It is 1905 and Sir Thomas Featherstone is a wealthy baronet and art patron in London. He has come to the Evensong Agency in search of secretary that will help him organize his business affairs, and help him launch an artist colony and art foundation. Ms. Evensong the wily proprietor of the agency, manages him deftly and before he quite realizes he has hired or more accurately Harriet Benson has agreed to work for him at an exorbitant salary.

Harriet is an experienced and hardworking secretary, who trying to return to work while dealing with the lingering after-effects of an emergency appendectomy. Harriet Benson loves working as a secretary, organizing and managing but what she loves the most is her ability to provide for her family and ensure her brothers the education they need through her salary. Her father however deeply resents her career and is looking for any excuse to bar her from working even if it means huge problems for their family financially. Sir Thomas Featherstone with his reputation associating with artists and half-dressed models is a scandal waiting to happen and Mr. Benson is sure he will soon cause his daughter’s ruination.

Little does Mr. Benson know that Sir Thomas although extremely dazzled by Harriet’s beauty and efficiency, is not an accomplished seducer. Despite the allowances he pays to several opera singers and chorus girls, and antics reported in the papers, Thomas is actually a virgin. He is technically a virgin despite of years of consorting with mistress, because he is too fearful of having his scandalous reputation exposed as a fabrication and too easy going to press for more. With Miss Benson, Thomas’s easy charm stumbles, and he often finds himself tongue-tied around her, so he meekly follows her lead in keeping their relationship as professional as possible.

However their relationship takes a dramatic turn when Harriet’s father comes home drunk after losing his job strikes her and locks her in her room, convinced she has been corrupted by Sir Thomas. Harriet flees and ends up on Sir Thomas’s doorstep. Sir Thomas insists on looking after her, and while trying to console her they end up embracing. Discovering their mutual attraction and inexperience and due to Harriet’s insistence in refusing direct financial help, they up writing up a contract, making Harriet Sir Thomas’s temporary mistress. Like it always seems to happen with these temporary arrangements they both fall deeper for each other than they intended,and as the end dates looms ever larger as Sir Thomas tries to figure out a way to convince Harriet to stay in his life, and not run off for quite life in the country after collecting her settlement.

The tone of the story was light and highly comedic, almost farcical, similar in tone to Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. I generally enjoyed the humor, and I think Robinson did a good job developing Sir Thomas’s inner voice, so that we could see his genuine if somewhat bumbling affection and admiration for Harriet. While I could understand Harriet’s attraction, affection and genuine concern for Thomas, I was less than convinced by some of the out of character choices she makes late in the novel in her attempts to facilitate the ending of their relationship, however her change of heart was believable as was her commitment to being the most proper wife for Sir Thomas despite her background.

I am thankful for the copy of the Unsuitable Secretary made available to reviewers by Penguin InterMix via NetGalley.