Susan Scarlett

[from back of 2022 Dean Street Press trade paperback edition] Annabel Brown has taken a job in the sewing room at Bertna's, a high-end dressmaker, to help her family's finances. When one of the "mannequins" employed downstairs quits unexpectedly, Tania Petoff, the shop's owner, decides to try lovely Annabel in her place, to the chagrin of her catty fellow models. Annabel's improved status leads to tension in her close-knit family, then (following a wardrobe malfunction) she catches the eye of wealthy Lord David de Bett -- and the ire of the dreadful Honourable Octavia Glaye. How things work themselves out is as delicious a bit of frothy fun as one could well imagine.

[from back of Dean Street Press 2022 trade paperback edition]

"Yes, and then I'll go over Miss Kay's rooms with either you or the housekeeper." "There is no housekeeper, Miss." From his voice it sounded as if the housekeeper had been strangled and her body put in the cellar; it nearly made Marda giggle.

James Longford, a wealthy former racing car driver with vision loss from an accident several years before, hires 26-year-old Marda Mayne as companion to his newly-orphaned 17-year-old American ward Shirley. His main concern is to avoid being troubled so he can continue to live in self-imposed isolation, but as plucky, practical Marda and flirtatious, kind-hearted Shirley take his intimidating household staff in hand (and find an unexpected ally in that surly butler), they also begin to revive James' interest in life. The trio will have to brace themselves, however, when his self-absorbed, manipulative sister Vera -- who sees his fortune as practically already hers -- announces a visit.

[from Greyladies reprint] Take one farm in wartime England, a motherless young girl and her father. Add a young woman bombed out of her London office, a beautiful but selfish younger sister, a sick mother, a resentful housekeeper, a retired colonel and his daughter at the Big House, and a canny old codger too old for the army. Mix well and leave to simmer for a delicious frothy summer confection.