The Lonely Lady of Grosvenor Square by Mrs de la Pasture (1906)

Elizabeth de la Pasture is the Edwardian storyteller-novelist par excellence. Her conservative schematics are illuminated by extraordinarily clear plots and primary-coloured writing. This one has a young woman who has grown up with an uncle on a farm in Wales sent to a wealthy aunt in London as late-life companion. The aunt is dying, so Jeanne sees her very irregularly, and spends most of her time on her own rattling around the aunt's very quiet Grosvenor Square house, filled to the brim with intimidating servants, gilded furniture, Romney portraits and dated decoration. Jeanne is a timid type in most company but has a mind of her own with which to dream, particularly about how life will be when her beloved twin brother Louis arrives back from the post-Boer African campaigns. Their names are French because the family is the de Coursets, but their orphaned status has meant that details about their supposedly aristocratic origins are thin on the ground. After her aunt's death it is revealed to Jeanne that her brother has inherited her huge fortune. Louis writes from Africa that he will share the funds with her equally, so Jeanne will be a wealthy woman once the estate is arranged and the legalities settled. He is supposedly on his way back, until Jeanne receives a letter saying he has been deployed to British Somaliland to quell a disturbance there. More waiting, as nothing can be advanced on a legal level until he returns. In the meantime, Jeanne has tried to cure her loneliness by visiting in the immediate locale, but things don't run in smart London quite the way they do in country middle-class Wales. She is hopelessly out of her depth. Thankfully the family's purported distant connection to the aristocratic Monaghans saves the day. Her possible far cousin, the duke, who is in his twenties and a gentle soul, lame from a childhood accident, is enchanted by her simplicity and takes her up very quietly. His mother, the frighteningly intense duchess, seeing his preference, and discovering the story of Jeanne's coming wealth, is keen to see her son attached, given his lack of other obvious charms, and the fact that his portion of the family's wealth is tiny indeed. Their connection blossoms, through their sensitivity and quietness, whilst all around them tend to the banal. Then disaster strikes. Louis is killed in Somaliland. Jeanne is devastated. And then a further bombshell: Louis has married a few years ago an older French woman who had come to Africa to search out her father who was supposed to be gravely ill in a military hospital. Anne-Marie and her father are also de Coursets, which is how Louis has got to know them, fascinated by the idea of finding out what his heritage might be. Anne-Marie's father does die, but she and Louis grow mad for each other. She reveals their minor aristocracy and that there is a Chateau de Courset which she would love to purchase back for the family, but the funds are beyond her. After their hasty marriage she returns to France. Louis, knowing Jeanne's devotion and proprietary feeling about him, has put off telling her of all this until he got home. Now, in a huge shock, Anne-Marie turns up at Grosvenor Square to meet the still devastated Jeanne, and, in a further wrench, she has with her a little boy who is the image of Louis. After the shock fades, they become fast friends in their mutual love for Louis. Anne-Marie, much more worldly and commanding than Jeanne, sees the duke's devotion, and makes sure that the match is confirmed. Jeanne slowly comes back to her former self and marries him. Anne-Marie returns to France with Louis' share of the funds and buys back her beloved family chateau. All of this is confirmedly traditional, and nothing about it sets the brain cells stirring. But there is a kind of visceral enjoyment in how balanced and limpid the construction is. Pasture leaves one with the feeling of being in an extraordinarily safe pair of hands.