A Queen for the Taking? Read Online Free PDF Page A

you told me, of course. You’ve detailed your own attributes admirably, Lady Liana. I get a wife who will be the perfect queen. Who will stand by my side and serve my country. And of course, God willing, give me an heir. Preferably two.’
    A faint blush touched those porcelain cheeks again, intriguing him. She was twenty-eight years old and yet she blushed like an untouched virgin. Surely she’d had relationships before. Lovers.
    And yet in their conversation this afternoon, she’d intimated that she hadn’t.
    ‘That still doesn’t answer my question,’ she said after a moment. ‘I understand your need to marry. But why me in particular?’
    Sandro shrugged. ‘You’re a duke’s daughter, you have shown yourself to be philanthropic, your father is an important member of the European Union. You’re fertile, I assume?’
    The pink in her cheeks deepened. ‘There is no reason to think otherwise.’
    ‘I suppose that aspect of unions such as these is always a bit of a risk.’
    ‘And if I couldn’t have children?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Would we divorce?’
    Would they? Everything in him railed against that as much as the actual marriage. It was all so expedient, so cold. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’
    ‘How comforting.’
    ‘I can’t pretend to like any of this, Lady Liana. I’d rather have a normal relationship, with a woman who—’ He stopped suddenly, realising he was revealing too much. A woman who chose me. Who loved me for myself, and not because of my money or my crown. No, he wasn’t about to tell this cold-blooded woman any of that.
    ‘A woman who?’ she prompted.
    ‘A woman who wasn’t interested in my title.’
    ‘Why don’t you find one, then?’ she asked, and she didn’t sound hurt or even peeved, just curious. ‘There must be a woman out there who would marry you for your own sake, Your Highness.’
    And she clearly wasn’t one of them, a fact that he’d known and accepted yet still, when so baldly stated, made him inwardly flinch. ‘I have yet to find one,’ he answered shortly. ‘And you are meant to call me Sandro.’
    ‘Then you must call me Liana.’
    ‘Very well, Liana. It’s rather difficult to find a woman who isn’t interested in my title. The very fact that I have it attracts the kind of woman who is interested in it.’
    ‘Yet you renounced your inheritance for fifteen years,’ Liana observed. ‘Couldn’t you have found a woman in California?’
    He felt a flash of something close to rage, or perhaps just humiliation. She made it sound as if he was pathetic, unable to find a woman to love him for himself.
    And maybe he was—but he didn’t like this ice princess knowing about it. Remarking on it.
    ‘The women I met in California were interested in my wealth and status,’ he said shortly. He thought of Teresa, then pushed the thought away. He’d tumbled into love with her like a foolish puppy; he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He wouldn’t have the choice, he acknowledged. His attempt at relationships ended in this room, with this woman, and love had no place in what was between them.
    ‘I’m not interested in your wealth,’ Liana said after a moment. ‘I have no desire to drape myself with jewels or prance about in designer dresses—or whatever it is these grasping women do.’
    There was a surprising hint of humour in her voice, and his interested snagged on it. ‘These grasping women?’
    ‘You seem to have met so many, Your— Sandro. I had no idea there were so many cold, ambitious women about, circling like hawks.’
    His lips twitched at the image even as a cynical scepticism took its familiar hold. ‘So you do not count yourself among the hawks, Liana?’
    ‘I do not, but you might. I am interested in being your queen, Sandro. Not for the wealth or the fame, but for the opportunity it avails me.’
    ‘And what opportunity is that?’
    ‘To promote the charity I’ve been working for. Hands To