A Most Dreadful Guide to Ruin (The Trouble with the Tollivers #1)

Chapter 1

M iss Henrietta Tolliver was the eldest of five sisters, and it can only be said that despite her most diligent efforts to be the picture of propriety – the most accomplished, most agreeable, and most unfailingly well-behaved of them all – fate, or more precisely, her own ungovernable streak of mischief had other designs for her entirely.

For it was a truth universally acknowledged (or, at the very least, oft lamented by her mother) that a young lady entering her second Season must consider herself exceedingly fortunate should she receive an offer of marriage.

It was an even grimmer truth that a young lady embarking upon a third Season without success would be declared ‘on the shelf:’ an object of pity to her friends and amusement to her enemies, condemned to the ballroom’s peripheries whilst fresher girls were whisked to the altar.

In Lady Tolliver’s view, therefore, it was imperative that her daughter secure a husband this very Season… preferably a titled gentleman in possession of a substantial fortune, no fewer than three country estates (two of which ought to be habitable), and a mother-in-law already deceased.

And thus, Hetty found herself, on a rather fine spring morning, seated in the smallest parlour of the Tolliver townhouse with a book upon her lap and a headache blooming behind her eyes.

She was not reading for pleasure, but for marriage.

A wife, her mother insisted, must be able to identify gooseberry at ten paces, elderflower at twenty, and must never – under pain of disgrace – allow creeping vine to gain so much as an inch upon a west-facing fence.

“A Guide to Cultivating the English Garden, ” Hetty read aloud, tapping the spine.

“Good gracious – how utterly tiresome. What I truly require is A Guide to Catastrophically Ruining One’s Reputation Before One’s Meddling Mother Can Marry One Off to a Man Who Collects Miniatures of the Duke of Wellington and Insists Upon Displaying Them at Supper. ”

She sighed and slumped deeper into the settee, sliding down until her ankles dangled in a most unladylike fashion over the side.

She was, quite honestly, bored to the point of collapse – so much so that she had taken to narrating aloud.

“For an entire, dreadfully long Season,” she announced to no one at all, “I conducted myself as the model of maidenly perfection. What an angel you are, Miss Tolliver! Oh yes – smiling when I ought, dancing when required, and laughing prettily at conversation so insipid it might have driven a less dutiful young lady to drink. Or worse, to speak her mind.”

She paused, waiting for applause. The ormolu clock on the mantel ticked on.

“Well, yes,” she continued, now addressing a large oil portrait of her great-great-grandmother, who gazed down with pursed lips and a Pekingese in her lap.

“Had there been a prize awarded for the most proper young lady of the Season, I should have won it without contest! ”

She leapt up from the settee and paced a few dramatic steps before throwing her shawl about her shoulders like a cape and adopting the aggrieved tones of her mother.

“Of course, one need not dwell upon the handful of offers you so rashly declined, Henrietta. The important thing is that you comported yourself with grace. You are a rather sensible girl these days. Precisely the sort of young lady a gentleman ought to want to marry! And let us not forget your dowry – large enough to make even your regrettable nose quite overlookable. Truly, the most desirable unmarried lady in all of London – positively every man’s second choice! ”

She marched to the tea table and held up the sugar tongs like a royal sceptre.

“It is only a matter of time before you come to your senses, abandon all Wollstonecraft nonsense and snare a husband. It simply will not do to have you lingering about the marriage mart like an overripe melon at Covent Garden! And if you – as the eldest – fail to do your duty, what hope remains for the rest of your unruly sisters? Oh, they shall be the death of me, Henrietta. An entire household of unmarried girls loitering about? Too ghastly to contemplate! It shall ruin our reputation , our prospects and quite possibly the upholstery!”

She ended this performance by collapsing back onto the settee and draping an arm across her brow. “The horror, ” she whispered, “the furniture.”

At length, she sat upright once more. “If matters proceed as expected, I shall very shortly find myself wed to some perfectly unexceptionable gentleman of sound income and sensible opinions before I have ever had occasion to live at all. And what, precisely, is to be gained by marriage to such a man? Lord of draughty corridors, heir to hideous china, master of endless discussions of land tax and barley yields… And I, condemned to nod prettily beside him until I perish of ennui upon a brown sofa. No. I should sooner feign my own death and flee to Scotland.”

There was a long pause, in which she considered the consequences of her next words, and then spoke them regardless: “If I have any hope of remaining free, I must ensure that no respectable gentleman considers me a viable candidate for matrimony this Season. A scandal of such proportions that even the most determined mother would steer her son across the ballroom at the sight of me. In short, I must render myself entirely unmarriageable.”

She sighed heavily and picked up her gardening book, staring at it for all of three seconds before letting it fall open across her lap.

“You know,” said a small voice from near the window, “there is certain merit to the idea.”

Hetty startled. “Good heavens, Mari!”

Her younger sister, Marianne Tolliver, aged five-and-ten and nearly invisible when she chose to be, blinked over the top of her book.

“You did not think to make your presence known earlier?” Hetty demanded.

“I did not think you should like to be interrupted.”

“How long have you been sitting there?”

Mari considered. “Since before you entered and began addressing the family portrait.”

Hetty groaned. “Oh Lord. I have become tragic. ”

“You were tragic last week. This week you are simply performative.”

Hetty dropped her head back against the cushions with a moan. “Did you know the only difference between a well-bred young lady and a prisoner in Newgate is that the prisoner need not smile during sentencing?”

Mari only grinned.

“You might at least pretend to take me seriously,” Hetty muttered.

“I do. And I believe it a rather sound idea, in fact.”

“You truly think so?”

“I believe,” Mari said, “that if you are intent upon escaping matrimony, a managed fall from grace may prove your only viable strategy.”

“A managed fall…”

“No true scandal. Nothing so ruinous as to render you wholly unfit for society. You are rather theatrical, Hetty. But yes – enough to ensure no gentleman of sense – or his meddling mother – dares consider you a prize worth claiming. It should be rather subtle, I should say.”

“You are far too clever for your age,” Hetty said with narrowed eyes.

“I read.”

Alas, before Hetty could dwell further on the details of her impending descent into scandal, a tremendous crash echoed through the house, followed by shrieks, exclamations and what could only be described as the sound of poultry in distress .

Hetty did not even lift her eyes as she called out, “Nell, I swear upon all that is decent, if that is another g oose – ”

“It is not a goose!” came the cry of her youngest sister, Eleanor Tolliver, with all the wounded dignity of a girl most unjustly accused.

“Well, that is a relief,” Hetty muttered to Mari. “I had begun to suspect we might open a poultry farm at this rate.”

“It is a chicken,” Nell amended cheerfully from the hallway beyond, as a very agitated hen flapped into the parlour, shedding feathers as it went. “A fine one, as it happens – acquired quite legitimately in a game of whist.”

Hetty looked up just in time to witness the chaos unfold.

A housemaid barrelled in after the hen with a broomstick, and close on her heels was the butler, Mr Simms, wielding a candlestick as though prepared to defend the household against imminent attack.

At the centre of it all stood Nell, breathless and beaming in the doorway as the chicken strutted beneath the pianoforte.

With her rosy cheeks, bouncing curls and muslin frock trimmed in blue ribbon, one might, at first glance, mistake her for the picture of innocence – provided one did not look too closely or spend more than half a minute in her company.

At three-and-ten, Eleanor Tolliver possessed the energy of a storm and the ethics of a corsair, though she would argue, quite earnestly, that piracy was merely a form of strategic redistribution.

Her pockets jingled as she entered, suggesting she had acquired not only a hen during her game of whist, but possibly several coins and the better part of a silver drawer .

The sight before Hetty was absurd, and yet, not entirely outside the realm of possibility at the Tolliver residence.

She closed her eyes briefly, then turned to the flustered servants, who were locked in a losing battle with the hen now flapping atop a chaise longue.

“Mr Simms, Mary – thank you. You may return to your duties. I shall handle this matter myself.”

The butler gave a grateful nod and the maid, still brandishing the broom against the offending hen, followed him out reluctantly.

Hetty turned to her youngest sister. “Eleanor… you cannot mean to tell me you gambled for a chicken.”

“Why, yes. I did. And it was the most splendid wager, Hetty! I won her fair and square, and, naturally, she has come to reside here. In our home.”

“And where – precisely – were you gambling?”

“At the mews,” Nell said. “With the grooms.”