Cynthia Wood

Crawford Hall Cynthia Wood

Cassandra Crawford, "Cassie" to those who love her, is seventeen, just returned from school and is a great reader of Romantic fiction. Her father, Sir George, the 8th Baronet Crawford, sensing that he has not long to live, wishes his daughter and only child to marry. A potential husband must be young enough to engage her heart and steady enough to manage the considerable properties she is soon to inherit. On the advice of Lady Augusta, his close friend since childhood and Cassie's godmother, he arranges a dinner party at which Cassie will meet Thomas Deane, a near neighbor and the principle landowner in the county. The Deanes had long been a local scandal-"We don't know them" was Sir George's initial reaction-but Lady Augusta assures him that Thomas is quite different from his father and brother. "He took me in to dinner at Mrs. Trumbull's last year and made a very decent impression. I'm told he's a widower. Mrs. Trumbull informs me his tenants swear by him."A solid and dependable man, no doubt, but a hero of romance? Cassie might like him, but could she fall in love with him?