The Duchess Hunt

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‘Which only proves my point, don’t you think?’

‘I might, if I only knew what it was.’

‘That arranged marriages are insipid at best and Jack is the last man who should consider making one. He has such a passionate, headlong temperament under that haughty indifference he shows the world and would be bored with such an empty-headed automaton of a wife before the marriage feast was over, let alone their bride visits.’

‘His Grace is also a wealthy and tolerably handsome nobleman, who would be hard pressed to find a lady who saw past that to the man himself. If they were still alive, no doubt his parents would have found a rich and lovely noblewoman who would understand his life, then contrived to throw them together long ago,’ Jessica argued.

‘Not they,’ Persephone denied with an emphatic shake of her head. ‘They would pick rival candidates and make Jack’s life a misery until he ran off with a farmer’s pretty daughter to prove he wasn’t going to be dictated to.’

‘Then since he can please himself who to marry, no doubt he’ll choose himself a conformable and agreeable wife he can be comfortable with.’

‘Such a pallid creature would never suit him,’ her friend said stubbornly and Jessica couldn’t help picturing Jack living with a female who forever agreed with every word he said and shuddered at the very idea.

Considering the vitality and impatience Jack Seaborne had struggled to contain ever since she first laid eyes on him, Jessica thought her friend was right. After such a stormy childhood, maybe it should be no surprise if he chose serenity over ungovernable passion in his own marriage, but it sounded so very dull.

‘Whatever we think, his Grace will go his own way—he always does,’ she said with a shrug and tried not to think of how she would feel if the Duke found himself a wife of character as well as beauty. Glad, she told herself stoically and did her best to look serenely content with her own lot in life.