****
Things have come to a pretty pass at Darracott Place. Following the unexpected death of Lord Darracott's eldest son and grandson in 1817, the family is horrified to learn that the title and the (admittedly ill-funded and rather run-down) estate will pass to a previously unknown cousin, Hugo--a Darracott, in a manner of speaking, but also a former soldier, and the son of a Yorkshire weaver's daughter. Still, Lord Darracott hasn't given up completely. He's counting on his spinster granddaughter Anthea (she is twenty-two, after all) to teach the commoner a thing or too ... and if the low-born imbecile can be bullied into marrying her, thereby preserving some measure of the Darracott line, so much the better. But when the rather enormous Hugo (hence the Ajax reference) arrives on the scene, the family doesn't know what to make of him. He is unfailingly good-natured and amiable in the face of his cousin Vincent's cutting remarks, and he genially resists his cousin Claud's attempts to improve his fashion and eradicate his appalling Yorkshire dialect (much to the chagrin of both). But there may be more to the seemingly stolid Hugo than meets the eye. Meanwhile, the local Riding Officer is closing in on a band of smugglers, and he suspects some of the local gentry may be aiding and abetting their activities. Lord Darracott, outraged by the extortionate tax rates, is certainly sympathetic to the smugglers. But Hugo suspects that young Richmond--Anthea's brother, whose desire to join the army has been repeatedly thwarted by his grandfather--may be doing more than just sympathizing. Will the Darracott heir be able to win Anthea's heart and save the family from ruin?
In other words, it's a sort of
Downton Abbey redux. Except this was published in 1959, so I guess that makes
Downton Abbey an
Unknown Ajax redux. (The commoner-becomes-heir part, not the smuggling part.)
