October 1899: all is not well at No. 17 Belgrave Square, London residence of the Earl of Dilberne when not ensconced in his ancestral seat in the Hampshire Hills. It is 7am and someone is pounding on the front door and as neither the butler nor the footman can be found, the poor Earl has been forced to open the front door to a man who shouldn't be using it. Worse, a man he is GBP30,000 in debt to, and, worse still, a man who has come to announce that the Earl's gold mine in South Africa has been destroyed by the Boers.
Before it gets any better for the Earl, its going to get even worse: His wife is going to find out about his ex-mistress - the one he passed on to his son, Walter (who doesn't know her provenance, nor that said mistress is two-timing him with an old rival from Eton). His daughter Rosina, conscientious objector to The Season, member of the Fabian Society (it is well known in Society that her radical opinions exasperated her choleric grandfather to death) is going to report Walter to the police for keeping a brothel. And the energetic Tessa O'Brien, wife of a Chicago Meat Baron, is going to arrive in town looking for a husband for her disgraced daughter Minne.
Meanwhile, below stairs, the servants dust, set fires, scrub floors, dream of freedom from service, steam open letters, take in waifs and strays from the streets, discuss their employer's sex lives, occasionally participate in them and prepare for the 11-course banquet the Earl will be giving for the Prince of Wales on the 7 December...
- ISBN10 1250042909
- ISBN13 9781250042903
- Publish Date 29 October 2013 (first published 1 March 2012)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint St. Martin's Griffin
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 336
- Language English