A House for the Season

About A House for the Season

A House for the Season is told from an unusual angle for Regency romance: the servants' hall of 67 Clarges Street, a fashionable London townhouse that's rumored to bring bad luck to anyone who lives there. Rather than following one aristocratic family, each of the six novels centers on the below-stairs staff -- led by the sharp, resourceful butler Rainbird -- as they scheme, matchmake and quietly manipulate events to secure a good match for whichever tenant is currently renting the unlucky house, all while trying to keep their own positions and the house's reputation intact for the next season.

Written under the Marion Chesney name in the mid-to-late 1980s, the series lets Beaton indulge her interest in class and social maneuvering from the servants' side of the stairs rather than the drawing room, with the same downstairs ensemble recurring across all six books even as the upstairs tenants and their romances change from one novel to the next. It's a distinctive structural gimmick that sets the series apart from Beaton's other Regency sextets, and a good pick for readers who enjoy stories where the household staff are the real protagonists.

How to read this series

Publication order, starting with The Miser of Mayfair (1986). The Clarges Street servants -- Rainbird and his below-stairs staff -- are the connecting cast across all six books, while the upstairs tenant and their romance changes with each new season, so each volume is a complete, self-contained story even though the household ensemble carries over.