How to Pursue a Princess Read Online Free PDF

the duchess had mentioned that the Earl of Huntley would be arriving tomorrow, and it was obvious from her arch glance that she favored Huntley as a potential suitor for Lily. Apparently the earl was wellborn, fabulously wealthy, handsome, and a perfect gentleman.
    Lily should have been excited—here was her chance for a more-than-favorable marriage, one with a carefully selected candidate. Instead, all she felt was deeply and irrevocably sad.
    She sighed and tilted her face to the dappled sun streaming through the leaves overhead. If she wished to save her family, she had to come to terms with a marriage of convenience. It wasn’t unusual; in fact, women were judged on the quality of husband they managed to snare. Women groomed themselves andlearned genteel arts such as embroidery and watercolors, a smattering of foreign languages, and just a touch of classical history, in order to attract men of wealth and breeding. They learn everything but the art of making a well-cut riding habit. She sniffed derisively. That’s a true art.
    She smoothed the navy-blue skirt of her habit with satisfaction. Just this morning, as she was waiting for her mount to be brought around, two of the duchess’s august guests—both ladies dressed in the highest fashion—had stopped to ask which modiste had made her habit. She smiled with pride. If I can’t find a satisfactory husband, I can always support the family. If only my skill with a needle could also save Papa—and Caith Manor—from his folly.
    She sighed. It has to be marriage, then. Why, oh why, am I finding this so difficult to accept? She firmed her chin and said aloud, “This is how the world operates.” Men looked for women who would grace their table and manage their homes and present them with heirs, while women looked for men who would provide for them and the ensuing family. It had been this way for centuries. So why did she feel so . . . bereft?
    “I’m being silly,” she told her horse.
    His ears flickered, but he offered no further comment.
    She sighed and patted his neck, glad that no one was about to hear her. Really, it was a simple—
    A fox jumped out of the shrubbery and dashed across the path, a streak of red near the horse’s hooves.
    The horse reared, whinnying madly as he pawed the air.
    Lily hung on for dear life, clutching at the horse’s mane, at the saddle, trying to hold on to anything that might stop her fall. But being perched upon a sidesaddle and weighted with the heavy skirts of her riding habit, she was no match for the frightened horse.
    The horse threw itself upon its back legs and, with a scream, Lily tumbled to the ground.
    •  •  •
    Twenty minutes earlier, on the other side of the river, a carriage had creaked to a stop beneath a towering oak. An old woman pushed back the curtains with a hand heavy with jewels and looked out the window, disbelief on her deeply wrinkled face. “This is it?”
    “What? You do not like it?” Piotr Romanovin, Prince Wulfinski of Oxenburg, threw open the carriage door and called to the coachman to tie off the horses. “It is charming, nyet ?” Flashing a smile, the prince reached up to help his grandmother to the ground.
    His Tata Natasha, a grand duchess more aware of her title than any king or queen he knew, gathered her velvet cloak as if it were a shield and stared at the cottage that sat in a small clearing. In silence, she noted the broken shutters, the half-missing thatch roof, the front door hanging from one hinge, and a profusion offlowering vines growing across the windows. “Nyet,” she said bluntly. “This is not charming. Come.” She turned back to the carriage. “We will go back to the big house, where we belong, and leave this foolishness to the wilds.”
    “It’s not a big house, but a manor. And this ”—he gestured to the cottage—“is to be my home. It is here I shall live.”
    “You are a prince of Oxenburg. You cannot live in a hovel.”
    “I’m a grown man