The Savernakes were one of Dorset's oldest and most aristocratic families. They were also outrageous and, sometimes, just plain peculiar. The Earl had finally married Gwennie, the nursemaid, while his eldest daughter, Lady Portia, had married the vile Corianum and become a duchess (and that marrige hadn't turned out to be a bed of roses). Beatiful, bad-tempered, tart Claudia was about to get married but was setting the family on its head with plans for her approaching nuptials. Would Claudia make it to the altar this time or would she be off on another mysterious and hard-drinking carousel of her own?

And quiet, delightfully sharp and observant Amity Severnake, knowing more of the family's strange- and sometimes sad- secrets than anyone else, watched them all drom her small white house on a village green , hoping for a kind of hapiness but finding her own life becoming increasingly complicated, funny, and bizarre.