"Rupert, none of your servants are socialists, I hope?"
"Good heavens no, I shouldn’t think so. I mean, I haven’t asked. Surely you don’t have to be a socialist to want to have a bath?"
"It often goes together," said Muriel sagely. [p. 122]
A reread of an old favourite: Ibbotson's romances are now published as YA, but when I originally read them they were marketed as general romance. They are all delightful, but I think this -- initially published as A Countess Below Stairs -- is one of my favourites. It's the story of Anna Grazinsky, a countess who has fled the Russian Revolution with her impoverished mother and younger brother, and finds work as a housemaid at Mersham, the stately home of Rupert, Earl of Westerholme.
Rupert is soon to be married to Muriel, an heiress who nursed him back to health after wounds sustained in combat: Muriel's wealth may be the salvation of the crumbling manor house, but she does have some unsettling ideas. Anna, who radiates kindness and is determined to work extremely hard, quickly wins over the other servants at Mersham. If she develops feelings for Rupert, that is nobody's business but her own. Until her little brother shows up at the neighbours' grand ball.
The Secret Countess is well-written, sometimes lyrical, often very funny, and always acutely observed: and even the minor characters are convincingly complex, while the protagonists have considerable depth. Muriel's passionate interest in eugenics, and her association with Dr Lightfoot, is unsettling even before it begins to affect the inhabitants of Mersham and the surrounding countryside: then it becomes quite chilling. Yet (in a way that I seem to remember as being typical Ibbotson) she sows the seeds of her own downfall. The slow-burn attraction between Rupert and Anna -- and their one, doomed dance at the ball -- is as much a trial as a delight. A Russian refugee and an Earl? It's a thoroughly unsuitable match, and even those who secretly hope it will work out can't see how.
Perhaps, in some ways, it's a simplistic and rosy-tinted vision, with a shading of fairy-tale morality: a world in which a good heart prevails over the most Machiavellian schemes, a world where love matters more than money. Where love germinates luck, and felicitous coincidence, and happy endings for the deserving. Perhaps it's unbelievable. But sometimes it is cheering to read a fairytale romance.
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