Summary
In a Manhattan that still clinks with the after-taste of gaslight, Mabel Vere—ink-stained, corset-defiant—turns the matrimonial market into her personal laboratory. A newspaper notice, brazen as a scarlet petal on snow, invites strangers to woo her, not for altar but for anecdote. Her fiancé, Gerald Wantage, monocled martinet of the Knickerbocker set, fumes; the wager he places inside the cigar-hazed sanctum of his club becomes both fuse and mirror. Beside Mabel pirouettes Maud Bray, a calisthenics zealot whose biceps dispatch unwelcome Romeos like flies swatted from a summer pudding. Letters avalanche in—some perfumed, some reeking of gin and desperation—until two outliers snag her curiosity: a butler with a past as polished as the silver he carries, and Noel Corcoran, heir to a robber-baron fortune yet allergic to his own gilt. When Gerald’s bet leaks, Mabel’s pen turns scalpel; she answers the louche epistles, each reply a controlled detonation that obliterates her engagement and liberates her into the carnival night. Chases through rooftop gardens, a Coney Island waltz lit by Tesla sparks, and a final proposal delivered aboard a yacht bound for Havana—where moonlight drips like mercury on brass railings—cement her discovery that plot and pulse are synonyms.
Synopsis
Bright young novelist Mabel Vere is engaged to Gerald Wantage, a prig who angrily objects when she advertises for a husband in order to elicit ideas for her new book. Mabel's roommate, Maud Bray, a physical culture expert, frightens away the less desirable suitors, while the writer responds to the more interesting letters, and soon becomes embroiled in a number of adventures. One of her applicants is a butler, whose employer, Noel Corcoran, also has answered the ad. Noel informs Mabel that Gerald has bet the other members of his club that she will answer no more letters. Angered, she responds to several particularly lurid ones, after which she and Gerald break off their engagement. Having fallen in love with Mabel, Noel proposes and is accepted.
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