When Dominic returns from a night of revels to find a badly beaten youth on his doorstep, little does he know that she is to become in turn his pupil and his love.

Rusticated to his father’s estates, he again meets Sophie in her boyish guise and agrees to become her tutor – treating her as a boy. However, their idyll is short-lived when the duke arrives at Stovely and Sophie, transformed once more into a beautiful young woman, is forced to return to London.