Susanna, Lady Dinsmore
Judith’s closest confidante, the one who has cheered on every previous affair, and the only person who objects to this one. Two hundred pages later the book explains why, and it is not concern for Judith.
Susanna, Lady Dinsmore. CVM Sekai original art.
Susanna is built as the warm one. She hosts the party the novel opens at, she pours whisky into the tea when a crisis arrives, she has always encouraged Judith’s affairs with enthusiasm, and she is the person Judith goes to first.
Which is exactly why her objection to Gideon is so loud. The book flags it explicitly at page 79 as unexpected and rather shocking, and then makes the reader sit with it for a hundred pages. At page 187 she finally says it: the woman Gideon eloped with was her own cousin, Violet Smithfield.
So the friend who could not recall Violet’s name in company knew it the entire time. She is not a villain. She is a woman with a family loyalty she did not disclose, giving advice that looked disinterested and was not.
The file
| Name | Susanna, Lady Dinsmore |
|---|---|
| Title | Lady Dinsmore |
| Marital status | Married. Her husband is not developed on the page |
| Children | None. She “wanted more than anything to have children of her own”, page 80 |
| Family | Numerous nieces and nephews, page 80. Cousin to Violet Smithfield, Lady Braxton, revealed page 187 |
| Relation to Judith | Closest confidante. Addressed as “Cousin” at page 81, which the book never explains. See below |
| How she entertains | Week-long gatherings at her country estate, literary salons, and the occasional ball, page 80 |
| Why she knows everything | Her own stated reason is a large family, which means she hears everything about everyone |
| Crisis management | Spirits. The severity of a crisis can be read off which bottle she reaches for, page 75 |
| First appearance | Chapter one. She hosts the party the novel opens at |
| Status at the end of the volume | Alive |
| Book and series | A Little Bit Wicked, Last Man Standing book 1, by Victoria Alexander |
The reaction that does not fit
“You and Warton? Warton?”
This is very, very bad.
Susanna’s reaction to Judith’s involvement with Gideon was unexpected and rather shocking.
Susanna had never expressed any sort of reservation regarding Judith’s liaisons.
[She had followed Judith’s flirtations and adventures] with both encouragement and enthusiasm.
Three separate statements of the same fact inside seven pages. That is not the author being repetitive, it is a flag planted where the reader will trip over it. Susanna has cheered on every previous affair. This one she calls very, very bad before she has heard a single detail.
Whisky in the tea
Susanna firmly believed any kind of problem called for spirits. One could determine how seriously [she took a crisis by what she poured].
She tips whatever is in the decanter into her own tea and then into Judith’s without asking. Judith privately wagers it is whisky, which is the top of the scale. It is a lovely piece of characterization and it is also information: Susanna has already decided this is a catastrophe.
The count, and Lord Lovett’s wife
You’ve had what? Three lovers since Lucian died? Four if you count Lord Lovett.
There was that unforeseen problem of the wife that no one knew he had.
So the famously scandalous widow has had three lovers in ten years, and the reason a fourth man does not count is that he turned out to be married and nobody knew. Lord Lovett was a deception practiced on Judith, not an affair she chose, which is why the book discounts him twice.
Susanna also states the position Judith has held all book, and states it as something Susanna already knows.
You of all people should know I have no intention of ever marrying again.
What she says about Gideon
Lord Warton is aloof, cold, superior. Arrogant.
I know he was married for no more than a day. An elopement I believe.
[He left] immediately after the ceremony, which was annulled at once. The girl then married her fiance.
Read that last line again knowing what page 187 will reveal. She recites the whole episode accurately, in order, including what the girl did afterward, and stops one word short of the name. It is the most precise not-remembering in the novel.
She is fair to him elsewhere, which is what makes the performance work. She allows that his lack of recent scandal may indicate discretion, and grants that discretion is a kind of reform.
The reveal at page 187
I’m talking about Lady [Braxton]… the woman in question was my cousin.
Violet Smithfield. Now Lady [Braxton].
Susanna met Judith’s gaze reluctantly.
Reluctantly is the word that convicts her. She is not confessing, she is being overtaken by events. And Judith, who has spent the book being the one with the secret, immediately spots that there is more and says so.
There’s more, isn’t there?
What she actually wants
She wanted more than anything to have children of her own.
The book drops this in the middle of a passage about Susanna’s social life and never returns to it. It is one sentence and it recolors her completely. The woman running literary salons and week-long house parties, who knows everything about everybody and cheers on her friend’s affairs, is doing all of that around an absence she does not discuss.
It also puts her beside Judith and Alexandra as the third woman in this novel organizing a whole life around something she will not say out loud. That is a pattern, and the book never remarks on it.
The word “cousin”, which the book uses twice and never reconciles
Recorded here because it is a genuine inconsistency in the text rather than a gap, and this shelf does not paper over either.
At page 81, in the middle of the whisky scene, Susanna takes Judith’s hands and addresses her as Cousin, immediately after Dearest Judith. At page 187 she says of Violet that the woman in question was my cousin.
But at page 80 the narration says Judith is without family to speak of, other than the in-law she is stuck with. Those do not sit comfortably together. Either Susanna is cousin to both women and Judith’s “no family” means no close family, or the page 81 address is an endearment rather than a statement of blood.
The novel does not settle it. This page will not settle it either, and if a later book in the series does, this section is what gets updated.
What the book withholds
Lord Dinsmore. She is Lady Dinsmore and her husband is essentially absent from the text.
Her age. Never stated.
How exactly she is related to Judith. See above.
When she learned Judith and Gideon were involved, and whether she had been in contact with Violet before page 187. Both matter for how calculated the earlier advice was, and neither is answered.
Where she connects
Judith, Lady Chester
The friend she advises, and the one thing she does not tell her.
CharacterViolet, Lady Braxton
Her cousin, and the reason the advice was never disinterested.
CharacterGideon, Lord Warton
Aloof, cold, superior, arrogant, and married to her cousin for one day.
Book hubA Little Bit Wicked
Last Man Standing book 1. Plot, arcs, tropes, reacts and the full cast.
The RaeRae take
The best-constructed thing in this novel is that Susanna’s deception is made of true statements. Every objection she raises to Gideon is accurate. He is aloof. He was married for a day. He is a risk. She never lies once, and she is still steering, because the one fact that would let Judith weigh the advice properly is the one fact she leaves out.
That is a more interesting kind of unreliable friend than the usual saboteur, and it is why the reveal lands as disappointment rather than betrayal. Judith does not get to be angry in any simple way. Susanna was protecting family, which is what people do.
The sentence I keep coming back to is the one about children, because the book throws it away. Susanna gets a single line of interiority in a novel where she is otherwise pure function, and it says the loudest, warmest, most social woman in the story wants the one thing she cannot arrange. Then it moves on to the plot. I would have given that another page.
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 terms Susanna, Violet and Braxton so every quotation above sits at the page given.
No secondary source, wiki, blurb or adaptation has been used. Where the book does not say something, or contradicts itself, this page says so.