and walked toward a landscape painting of courtiers at the hunt. “Do you track game?”
“Shooting parties. Yes, we do. Have you gone to any since you’re here in England?”
She shook her head. “I’d love to be invited.”
“Really?” That stunned him.
“Quite.” She looked up at him over her shoulder. Her abundant hair curled over her ears in enticing tendrils and her mouth was open, ripe with humor. “I’m a very good shot.”
“A good horsewoman and an excellent marksman. I must remember that.”
“But you’d hunt with me? Even if I bagged more grouse?”
Her teasing had him laughing. He put his own candle down on the table behind her and took hers from her to set aside as well. When he returned to her, she melted against him. Her lips parted. Her breasts bore into him. She was all warmth and sensual woman. He enveloped her, the wealth of her a raw temptation to his desire to remain a gentleman.
She went up on her toes and brushed her lips on his. “Say you’d hunt with me.”
“Not for years and years,” he heard himself saying as his lips sizzled with the lure of her own on his. “I’d have better things to do with you.”
Horrid man that he was, he scooped her up and found the settee, his legs weak as a baby’s from wanting her. He sent his hands into her hair, the heavy silk alluring to his fingertips. She wiggled, her efforts to sink into him spiking his cock to ribald heights.
She placed her mouth on his, a full kiss, mad in its appeal.
He bent over her, smoothing her hair back over her ear, admiring the beauty in his arms and warning himself…warning himself to remain in control.
She gasped, clutching him closer and rubbing her breasts against him. “Show me.”
“What?”
“The better things.”
He crushed her to him. “You’re too adventurous for your own good—or mine.”
She arched an elegant brow. “Say it’s our secret.”
He swirled her beneath him to the cushions. “A witch.”
She chuckled.
But her laughter was caught short by his assault on her mouth. His tongue laved the seam of her lips and she let him inside. He stroked the wet cavern of her with a demanding glide and she undulated under him, willing and wanton. The fires inside him exploded in flames of glory. She was his. Would be.
He needed more of her. His lips branding her skin, laying claim to all she was. He lifted the hem of her white blouse, his suspicion that, like last night, she wore no corset or chemise a correct one. And in his fury to have more, he tore the thin cambric straight up the center. She was bare to him, her bounteous breasts pale and glowing in the rays of the moon.
“Darling,” he said as he cupped one breast and admired the large round nipple that hardened as he gazed at it. “I have never seen such perfection.”
And then he took her areola in his mouth and sucked her high and hard into him.
She bucked, her nails digging into his jacket, her legs restless.
He caught one of her thighs and hooked it up around his hips. The new position made him growl for now his cock was nestled in the hollow of her loins. He caressed her hip and sent his hand further along the line of her cleft. Dear God. Had she nothing but those sweet damn trousers between his hand and her finest treasures? Finding the waist of her trousers, he slid his hand inside and down. Her skin was silk. Her folds were heavy, flowing with need of him. She was so ready for him, he pressed his forehead to her chest. And madman that he was, he sent his fingers along her juicy cleft and up inside, deep into her hot flowing core. She wanted him, in all ways. Of that, there was no doubt. Virgin and minx, innocent and wanton, if she wanted him, he’d give her all he could.
He captured her mouth and sank his fingers higher inside her. She groaned and shifted to give him better access to her core. It was then he turned gentle and heathen and found her nub. Satin hard, her bud stood in invitation and he circled her, tapped her, rubbed her over and over as she writhed and let him take her up to a rough ecstasy where she clung to him, suspended in her own passion and cried out, drifting down to him and his fierce embrace.
He cuddled her close, the aftermath for her so vital to his suit. She shuddered and nestled near to him.
“Julian,” she murmured.
He kissed her time and again.
With one hand, she cupped his cheek. “That was marvelous.”
He grinned at her, the rogue in him coming out. “For me, too.”
She wrinkled her forehead. “I daresay not as much.”
“You know the mechanics of this business, do you?”
“I grew up on a ranch. I’ve seen horses and cattle in their throes. But—” She licked her lips. “Never imagined it was this…thrilling.”
He pinched her nose and pulled the two sides of fabric of her ruined blouse together. Then he slipped off his jacket, urged her to put it on and pushed himself away from her.
He rose, strode to the fireplace and back. His cock raged to have her. But his code of honor told him he mustn’t have more than he’d taken already. “I promised you and myself I’d never hurt you.”
“I believe you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
She startled, her lashes fluttering in confusion. Presently, she clutched the garment to her chest. “Why not?”
He jerked around. For all his days, he’d never get over how direct she was. “I want you. Badly. Want to offer you more and yet I…”
“Don’t stop,” she urged him.
“I want to say…”
“Please tell me, Julian.” The light in the room did not reach her. But he could see her heart in her beguiling blue eyes. She was too precious to toy with or avoid her appeal.
“Lily, I have nothing. Soon, less than nothing. We Setons are on the verge of ruin.”
She blinked. “I am not enamored of money.”
“How wonderful of you to say.”
Standing, she clutched his jacket more tightly about her. “I don’t say what I don’t mean, Julian.”
He had to be as forthright. “You come with stipulations.”
Her eyes darkened. Her mouth thinned. “Not I. My father’s, you mean.”
“No—”
“It’s the shipping company. You object to…to what? American money?” She grew angry.
He winced. “I object to being bought!”
She sucked in a breath. Insult had frozen her. “And I to being sold.”
“We are two people who want someone whose circumstances offend their pride. What if,” he asked with bated breath, “we were neither sellers or buyers, but simply two people who were meant for each other?”
Shock limned her features. “Are you asking me to marry you, Julian?”
Could he ask for her hand in all good faith?
Her face fell. She whirled away toward the door.
He caught her by the wrist. “Don’t go. Look at me. I’m asking if—”
“Shouldn’t you first seek my permission to marry, my boy?”
With a gasp, Lily spun, whirling back against Julian and facing their intruder.
Julian braced her. Outrage burned through him. “Why are you here, Father?”
The duke strolled toward them and Lily shrank backward into Julian’s embrace. The look on the older man’s face was no less than a sneer.
Her blood froze. Ashamed of her dishabille, shocked at the man’s hauteur in the presence of his son, Lily steeled herself for whatever confrontation the duke so obviously intended.
He removed his hat, ran a hand through his wind-blown silver hair and focused with lascivious brown eyes on her hold of Julian’s coat at her breast. “I told you, Julian, I wouldn’t approve of this match.”
“What?” Julian spat. “You did no such thing,”
The duke wiggled a finger, indicating Lily’s bodice. “Here’s proof why such a union is unsavory.”
“You lying basta—”
“He’s wanted you from the start.” The Duke of Seton was pleased with himself, cutting her with his disdain, strutting as he paced the room. “Did you know?”
She straightened, drawing away from Julian’s comforting body. Julian had been attracted to her, and she’d believed him in spirit and truth.
“Ah. I see you did not. He knows what you’re worth, girl. He needs your dollars.”
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, “your daughter, sir, is truly in an unacceptable condition.”
“Papa,” Lily said as she beheld the forbidding countenance of her father standing behind the duchess. 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, as he walked around her, “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.
“Your Grace,” her father said with spite in every enunciated syllable, “my daughter is as fragile a flower as yours. Today, you gave yours to a brute of a man.”
“I say, Hanniford!”
“No bluster, man! I see who you are. I am not blind nor as loose of principle. As for my own daughter, I take pride in her every move. If she wished to ride at night, she has the ability, if not the proper sense to take a maid and a footman instead of your son as her escort.” He offered his arm to her and with a shaking hand, she took it. “I also see by my girl’s attire that there was more to this night than riding and visiting a house.”
“Mr. Hanniford.” Julian stepped up to them. “I would not hurt her.”
“Is that so?” he asked with disbelief in his tone. “A hideous way to prove it.”
“Papa, please.” Lily squeezed her father’s forearm. “Don’t argue. Take me back. I wish to return to London.”
“No, Lily. You can’t.”
“But—”
“Sir, hear me out,” Julian pleaded. “I wish to marry Lily.”
She met Julian’s gaze, her heart bleeding. “No, he doesn’t.” Not for love or money.
Her father huffed. “How good of you, Lord Chelton.”
“I was proposing to her before my father arrived and interfered.”
Wasn’t it more a litany of reasons why he wouldn’t ever marry her?
Her father stared down at her. “You’ll marry him.”
“No!” She stepped backward. “This is outrageous.”
“I agree,” her father said.
“You can’t make me.”
“It’s best, my dear.” He looked older, defeated. “The circumstances are such.”
She’d never seen him without a swagger. “How can you say that, Papa? You agreed to let me choose my own husband.”
“By your actions here tonight, Lily, you have chosen.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I—”
“I forbid the marriage,” said the duke.
Julian confronted him. “Are you mad?”
The duke gave his son a sardonic smile. “I warned you.”
Julian glared at his father, then turned to hers with wildness that cast his features in stone. “He’s scheming, trying to manipulate us all. I won’t let him.”
“Intriguing. How so?” asked her father.
“He wants a higher price for the shipping company. Wanted me to negotiate again with you to persuade you. I refused. He’s angry at the loss. Angry that I’d court Lily in my own way. Angry that he’s penniless, by his own folly.”
Her father pursed his lips and studied the duke. “So you’ll not give your consent to their marriage unless…what? I offer a higher price on stock?”
The duke lifted on his toes, preening like a fool. “I’d say you have the right of it.”
Her father shot a look at Julian. “You must be of age.”
“I will be thirty-one June first, sir.”
“Do you own stock in the shipping company?”
“No, sir.”
“Splendid. Send your lawyer to me for transfer of Lily’s dowry.”
Lily gasped.
Julian went white as a sheet. “I will, yes.”
“Well, then, Seton.” Her father seemed without joy as he looked at the duke. “We have a wedding to plan.”
Julian beamed at her father. “Thank you, sir.”
Lily shrank away from them. “You cannot sell me.”
Her father glared at her. “You consented to too much tonight. I do not sell you, dearest, as ensure you will live without disgrace.”
The duke lurched forward, his face ruby red. “You need my approval!”
“He’s right,” proclaimed the duchess with overweening pride. “Society will expect it. If Julian were to marry her, the chit would need my entre to the ton. And then there is the unfortunate possibility that this instance of riding at midnight and the seduction in my son’s parlor would get out.”
Julian seethed. “You wouldn’t dare put that abroad.”
She tut-tutted him. “Don’t be naïve, dear one. Servants talk, you know it.”
Julian cursed broadly. “I thought you were a hellcat, but I’d no idea how unscrupulous you were. You’d do this for money? Renounce decency?”
Lily could bear no more. She’d heard of families who starved because they drank away their wages or gambled the gold from their teeth. But the hypocrisy of the duke and duchess cut her like a knife. Did the son fall far from this tree—or could she trust Julian in spite of what was said and done here? “I don’t want anything from any of you. Not acceptance, not titles, not money—and not marriage.”
Julian caught her hands. “That’s not true. I want you.”
“Listen to him, Lily,” her father urged. “This rejection does you no good.”
She yanked away. “No.”
“I’ll not have scandal on my doorstep, Lily. I told you that before. I warned you. This is as much your doing as Lord Chelton’s. Fix it.”
“No, no,” the duke persisted. “I won’t approve of it.”
“Quiet, Seton. You’ll have your price for the sale.” Her father patted her hand and led her more snuggly by his side. “I’ll have my daughter wed with all due respect. You will approve. And you, Your Grace,” he said to the duchess with a murderous look over the rims of his glasses, “will put no rumors of this night out to anyone. Understood?”
With an indignant lift of her chin, the woman demurred. “As you wish.”
He looked at Julian. “How soon is a wedding possible without feeding the gossips?”
“The banns should be read in church for three Sundays.”
“See it done. That makes the wedding the first week in June. Our house. I will post the engagement announcement in the newspaper. Also, Lord Chelton, be sure to find some exquisite family bauble that your mother has not yet sold to pay her nefarious debts. It will become an engagement gift for your fiancée. Send it round to the house Monday. We’ll host a ball two nights before the wedding. Meanwhile, Lily goes to Paris for fittings for her trousseau.”
She opened her mouth to object.
But he quashed her efforts with a shake of his head. “Do not disappoint me. None of you.”