The Nonesuch – Georgette Heyer

I must first note that the back cover blurb on the modern edition of this book is terrible – it gives away the climax of the book, and doesn’t really give you a flavor of what came before it.

Here, we have Sir Waldo Hawkridge, lately having inherited a Yorkshire estate from an eccentric cousin. Sir Waldo is known as the Nonesuch, one of the most eligible bachelors in the Ton. With his younger cousin, Lord Lindeth, he rides to Yorkshire to investigate the new estate.

There, Lord Lindeth is enamored of Tiffany Wield, the local heiress, who is also quite possibly the most spoiled girl on earth. Tiffany has a companion, Ancilla Trent, a gently reared lady just about ready to be officially over the line into spinsterhood, who’s really there to try and control Tiffany’s wilder outbursts. Sir Waldo is enamored of her.

It’s no great mystery where this story is headed. And it’s fine, except Tiffany is so over the top spoiled, I kept getting pulled out of the story. No gently bred young lady of that time period could have gotten away with that behavior for so long. It’s a little too anachronistic for my tastes.