She sighed again. The truth of it was, she liked none of them any better than the next, and certainly none of them well enough to marry. But she was not getting any younger, she was her father's only child, and as he lost no opportunity to point out to her, it was time she was wed and producing heirs for Heart's Ease. It was beginning to look as though she could do no better than to accept her stepmother's nephew, Kevin Talbott, who had a standing offer for her, made when she was seventeen, that he renewed regularly and she just as regularly re- fused. Kevin was her father's choice for her, and her father, for all his faults, was the smartest man she knew. At least marrying Kevin would have the advantage of permitting her to live out her life at Heart's Ease, which she loved with an unswerving devotion, while at the same time providing the plantation with a competent manager for years to come. As her husband, Kevin would continue to serve in his present capacity of overseer until her father's death. Then he and she would inherit, and life on the vast sugar plantation would continue as it always had. Her father seemed to find that thought immensely comforting. Lilah found it more than a little distressing.
She had had such hopes for this visit-such dreams that, in this new and (she'd thought!) excitingly different place, she might find a man who'd sweep her right off her practical little feet and make her fall in love.