Gloria asked Eloisa James:

I loved “The Reluctant Countess,” but I walked away with a dozen questions about Lydia, whom I gleefully hated. Epilogue 1 reveals she ran off with another man a few months after she married Pettigrew. Epilogue 2 strongly implied Lydia was pregnant. Did she return to Pettigrew to have a child which may or may not be his? Is she literally repeating her mother’s life verbatim?

Eloisa James Hi Gloria! Yes, I did see her repeating her mother's life verbatim. I've been thinking a lot about how parents' sexual histories influence their children. Lydia was fraying at the seams from the first book, when she was already playing at being adult by engaging in sexualized behavior with random strange men. As I see it, she truly loves her brother but she doesn't love herself,. You'll see that the first half of Not that Duke (the third in the trilogy) runs concurrent with the end of The Reluctant Countess. Someone had to put Lydia in her place... I enjoyed writing that scene. I hope you like it!

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