Delia Hayes

Delia Hayes, a character in The Unexpected Heiress series, is your Your Character's and Amelia Hayes's stepmother. She is first seen in Chapter 1.

Appearance
Delia has curly black hair styled up, green eyes and tanned skin. She wears a white and cream dress and a wide brim white hat with lace, flowers and feathers.

The Unexpected Heiress

 * Chapter 1: Windcroft Manor
 * Chapter 2: Blood Relatives (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 3: Lay of the Land
 * Chapter 6: A Sordid Affair (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 9: The Cause (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 12: The Hunter and the Prey
 * Chapter 15: Reckoning
 * Chapter 16: The Bride

Amelia Hayes
As you reveal to the Somersets during your first dinner with them, Amelia's mother and father divorced when Amelia was a baby. Eventually, her father remarried your mother and they had you. When your mother died, he then remarried Delia, who bore him two sons.

Your Character
Because you are the only living daughter of an electric power industrialist, a wealthy American magnate, you are forced to follow through in a marriage arrangement meant to benefit both families - your family's wealth for their family's titles and lands. Delia believes the marriage is of the utmost importance now to stabilize the family's status. Even though the family is wealthy, your family is only seen as nouveau riche - easy to gain fortune and easy to lose fortune fast. If you marry a titled gentleman and move up in respectable society, you will carry your family with you. Without the family fortune, Delia admits that the family's background is one that most aristocrats would snub. Marrying for love is a luxury that none of them can afford.

When Delia witnesses Marchioness Huntsbury's actions, she allows you to back out of the marriage arrangement. She does not want to turn into Marchioness Huntsbury herself, blinded by protecting the future of her children to the point that she loses sight of everything else. She says she will never forget the madness in Marchioness Huntsbury's eyes and never wants to see that in the mirror. If you knock the revolver from Marchioness Huntsbury's hand and she reaches for a letter opener to stab you, Delia is quick to disarm her and protect you. If you go to tackle Marchioness Huntsbury instead, Delia rushes her from the side and knocks the revolver out of her hand.

Maude Leighton
Maude Leighton is Delia's older sister. While Maude's eccentric and promiscuous ways frustrate Delia, they both support family and love each other. Maude enjoys throwing barbs at Delia.

Trivia

 * She and her family (MC, Amelia, and Devon) share their surname with Selma Hayes from Baby Bump, Book 1.
 * Her character model resembles young Josephine Vance from It Lives Beneath.