Jonathon Effington, Lord Helmsley
The friend whose wedding the book opens on, one of Judith’s three former lovers, and the only man in the novel who asks Gideon what his intentions are. He has no standing to ask. He asks anyway.
Jonathon Effington, Lord Helmsley. CVM Sekai original art.
Helmsley is the first casualty of the tontine and the reason the series exists. Page one has the surviving members at their club privately marking his wedding, which is how a book about men refusing to marry establishes its stakes: one of them just went.
He is also the most decent person in the novel, and the book demonstrates it structurally rather than asserting it. Gideon pumps him for information about Judith and he gives up almost nothing. Judith’s affair with him ended and the friendship did not. When he decides Gideon needs warning off, he does it to Gideon’s face in front of witnesses, having first established that he has no right to.
What makes him land is that he is not disinterested and does not pretend to be. He admits he is still a little in love with her. He asks anyway.
The file
| Full name | Jonathon Effington, given in full on page 1 |
|---|---|
| Title | Marquess of Helmsley. Addressed throughout as Lord Helmsley, and as Helmsley by his friends |
| Family name | Effington |
| Marital status | Married, at the very start of the novel. A love match |
| Wife | Norcroft’s cousin. Book two names her as Fiona |
| Relationship to Judith | Former lover, one of the three she counts in ten years. The friendship survived it |
| Circle | The tontine, with Warton, Norcroft and Cavendish |
| How Susanna rates him | As the type Judith goes for: “men who are amusing and entertaining”, page 78 |
| First appearance | Page 1, in absentia. His wedding is the occasion of the opening scene |
| Status at the end of the volume | Alive and married |
| Status later in the series | Still married. Book two counts him among the men lost to matrimony |
| Book and series | A Little Bit Wicked, Last Man Standing book 1, by Victoria Alexander |
Page one, and what his wedding is for
favorite club to privately mark the wedding of their friend Jonathon Effington, the Marquess of [Helmsley]
That is an efficient piece of setup. A wedding is normally a celebration you attend. This one is being observed by the remaining men, privately, in the manner of people noting a loss. It establishes the tontine, it establishes that the pool has just shrunk, and it establishes the tone: fond, and slightly funereal.
It also means Helmsley enters the series already solved. He is the worked example the other four are arguing about.
The orchid, and what circumspect means
You discussed my likes and dislikes with Lord [Helmsley]?
That depends on what, beyond my penchant for orchids, you learned from Lord [Helmsley].
I should tell you Helmsley was most circumspect during our conversation.
Gideon volunteers that last line unprompted, which is the tell. He is defending Helmsley to Judith before she can be angry at him, because he knows the position he put his friend in and knows Helmsley handled it well.
What Helmsley actually gave up was orchids. A flower. Out of an affair, he surrendered one piece of harmless information and kept the rest, and the novel makes a running joke of Gideon feeling like an idiot about it afterward.
I felt like an idiot.
She was also very pleased to get her orchid back.
Asking a man his intentions with no right to
I do consider her my friend, you know.
Which compels me to ask about your intentions.
You are her former lover not her father.
Norcroft’s line is the objection every reader is already forming, and the book puts it in the room so Helmsley has to answer it. He does not retreat. He nods, says yes, and holds the question open while Gideon tries to laugh it off.
The scene also shows what a good friend looks like in this circle. He asks casually rather than directly, because directness would corner Gideon, and Gideon registers that as a courtesy.
It spoke well of Helmsley, but then that came as no surprise.
The warning
Everyone falls in love with Judith in one manner or another.
I think it’s entirely possible that you could break her heart.
Every other character in the novel reads Judith as invulnerable. Society thinks she is a scandalous widow enjoying herself. Susanna thinks she is being reckless. Aunt Louisa thinks she is a woman in charge of her world who frightens men.
Helmsley is the one who says she can be hurt. He was inside the arrangement and got close enough to see the shape of it, and he is warning the next man that the thing everyone treats as armor is not.
He is also, by his own admission, still a little in love with her, which is exactly why the warning is credible rather than jealous. He has nothing left to gain and he is newly and happily married.
Effington
Recorded because it matters for anyone reading Victoria Alexander more widely. His family name, given once on page one, is Effington. That is the surname of the author’s long-running Effington family novels.
The book itself makes nothing of it. No Effington relatives appear, no crossover is signaled, and no reader of this novel alone would notice. This page records the name as it appears and does not build a theory on it. Whether the connection is developed anywhere in Last Man Standing is a question for the remaining four books, and this section gets updated when they are read.
What the book withholds
His wife, in book one. She is Norcroft’s cousin and the wedding is the opening occasion, and she is otherwise not on the page. The name Fiona comes from book two, not this one.
When and how his affair with Judith ended. It is established as past and amicable. The circumstances are not given.
His age. Never stated.
How he and Gideon met. Page 85 places Gideon’s bad year, the drinking and the beatings, in the East End and Haymarket, and mentions Helmsley in the same breath. The snippet is not conclusive about whether that is where the friendship began, and this page will not assert it until the passage is read in full.
Where he connects
Judith, Lady Chester
One of her three. The friendship outlasted the affair.
CharacterGideon, Lord Warton
The friend he grills about his intentions, with no standing whatsoever.
SeriesLast Man Standing
The tontine he just dropped out of by getting married.
Book hubA Little Bit Wicked
Last Man Standing book 1. Plot, arcs, tropes, reacts and the full cast.
The RaeRae take
The former lover who stays a friend is hard to write without making him either pathetic or a threat, and this book does neither. Helmsley is happily married to somebody else, admits he still carries something for Judith, and does not act on it once. The novel treats that as unremarkable, which is the most flattering thing it could do.
The orchid is the detail I would keep. Gideon goes to him for ammunition and comes away with a flower, because Helmsley gave him the single most harmless true thing he knew. That is a whole character in one prop.
And the intentions scene is better than it looks, because Norcroft is right. He is her former lover, not her father, and he has no business asking. He asks anyway, and eats the mockery, because somebody should and nobody else will. Judith has no family. Her closest friend turns out to have an undisclosed stake. The man best placed to look out for her is an ex, and he does it.
Sources
Primary source is the novel itself: A Little Bit Wicked by Victoria Alexander, Last Man Standing book 1, 374 pages, read on Kindle. Page numbers are Kindle page numbers, verified by in-book search on the term Helmsley so every quotation above sits at the page given. The book two material is from What a Lady Wants.
No secondary source, wiki, blurb or adaptation has been used. Where the book does not say something, this page says that it does not say it.