Flora Hyde-Clare’s visit to her beau’s ancestral home was always going to be a disaster.

Her mother’s nervous habit of rambling nonsensically, her father’s thinly veiled contempt, her own desperate desire to make a good impression on Sebastian Holcroft’s parents, and his seemingly endless parade of siblings all guaranteed that their stay in the country would be intolerably awkward at best.

Yet for all her dire misgivings, Flora never imagined one of the household servants would wind up slain in his own bed.

But that is precisely what happens to the handsome young land steward. Chock-full of bright ideas for the estate’s future, Adrian Singleton nevertheless failed to conceive the folly of dallying with an impoverished widow whom he had no intention of marrying. Tired of his lies, his lover strangles him to death with her scarf — her very stylish scarf.

That is the story everyone believes — except Flora, who simply cannot fathom how a poor woman buried in the country would get her hands on a scarf in the first stare of fashion. The lovely accessory has to belong to a lady of means, and although she knows investigating Holcroft’s sisters for murder is a surefire way to end their relationship, she simply cannot smother her suspicions. She has to poke around until she finds out which one is the culprit.

Disastrous indeed!