The Love Match

By Lily Maxton

England, 1818. To her family, Olivia Middleton is a problem of the most vexing sort. With her older two sisters married off, she is now the target of her mother's matrimonial scheming. Shy and somewhat plain, Olivia prefers the thrill of a gothic novel to the hunt for a husband. And as far as her family is concerned, something must be done. But Olivia has no interest in the men paraded before her, except, perhaps, the sought-after bachelor William Cross.

William has sworn never to wed, but that doesn't mean he can't enjoy women. What he excels at most is flirtation... unless the woman in question is Olivia Middleton. She barely bats an eyelash at his most creative compliments. She laughs at his attempts to flatter her when other ladies would swoon. Olivia intrigues him, particularly when he discovers the passion simmering beneath her facade, a passion that should be to his benefit...

The Sisters of Scandal series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Book #1 The Affair
Book #2 The Wager
Book #3 The Love Match
Book #4 The Mistake
Book #5 The Improper Bride

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Oct 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781633751033

Book preview

Love is the last thing on their minds...

England, 1818. To her family, Olivia Middleton is a problem of the most vexing sort. With her older two sisters married off, she is now the target of her mother’s matrimonial scheming. Shy and somewhat plain, Olivia prefers the thrill of a gothic novel to the hunt for a husband. And as far as her family is concerned, something must be done. But Olivia has no interest in the men paraded before her, except, perhaps, the sought-after bachelor William Cross.

William has sworn never to wed, but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy women. What he excels at most is flirtation... unless the woman in question is Olivia Middleton. She barely bats an eyelash at his most creative compliments. She laughs at his attempts to flatter her when other ladies would swoon. Olivia intrigues him, particularly when he discovers the passion simmering beneath her facade, a passion that should be to his benefit...

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Lily Maxton. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

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Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Scandalous is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Nina Bruhns

Cover design by Libby Murphy

ISBN 978-1-63375-103-3

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition October 2014

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Discover the Sisters of Scandal Series

The Affair

The Wager

The Mistake

The Improper Bride

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Chapter One

Hampshire, England, 1818

Olivia Middleton was the only daughter left.

Olivia didn’t begrudge her two sisters marrying, but she did begrudge their freedom. As soon as they were out of the house, their mother, Lady Middleton, had turned a matchmaking eye to her youngest daughter with all the fierceness of a hawk seeking its prey, and Olivia, like the scurrying field mouse, was rightfully terrified.

When news came to them of Elizabeth’s hasty marriage to a bookseller, Mother had fainted on the chaise longue—rather strategically—and had to be revived with smelling salts. She’d been triumphant when Anne, the second oldest, had married the Earl of Thornhill—who had actually proposed to Elizabeth first, and coincidentally was the cousin and heir to Elizabeth’s deceased first husband, making Lizzie the dowager Countess of Thornhill and Anne the new Countess of Thornhill.

The titles were really a bit of a tangle.

But they both seemed happy in their new lives.

And Olivia was happy for them. Truly, she was. But now, she’d been left alone with her parents, who wanted to get her married off quickly and be done with the business of raising daughters. Mother was becoming increasingly unbearable.

Lady Middleton liked to tell Olivia she’d never catch an earl like her sainted middle sister, whom her mother didn’t even like that much—Elizabeth had always been her favorite. And she treated Olivia, who was insufferably shy around men and preferred reading—the most vulgar of pastimes for a lady—to being out in society, as more of a nuisance than a daughter.

If Olivia were bolder, she might have pointed out that Anne hadn’t caught an earl by being a perfect lady—far from it, in fact.

But Olivia wasn’t bold.

And whenever she uttered something her mother didn’t like, a vein throbbed in Lady Middleton’s forehead, so she usually kept her mouth shut. She might not enjoy her mother’s company, but she didn’t want to give her an apoplexy, either.

What Olivia liked to do most of all was curl up in an armchair by a window—open, if the weather allowed—and read, unhindered by her mother’s frequent diatribes.

I gazed upon the Spectre with horror too great to be described. My blood was frozen in my veins… The Apparition rose from her seat, and approached the side of the bed. She grasped with her icy fingers my hand which hung lifeless upon the Coverture, and pressing her cold lips to mine, again repeated,

Raymond! Raymond! Thou art mine!

Olivia heard the slightest creak first, as if someone were stepping softly. And then a weight landed on her head, obscuring her field of vision. Darkness descended.

"Ahh!" she shrieked, lashing out with her hand and striking something fleshy.

Good Lord, Olivia! her mother snapped.

She lifted the sinister thing from her head, which turned out to be a bonnet with pink ribbons. Not very fear-inducing, unless one disliked pink.

What are you doing with this? she asked when her heart began to slow again.

We’ve been invited to a house party, her mother said as merrily as though they’d just been asked to dine with the king and queen. "Your father will go pheasant hunting, and we will hunt barons!"

She was alarmed by the glittering of her mother’s gray eyes, so like her own. I fervently hope that is a metaphor.

Lady Middleton yanked the bonnet away and adjusted one of the ribbons before placing it back on Olivia’s head with an equally glittering and alarming smile. We must decide what you’ll wear, my dear. Baron hunting is a very serious business.

…

Lord Ashworth’s ancestral home, Eastwold Abbey, looked like something from one of her gothic novels.

To reach the abbey, the carriage had to travel through a path cleared in the dense wood that surrounded it, under the

Reviews for The Love Match

[pnrlist · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not bad for only 95 pages. Usually such short romances feel too rushed for me to get invested, but I liked this. Short and sweet with a nice dash of angst. Of course it would have been better as a full length novel, but I'm willing to suspend my disbelief about such a quick timeline of events when there is a plain heroine, one of my favorite tropes!