Now she is sixteen and a half, beautiful young Lady Imeldra is eager to leave school and resume her exciting life with her father the Earl of Kingsclere, who is renowned in Society as something of a “man about town”. She is dismayed when he announces that his rather decadent lifestyle is not conducive to the necessary task of presenting Imeldra formally to Society and finding her an appropriate suitor – and that he is sending her to live with her strait-laced and disapproving grandmother. Rebelling, she enlists the help of an old family friend William Gladwin, who is currently building an Orangery at the neighbouring estate of Marizon, and passes herself off as Mr. Gladwin’s grand-daughter so that she can stay at Marizon. Although the house and its estate is incomparable in its beauty and grandeur – and its brooding, cynical Master the Marquis is equally handsome – Imeldra has the feeling that something is amiss. And, seeking to know more of the mysterious Marquis, she finds that she has fallen in love.