Sir Tom

A reformed rake marries an heiress to save his crumbling estate. But Mrs. Oliphant isn't interested in weddings - she's interested in what comes after. Sir Tom's reckless youth hasn't entirely released its grip, and Lucy Trevor, for all her new wealth, finds herself bound by her father's peculiar will and her brother's claims. This is a novel about the unglamorous labor of respectability: managing land, navigating duty, and learning that escape from one's past is harder than escaping poverty. Lucy is no passive heroine - she has her own fierce calculations about what marriage means, what she owes her family, and whether either of them can become worthy of their second chance. Oliphant writes with sharp, unsentimental intelligence about the way money shapes intimacy and how respectability is its own kind of adventure.