Rejected by society for his wild ways, Lord Sheringham is bent on avenging fate and coming into his fortune. But the very first woman he meets is Hero Wantage, the young and charmingly unsophisticated chit who has loved him since childhood.

When the redoubtable Sir Horace Stanton-Lacy is ordered to South America on business, he leaves his only daughter Sophy with his sister in Berkeley Square. But Sophy's cousins are in a sad state, and she's arrived just in time to save them all.

When Miss Annis Wychwood offers sanctuary to the very young runaway heiress Miss Lucilla Carleton, no one at all thinks this is a good idea. With the exception of Miss Carleton's overbearing guardian, Mr. Oliver Carleton, whose reputation as the rudest man in London precedes him. Outrageous as he is, the charming Annis ends up finding him absolutely irresistible.

Slumped on a seat under an oak tree is old Sampson Warrenby, with a bullet through his head. Everybody in the village is ready to tell Chief Inspector Hemingway who did it. Could the murderer have been the dead man's niece? Or perhaps it was the other town solicitor? The couple at the farm had a guilty secret-what was it? And why is it someone else actually wants to be the prime suspect? Add to this the fact that Warrenby was blackmailing someone,...