CHAPTER ONE

This certainly wasn’t the trip I’d planned on.

Engine problems delayed my flight into Manchester. On top of that, the rental company gave away my luxury car and I was left with something that looked like a toy. Worst of all, this honeymoon had turned into a trip for one. At least the cottage was everything I’d imagined.

I stood for a moment in the waning light, admiring what I could see of it. White stucco walls seemed to almost glimmer in the fading light. Roses climbed the trellis and onto the slanted, thatched roof. Their sweet fragrance reached me, for a moment overpowering the scents of exhaust and travel grime that clung to me.

Sighing, I hefted my bookbag full of romance novels and hooked it over my shoulder. I’d been planning this trip for six months. I should be happy. I was happy. So why did this ugly feeling of disappointment rising in my throat make me want to cry?

Because I had dreamed it differently?

Who needed a man to carry the luggage, anyway?

It took some effort, but I wrested my suitcase from the miniature trunk –wasn’t it called something else here in the U.K.? – and trudged up the walk. As I juggled my luggage and tried to find the key that had disappeared into the abyss of my backpack, my cell phone began playing the Oklahoma State University fight song.

“Not now,” I mumbled. For a nanosecond I considered who it could be. I’d called Aunt Donna from the airport earlier and promised to call again tomorrow. Considering that my best friend had run off with my now ex-fiancé a week before the wedding, hearing from either of them was out of the question. That left only one person.

Erik.


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THE STORY

A young woman, jilted by the one man she thought she could trust, escapes to an idyllic English cottage. She hopes only for peace, but instead finds herself mistaken for her ancestor in the early nineteenth-century.

While Mattie finds herself saddled with a grumpy older sister, stuck with a snooty family, and head-over-heels for the charming but distant Andrew, she gets into disaster after disaster.

But when Mattie finds herself in the middle of a scandal that plagues her ancestor's family, she'll have to choose between forgiveness and honor.

Will she do the right thing and risk losing the man she loves, again?


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Inspirational writer Lacy J. Williams is a wife to Luke and "mother" to two charming Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. She writes book reviews for the Christian Suspense Zone, Afictionado (the official e-zine of American Christian Fiction Writers), local newsletters, and for her site, novelinspirations.com. She enjoys reading, playing with her pooches and taking them to the dog park, chick-flick movies (mostly those with happy endings), and reading great fiction. She loves to hear from her readers: email Lacy.


WHAT READERS ARE SAYING...

"What an extraordinary book, so easy to read but put together in such a way it is as though I sat right next to the camera as the film rolled out the scenes. I was totally unaware of each setting being described; I just realized I saw what the people in the story saw in my own imagination with no effort on my part. I actually went back through the document at one point looking for the picture I just knew must have been within the pages to check out a detail I wanted to verify when I realized the only actual picture available was produced in my own mind’s eye through the writing on the page.

From the first page, I was drawn into the life of Matilda, completely identifying with what she was going through. As she went through the next three weeks or so of her life, it was easy to sit right beside her and feel the same emotions she was experiencing. Matilda had quite a roller coaster ride while working through the pain she was trying to forget and at the same time making the most of the situation in which she found herself. I’d just get settled down in what direction I thought the story was going and found myself knocked off balance as the story took a new and interesting turn, one I totally didn’t expect.

I can’t let this review finish without mentioning the profound way God intervenes in her (Mattie's) life even when she wasn’t on speaking terms with Him right then. His words come to mind when she needs them most as He speaks to her heart. She yields to His guidance and He gives her peace in the midst of turmoil." - Pam W.



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The Bluestocking and the Blueblood Copyright © by Lacy J. Williams
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