Venetial Lanyon, beautiful, intelligent and independent, lives in seclusion in rural Yorkshire with her precocious brother, Aubrey. Her future seems safe and predictable: either marriage to the respectable but dull Edward Yardley or a life of peacefual spinsterhood. When the dashing Lord Demerel intrudes upon a quiet provincial community in the North of England, news of his scandalous past soon sets tongues wagging. In spite her of sheltered upbringing, though, Venetia is singularly unfazed by the rakish Demerel, and proves to be more than a match for him.