Page 1 of The Mysterious Miss Lydia
1
If Miss Lydia Baker had been harboring any hopes that her family had summoned her home from her finishing school for the evening because they’d missed her company, the notion was swiftly dashed the moment her father’s protégé arrived.
“Sir Wendell, you made it,” Lydia’s mother cried, with such enthusiasm, Lydia felt a pang of suspicion.
A glance at her elder sister Imogene’s smug smile in her direction made Lydia’s belly turn.
What was Wendell doing here? But of course...
She could guess.
Her father smiled and strode over to greet the fair-haired man, whose father he’d counted amongst his closest friends.
“Sir Cedric,” the other man said with a deferential nod of his head. “How good of you and your wife to invite me.”
“Nonsense,” her mother said as she ushered him in to join the small gathering that was almost entirely made up of family. “You know you are always welcome here.” Her mother’s glance slid toward Lydia who was curled up in an armchair in the corner reading.
That was Lydia’s next clue that her worst suspicions might be proven true.
“Why, you are practically family,” her mother continued.
Lydia dipped her head behind the book as her heart jolted and skittered with alarm.
But he isn’t family.
Everyone else here was. Her mother’s brother was in the corner napping, while her cousin and his wife had been contentedly playing cards before the fire. But Wendell was not, despite the fact that their families had spent a good amount of time together when Lydia was young.
She burrowed into her seat farther, sinking lower. It was all that time together as children that made her stomach turn at the sight of him now.
It was what had a voice in her mind shouting,he is not family!
“Surely you know everyone here,” her mother was saying, and Lydia heard mumbled greetings along with her sister’s pretty words of welcome.
When her mother had insisted that she leave the School of Charm to join them all for dinner, she’d been told it was a family gathering.
Wendell was not family.
He will neverbefamily.
The words of protest stayed firmly stuck in her head as she did her best to be invisible. Even if Imogene hadn’t been smirking in her direction a moment ago, there was no way anyone would believe Wendell’s presence here tonight was for Imogene’s sake.
No, he was here for her. Lydia shut her eyes when the words on the page began to blur. She should have seen it coming.
The whole reason she’d been sent to the School of Charm was as a last-ditch effort to make her more appealing to men. Aneffort that her mother was quick to say had failed, even though she hadn’t even been there a full year.
But apparently, her parents had expected her to learn how to speak to members of the opposite sex without stammering and blushing, and they’d hoped it would happen in a fortnight.
So no, it shouldn’t come as a shock that her parents’ intent in bringing her here tonight had been to form some sort of match.
After all, Imogene might have been slightly older, but her future was secure and everyone knew it. A beauty and a flirt, the girl could have her pick of men. The only reason she wasn’t married already was that she was holding out for a title. Everyone expected her to marry into wealth and status.
And for Lydia, they expected...
“Wendell,” her father’s voice boomed.
Lydia fumbled with her novel before it fell into her lap. It wasn’t that her father’s voice had been so very loud. Just that he’d approached without her realizing and was now standing directly in front of Lydia. To Wendell, he said, “You remember my daughter Miss Lydia, do you not?”
Wendell’s teeth glinted when he smiled and his boyish, handsome features split with the friendly grin. “Of course! Lydia and I are old friends, aren’t we, Lydia?”
