A Most Dreadful Guide to Ruin: A Delightfully Outrageous and Wickedly Witty Regency Historical Romance (The Trouble with the Tollivers Book 1) by Samantha Blok

Author:Samantha Blok [Blok, Samantha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The next catastrophe began, as many Tolliver calamities were inclined to do, with dinner. It was not a humble repast, of course. Lady Tolliver would sooner dine in a pigsty than preside over anything so vulgar as an ordinary supper. No, this was a Dinner, hastily arranged, frightfully expensive and prompted by an ill-timed mention in The London Weekly Scandal. (The column in question had referred to Hetty as ‘the darling of Langley’s eye and the ruin of his reason,’ – a line which Lady Tolliver read aloud no fewer than six times over breakfast, once with tears in her eyes and once with toast in her hand, declaring it both “a disgrace to the family” and “the most romantic thing I have ever encountered.” This peculiar state of being both outraged and utterly delighted was, it must be said, one in which she frequently excelled.)

The Tolliver dining room had been transformed – by a flurry of footmen, maids, a panic-stricken cook, and no fewer than three bouquets flung out for being “too provincial” – into a tableau of domestic splendour. Candlelight flickered from twin chandeliers, and new flowers (spirited in from the conservatory at dawn and rearranged half a dozen times under Lady Tolliver’s despairing gaze) nodded graciously from every surface.

The Tollivers themselves had arranged like an eccentric theatrical troupe: five daughters in varying stages of composure, from serenely smiling to violently pouting; one heir who sat like a man awaiting his own execution; and a smattering of relations so peculiar in expression and so varied in temperament that no playwright would dare invent them.

The honoured guest of the evening, Lady Langley – the Dowager Countess, matriarch of the Winslow line, and most importantly, Theo’s mother – arrived precisely on the hour, as though summoned by some invisible bell of propriety. She was everything a Society matron ought to be: composed without warmth, stately without softness, and in possession of a gaze so exacting it could reduce a debutante to tears at thirty paces. That she also happened to be a lifelong friend of Lady Tolliver rendered her presence both a singular honour and an unspoken menace. The two women had been presented in the same Season. They navigated Almack’s, matrimony and motherhood side by side – and now sat atop their respective family empires like rival generals in an ever-shifting campaign of social manoeuvring.

“Such a handsome match,” Lady Langley had observed not ten minutes earlier in the drawing room, offering a gracious nod in the direction of Miss Tolliver and her own son. “And such impeccable timing. The columns are positively brimming with speculation.”

“I do not read the columns,” Hetty had lied, as her mother beamed and Theo made a strangled sound not unlike a man perishing upon a canapé.

“They claim your kiss was quite the spectacle,” said Aunt Belinda, lifting her sherry. “One young lady reportedly swooned. Another was seen climbing a hedge for a better view! My, my, what a tonic for Society’s doldrums.”

Cousin Edwina,

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