Leonore Stubbs

Leonore Stubbs believes she's returning home as a wealthy widow. Instead, she discovers her husband Godfrey left her with nothing but debt and shame. At Boldero Abbey, her father General Boldero, once eager for her advantageous match, now regards her with cold contempt. A penniless woman is an embarrassment, and Leonore finds herself trapped in a house that was once home, surrounded by sisters who measure her worth in guineas. Walford dissects the brutal arithmetic of Edwardian class: love conditional, family conditional, dignity conditional upon a ledger. This is a novel about what remains when every safety net is pulled away, and a woman must reconstruct herself from the ruins of someone else's failure. Sharp, unsentimental, and quietly devastating.