Page 8 of In Want of a Wife
Barricading herself in her father’s office had its advantages.
“Where are your teacups?” She poured scotch into everyone’s tea and settled against the ridge of the desk, knocking off another large stack of papers which overturned a horrifically stuffed goose.
“Always prepared, our Lily,” Kate said with a smile. She kicked her long legs onto the ottoman, even as Charlotte swatted them away. “Nothing quite like liquid courage.”
“What’s good for the gander...” Charlotte agreed.
All three took a long sip of tea and scotch and sputtered, coughing as said liquid courage burned their throats.
“Well, maybe the goose knows better than the gander in this instance,” Charlotte sputtered, making a most unladylike face. “That is repulsive.”
Lily laughed. Truly laughed as if nothing weighed upon her, and she was not mere moments from crying. “I will keep my preference to champagne and lemonade.”
Kate reached for the teapot, then thought better, and grabbed for the scotch bottle, smiling innocently as Lily and Charlotte both leveled glances at her. “There is a problem with your plan, dear,” she started nonchalantly, adding more scotch to her teacup.
Lily raised her eyebrows, gesturing for Kate to continue.
“Well for one, you are not five feet four.”
“I could be if I stood on my tiptoes,” she shot back defensively. The scotch sloshed over the cup as she stretched toward the ceiling, lifting her chin for extra height. It was no use. Even with her hair dressed and stretching tall, there was no changing her petite frame.
“If he is a good man,” Charlotte said diplomatically, “then an inch?—”
Kate cleared her throat.
“—threeinches will not matter.”
The two giggled, leaving Lily out of some private joke.
“Unless the man is shorter than our Lily,” Kate said.
“Why must you assume the worst? The man could be tall and exceedingly handsome.”
“Maybe, but you are forgetting something much more important.” Kate made a grab for the scotch again, but Charlotte swiped it away, always the proper lady. Kate pulled a funny face, then regarded Lily, shedding her playfulness as she said soberly, “You will never have five thousand pounds if you go against your father’s wishes and marry this stranger.”
Cool dew lickedLily’s heels as she stood in the garden, staring up at the stars. Her telescope was still conveniently locked away in her stepmother’s room after the wedding that did not happen.
Nearly four days had passed, and besides some snickering and whispers from her sisters, it was as if she no longer existed in her father’s household. All because Felton, a man her father arranged for her to marry, decided to take off for Gretna Green with a much younger and far richer heiress, or so the gossip rags reported.
Leaving Lily pacing her father’s garden in the middle of the night. She pulled her shawl tight around her shoulders and glanced behind her at the flicking candle light in her father’s office. He was avoiding her, and if she were being honest, she was doing the same, but the growing pit in her stomach was making it obvious she must face him.
She couldn’t roam the gardens all summer staring up at the sky. She couldn’t stay here, but she didn’t know what to do either. Where could she even go?
The sweet trill of the nightingale echoed from the forest surrounding Milton House. With a sigh, she trudged inside and stood at her father’s office door for a moment too long.
“Lily?” he asked from within.
She leaned her forehead against the doorway, slamming her eyes shut. She could no longer remember a time in the recent past where he didn’t address her with an underlying tone of aggravation.
“It’s far too late to be awake. Go to bed.”
It was almost like a fever dream now, that once, she remembered her father’s laugh. It had been a big, booming sound. She remembered him climbing under a table and pretending to be a monster as she playfully screamed and clung to her mother’s skirts with her pudgy little hands.
But that was years ago.
She had done everything he had asked, and now he ordered her to bed, just as he would likely dismiss her from his presence tomorrow if he didn’t run away to London first.
No, Lily could no longer endure him—or her stepmother, or staying in this house and being treated as nothing but a nuisance—when she wanted nothing more than to experience the world and not remain stuck in some small corner of it.
