An Unsuitable Duchess Read Online Free PDF Page B

to analysing her next move. ‘You were never cruel to Emma, however, I always had a sense that you were indifferent to her presence.’
    He forced his jaw to unclench. ‘And you think I was wrong in that?’
    ‘I suppose it depends on what you want in a marriage.’
    He rarely lost his patience with his grandmother, but she knew as well as he that what he wanted in life for himself did not matter. His parents had chosen his bride for him when he’d been away at Cambridge. When he had returned home one Christmas he had been informed that he would be married to a girl he’d never met. It had made him ill, but he’d understood that his needs and desires did not come before his duty. What mattered above all else was the legacy he left to the Lyonsdale name. He had known that to be true then, just as he knew it to be true now.
    ‘I accepted my responsibility,’ he said, looking his grandmother in the eye and raising his chin.
    ‘Yes, you did—quite well, I might add. To my knowledge you never questioned your father’s decision.’
    ‘You know I could not cry off, even if I had wanted to. A man does not break an engagement. It is not done.’
    She leaned in. ‘But would you have done so if you could?’
    If he had, Emma would still be alive today.
    He took a large swig of brandy. ‘I knew how important it was to have an exemplary woman share the Lyonsdale name. Father made an appropriate choice in Emma. There was no reason to protest.’
    ‘And yet even though you accepted their choice the spark in your eyes you had as a child went out when you made your vows, and it has not returned since. You need to find that spark again.’
    She made it sound simple, but Julian knew that honouring the responsibility of his title meant he would be bound, yet again, to a marriage of convenience. The only sparks that mattered were the ones he could fire off in his speeches at Westminster.
    ‘Why am I certain you are about to tell me how I can regain what I have lost?’
    His grandmother gave a slight shrug. ‘I was fortunate. I married your grandfather and we fell in love. Your father was not as fortunate. We were certain your mother would be a rose in his pocket, but she had thorns. Being married to her killed something precious inside him, and he became consumed with politics and Westminster.’ She leaned across the table and levelled him with a pointed stare. ‘There is more to life than that. It did him no good.’
    His father had been the very model of what an English duke should be. Nine years had passed since he’d collapsed and died while delivering a speech to the House of Lords, and to this day people continued to tell Julian how much they had admired him. If only Julian could be half the man he had been.
    ‘I disagree. He helped this country achieve great things.’
    ‘And it cost him his life. No one will convince me that his heart did not give way because of the strain of his political career.’ She drained her glass of sherry. ‘We were wrong in preventing him from choosing his own bride, and he was wrong when he did the same to you. Life is too brief, Julian. Trust someone as old as I. Do not waste your life tied to someone you do not want.’
    If only it were that easy. Out of an entire ballroom of girls the only one he had been drawn to wasn’t an appropriate choice—to say nothing of the fact that she was probably married to a man old enough to be her father. The point of taking a wife was to produce an heir. His father had told him many times that it wasn’t necessary to like the person you married. You just needed to tolerate them.
    Thankfully his grandmother’s attention was back on the chessboard. ‘Oh, and Julian...? I seem to have misplaced my edition of A Traveler’s Tale by that American author—Vandenberg. Would you mind purchasing another one for me the next time you are near Hatchards?’
    The Vandenberg name should not follow any conversation about marriage. He needed to concentrate on