Making Merry

Miss Christina Stanbury and Mr. Hugo Merryman have much in common, not the least of which is a strong desire to meet. Upon her eighteenth birthday, Christina learns that she is to marry an old friend of her father’s. Why, he might be as old as Methusalah (or at least six and thirty), perhaps with a secret wife already! Because she lives with her guardian uncle and aunt, whom she doesn’t trust to pick out a cabbage for her, let alone a husband, she decides to take her fate into her own hands.

Hugo is weary of receiving his wastrel brother’s seconds, which now must include a wealthy bride, but an honest look at the list of costly repairs his family home requires and the humiliations of impending poverty is enough to force him into a carriage and off to woo the heiress and daughter of the roguish Frederick Stanbury.