1820. Mary Dorothea is living under the sole charge of her widowed father, Sir Edward, a man of strict principles and high moral values.

But when Sir Edward marries Miss Fanny Knight of Godmersham Park, Mary’s life is suddenly changed.

Mary’s new stepmother, Fanny, comes from a large, happy and sociable family, and Fanny’s brothers are amusing, handsome and completely charming.

One brother is particularly attentive and, as Mary approaches her seventeenth birthday, a bond forms between them that leads, on the last day of the year 1825, to a proposal of marriage.

Sir Edward’s outrage is immediate, his refusal isabsolute. The union will never take place.

There appears to be only one solution . . .