Katherine Martin is the daughter of a barrister, and she travels with her parents, home from Delhi. The Indian Mutiny has made life too dangerous, and she’s mourning a girlish romance with a half-Indian officer. THE RELUCTANT HEIRESS returns to observe East End London which, in 1858, is awash with poverty and criminal elements.

Determined not to marry anyone her parents think suitable, since they forbade her romance, bluestocking Kate starts up a soup kitchen and employs a destitute family.  Harry Trader and his gang own the Cable Street building she rents, but they are pleased to have a respectable charity as a front. Kate keeps hoping to hear word of Ashok Patel who served in the East India Company. This was the first global trading company, and it had its own army to protect trading buildings. From her home in Finsbury Square, aided by Jenny Marsh her ladies’ maid, and Perry Harte, a barrister under her father, Kate works to improve one country while her heart remains in another.  

Dilly Court, an East Ender herself, has written an involved and involving tale of shabbiness and wealth, city and countryside, reputable folk and downright disreputable coves. Kate’s mother, Lady Arabella, seems genuinely uninterested in her daughter, and I can understand this as parents often had little contact with young children, then saw older children only during school holidays. But I was surprised that this lady disparages her daughter and their relationship at a later point, when the envious woman has no inheritance of her own. Kate never suggested making a family member destitute and is evidenced feeding the needy. But… well, nobody’s perfect. Maybe this hands-on improving work, rather than sitting properly on a committee, was partly done out of spite, and her mother knows it.

I enjoyed our two soujourns, first to a country house in Walthamstow, then off to India. We keep hearing so much about Kate’s life in the Colonies, that I would have been extremely disappointed if that ship hadn’t sailed. The central theme of the story, on the other hand, is Kate’s self-appointed mission and her developing relationship with the unlikely character of Harry Trader, a rough diamond. As with other recent books by Dilly Court, I did find there were too many first names by the end of it, making it hard to keep straight who was whom, especially if the book is read in a few sittings.  Some violence apart, THE RELUCTANT HEIRESS is a clean read with just enough romance to tickle your fancy.