She wondered how Lady Masters got her old parlour maid to carry the coffee right across the lawn. But, of course, Lady Masters got things simply by always having had them and by taking it for granted that she always would have them.

In Bramton Wick, the setting of Elizabeth Fair’s cheerful debut novel, tensions and resentments—not to mention romance—roil beneath the polite interactions of its charming and eccentric residents.

There’s upper crust Lady Masters, taking the good things for granted but thoroughly cowed by her gardener....