A light-hearted Regency folly, starring Miss Clarissa Harlowe who wants a quiet life-but falls in love with a smuggler, the marquess of St. Tarval.

Tarval's sister, Lady Kitty, is determined to write a dramatic Gothic to save her brother's mortgaged estate-if she can reach London.

Clarissa's much-pursued cousin, Mr. Philip Devereaux, is inexplicably intrigued by Lady Kitty, who is doing her best to encourage the match between him and Clarissa, except that Clarissa is now betrothed to . . . Lord Wilburfolde.

And so the madness of changing partners begins in the dance of love.