Jennie Hawthorne, orphaned at 21, is carried off after her father's death by her mother's sister. She would henceforth live the life of the and "upstairs and " classes in the home of her aunt and uncle in London's Brunswick Square. and "We'll make you a good marriage, and " her Aunt Higham promised.Jennie, born and brought up surrounded by moors and the North Sea in Northumberland, a free spirit, educated in an era when girls seldom learned anything but needlework and the harpsichord, pined during her first winter in London: for her dead father, for his wise counsel, for the countryside she could roam.Desolate and determined to escape drawing rooms and stultifying society, Jennie is poised to run away on the Ides of March, when she meets, as she and her aunt are out riding in their carriage, the dashing Captain Nigel Gilchrist, attached to the Household cavalry. Handsome, polished, making up in charm what he lacks in education, he sweeps restless Jennie out of her despair, gets her uncle's permission to marry her, and when the ceremony is over sails off with her to Scotland. He has gotten a chance to resign his commission and go off to the Highlands to manage the estate - chiefly a sheep farm - which his older half-brother owns.More comfortable downstairs than upstairs, ill at ease in the artificial London atmosphere her sister-in-law has created in the primitive area, Jennie hopes to be able to start a school for the illiterate children of the cottagers, to help the clearly downtrodden villagers.It is quickly apparent she is out of step. Her husband is in league with his half-brother. Even the local minister is in on the compact. Who needs people when it's sheep which are going to make fortunes for the Highland lairds?Of the family, only her husband's cousin Alick Gilchrist shares her concern. Together, they make their way.