His Maddening Matchmaker by Virginia Heath

Author:Virginia Heath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-11-24T16:39:12+00:00

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Her father’s ostentatious yellow curricle was sat outside the house by the time she returned a short while later. That he was leaving on a Sunday was no surprise, but that he was leaving so early in the day was. He usually meticulously went through the household accounts straight after church to ensure that she wasn’t squandering the increasingly small allowance he gave her to run it. This deviation from his routine on top of the news he was purchasing a house only served to unsettle her further, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing that.

‘At what point were you going to tell me that you had purchased a house on Moulsham Street? Or was it your intention to never tell me in case I darkened its door, Papa? Which of course, I would rather die than ever do.’ When the wind had been knocked out of your sails, it was always best to come back fighting, so Isobel asked that with the breezy nonchalance of one who did not care one whit about the hurtful oversight. Or, more importantly, was not the slightest bit worried by what it meant.

‘Who told you?’ He did not bother denying it and was obviously aggrieved that she knew.

She offered him one of the tinkling laughs he found so annoying. ‘Chelmsford is barely fifty miles away and shares the same road to London as we do, so it was hardly going to remain a secret for ever now, was it?’ She peeled off her gloves and placed them inside her bonnet but continued to hold it in full view as her father glared at her over the top of his copy of yesterday’s South Essex Gazette simply because she knew that he disapproved of it.

She knew that irrefutably because he had vehemently disapproved of the smaller sprig of harlot’s scarlet silk roses which it had sported two weeks ago. Hence she had added a few more red petals as a quiet act of continued defiance. It was those tiny little flashes of rebellion which always got his dander up the most despite them doing little to make her feel better about her lot.

With hindsight, which she had never been good at pre-empting, this latest petty revolt had probably not been wise. ‘As I am sure you can imagine, that juicy titbit is already doing the rounds about the village. Everyone so far seems delighted that you have no plans to return here permanently.’ She would be one of them if only she could be assured that her place here was still secured. ‘Dare I ask what that means for this place?’ She gestured around the drawing room which so often felt like a prison, but which suddenly seemed like the last sanctuary she had left.

‘There is six months left on the lease.’

Fear made bile rise in her throat, but she smiled regardless. ‘And when those six months are up?’

‘I am rather hoping that six months is all the incentive

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