The Princess & the Pea Read Free

her quite an inviting little morsel."
    "She would have gone to fat." Olivia's eyes snapped, her attitude at once keen and discerning. "She was already well on the way to having not one but two chins."
    Jared suppressed an impudent grin. Olivia Grayson was no longer a sylphlike figure herself.
    "I saw that, Jared."
    He allowed the grin to escape. "I know you did, Mother. That's what makes it so delightful." He swirled the brandy in his snifter and considered his next words. "All right, Mother. While I hardly think that's a suitable reason to eliminate a young woman worth million from my quest for a suitable wife, I will accept your reasoning. But I remain curious about the others. The chit from San Francisco, for example." Jared leveled a steady gaze at his unruffled parent. "She had no lack of fortune and the proper amount of chins."
    Olivia smiled serenely. "Insipid. Shallow. Possibly stupid. I would not rule out inbreeding somewhere in her background."
    He swallowed a laugh and nearly choked on the effort to retain his composure. "What of the girl from Baltimore?"
    She sighed with feigned regret. "Flighty. Absolutely no sense of decorum. And her brows nearly met above her nose." Olivia shook her head. "Simply not becoming in a countess."
    Jared stared. Annoyance battled with amusement. His mother was far more perceptive than even he gave her credit for. Why hadn't he noticed that brow business? More than likely he simply hadn't cared enough. This search for a wife was an unavoidable necessity, nothing more.
    He narrowed his eyes. "Very well, then. Tell me what was lacking in the New York heiress. She was lovely, one chin, two separate and distinct brows. She seemed neither too reserved nor too forward. Her ancestry was outstanding, her wealth excessive. What on earth was wrong with her?"
    Olivia spread her hands before her in a gesture of inevitability and shrugged. "The poor child could not sit a horse to save her soul."
    He widened his eyes in stunned disbelief. "You are telling me that every one of those women, young, for the most part lovely, and each with a dowry that could revive the legacy of Graystone, has been disregarded because of the most minuscule, insignificant reasons it has ever been my misfortune to hear?"
    "Jared." Olivia frowned and rose to her feet. "They are not insignificant. Besides, there are other reasons why they were not suitable. Each and every one of them failed to pass my te—" her eyes widened in dismay—"er ... my requirements. My standards."
    Abruptly, his failures in these last months of tentative flirtations and cautious courting made sense. Amazement swept through him. "You've been testing them?"
    "In a manner of speaking ..." Olivia paused, as if groping for words, and Jared suspected for once her hesitation was not an act.
    "What kind of tests?" he said through clenched teeth.
    "Oh, the usual. This and that." Olivia gestured vaguely. "Questions only a mother could properly judge coupled with quite a bit of basic observation. You understand."
    "I most certainly do not." He clenched his fists at his sides in an effort to keep his growing outrage under control. "Regardless of their faults—and it is fair to say those faults are minimal—each and every one of my prospective brides has had the one inestimable quality I need in a wife. Money. Resources. Vast wealth. It is not a whimsical desire, an idle wish. You and I both know survival is questionable without a substantial infusion of funds, and the sooner the better."
    "Of course I know all that." Olivia's eyes sparked. "But I refuse to settle merely because some young woman is the highest bidder. And an American no less. Why can't you find a nice British heiress?"
    Jared sighed wearily. "British heiresses are few and far between these days. There is an agricultural depression you know, Mother."
    "Nonetheless, your title is your inheritance, much the same as the wealth of some American heiress is hers. There has been an Earl of