When 17-year-old Susan Fyfield, newly arrived at her aunt’s house in London from a Young Ladies’ Seminary in Twickenham, says that she is secretly engaged to the most eligible and elusive bachelor in Town, it should have made her the happiest girl in England. After all, Beau Eversley is everything any female could wish for: handsome, charming and from a good family.

The trouble is, in announcing her betrothal to her aunt and sister, she has made one small oversight. With typical impetuosity, she has neglected to tell the Beau himself.

As the Beau’s affairs are the subject of much gossip, including his pursuit of such ladies as the vivacious actress Maria McCann, Susan is surprised when he actually agrees to help her out of the situation in which she has landed herself in the only way possible. For not only does he consent to the pretence of the engagement, but will also allow her to break it off whenever she chooses.

But a possible marriage raises an unexpected question about Susan’s past that casts a shadow on her parentage. Aided by her schoolfriend, the Beau’s volatile younger sister Georgiana, Susan sets out to solve the mystery. In doing so, she has to enlist the help of Society’s foremost gossip, the renowned Horace Walpole...