Who You Are Dealing With
Two liars, one borrowed name, three sisters, four nephews with no respect for property law, and a butler who ends the whole thing by answering a question honestly.
The two at the center
Lady Cordelia
Twenty-five, brown hair, green eyes, and still living under her parents’ roof, which the book notes has “certain benefits” she is entirely willing to exploit. The eldest sisters are married with children. She is the one still in the house.
What makes her good is that she is not written as spirited. She is written as methodical. Told she must marry a stranger, she does not rebel, she investigates: a written list of questions, a critique of her own first attempt as “not well executed,” and a second run done properly. Her father is right that she is the most like him of his children, and he says so before he asks her for anything, which is its own kind of tell.
Her flaw is precise and she never quite sees it. Her plans have costs, and the costs land on other people. Sarah says out loud that she could be dismissed over this. Cordelia talks her into it anyway, kindly, using an argument about Sarah’s own independence. She is not careless. She is persuasive, which is worse.
Daniel Sinclair
American, tall, broad-shouldered, with what the book keeps calling a slightly wicked look and a devilish but endearing smile. Self-made in railroads, buying small lines with an eye toward consolidation, which in 1854 is genuinely forward-looking and which his father compares to Vanderbilt.
He is not a rake and the book is not interested in reforming him. His defining trait is that he refused his father’s money and has spent his adult life proving he did not need it. He presents himself as Warren Lewis for one reason: he wants to know whether a titled Englishwoman would want him if he were nobody. It is a reasonable fear and an unfair experiment, and the novel is clear-eyed that it is both.
His best scene is not a kiss. It is page 162, hearing that the father he has been arguing with for a decade was proud of him the whole time, and answering “Am I?” weakly, like someone whose floor moved.
The borrowed name and the person attached to it
Sarah Palmer
Cousin, paid companion, blond hair, brown eyes, pale green gown, and deliberately the visual opposite of Cordelia, which is what eventually breaks the deception wide open. The book describes her as “most fetching even if Sarah herself did not seem to realize it,” and Cordelia keeps vowing to do something about her cousin’s lack of vanity.
She is the one with something real to lose. She took a paid position rather than live as a dependent relative, and the whole scheme puts it at risk. She says so plainly and is overruled by affection.
Viscount Creswell
In love with Sarah, has been away, and returns believing they had “a certain understanding.” He gets the best entrance in the book by walking into a foyer and having Sarah fall into his arms while Daniel stands beside them being ignored. When Sarah asks whether he is jealous he says “Yes, I suppose I am,” and huffs, which is an entire personality delivered in six words.
Warren Lewis
A real man, whose name Daniel spends the novel wearing. He turns up at the wedding standing beside Daniel as best man, described flatly as “the real Warren Lewis.” It is a small joke and a good one.
The Sinclairs
Harold Sinclair
Daniel’s father. Shipping, steamboats, and interests “around the world.” Described as a captain of industry who “makes it his business to know such things.” He never appears as a villain. The estrangement is real but the contempt Daniel assumed is not there at all, which is the quiet cruelty of the setup: a decade of proving something to a man who was already convinced.
Daisy
Harold’s wife, Daniel’s stepmother, and close enough to Daniel’s own age that the book expects you to raise an eyebrow before it disarms you. She refuses the wicked-stepmother role completely. She defends Harold with real feeling, telling Daniel “He makes me laugh and makes me feel as if I were a girl again,” and she is the one who tells Daniel his father is proud of him. She is a good character doing an unglamorous job: delivering information the hero could not get any other way, and being a person while she does it.
Cordelia’s household
| Who | What they do |
|---|---|
| Her father | Arranges the marriage, and does it while telling her she is the most like him of his children. At the wedding he is the only one with the sense to say nothing at all. |
| Her mother | Offers “We thought you’d like the American part of it,” and at the end, comfort in the form of noting Cordelia will at least be married. |
| Amelia, Edwina, Beatrice | The married sisters. Amelia named her sons after kings, Edwina after apostles. Beatrice named hers after their father, which delighted him more than either. |
| Henry, Thomas, Edward, Philip | Nephews, ten to nearly twelve, and the best comic ensemble in the book. Henry is the ringleader. They blackmail their way into the night expedition on the grounds that “Friday belongs to all of us.” |
| Will | The brother, in India, “doing his part.” Absent for the whole novel and still manages to blame the disaster on Cordelia from a distance. |
| Aunt Lavinia | Contributes the observation that money is not a bad reason to marry one’s first husband, which is either bracing or horrifying depending on the hour. |
| Gilliam | Daniel’s butler. Ends the entire deception by doing his job correctly and describing a woman’s hair and eyes through a door he did not quite close. |
| Hodges | The other butler, who averts his eyes during the foyer scene and fails to hide a smile. |
The one you meet on the last page
Oliver
He is not in this book until the epilogue, and then he owns it. Alone at a club table with three empty chairs and four shillings, having won a tontine on staying unmarried by outlasting all his friends. He climbs on the table to toast them and admits the cognac “was meant to be shared, not drunk alone by a man feeling a bit more melancholy than was warranted.”
He is the last man standing the series is named for, and he wins by losing everyone. His own book is Seduction of a Proper Gentleman.
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