[2] The novel was written at a point when Heyer, not long after she had recovered from an illness, was reportedly "desperate for a plot" and "still worried about finances".
[3] Kate Malvern is a beautiful orphan who is forced to become a governess when her father dies.
However, due to her youth and beauty she loses the job and has to go to her old nurses' house whilst looking for a new position.
Kate soon discovers Aunt Minerva to be controlling even to the point of always having Torquil watched.
When she asks her aunt the next morning Lady Broome is not able to give a satisfactory answer but merely replies she must have heard Torquil who is afraid of storms.
She quickly writes a note to Sarah via Mr Nidd, knowing that this time it will arrive.
Yet when they arrive back at Staplewood they find the house in chaos because Aunt Minerva has taken ill.
Soon Kate has to tell Lady Broome about her engagement with Phillip, but when she does Aunt Minerva has a terrible reaction.
She calls Kate a slut and numerous other things that cause her to sleep terribly that night.
Florence Hascall of the Portland Press Herald called it a "comfortable cushion on which one may sink through time to a world that has problems but no nuclear weapons."
"[4] Barbara Hodge Hall of The Anniston Star wrote that while it is "much the same" as Heyer's other novels, it features her "successful technique of simple plot, bouncy characters and cleverly reproduced slang of the Regency period.