The night before he is to announce his choice he comes across Penelope Creed, a young girl in boys' clothes, hanging helplessly from an upper story window.

The two become allies, leave London in search of Miss Creed's childhood sweetheart, and find themselves in the middle of a dangerous game of mystery, theft, and murder.

Richard/Beau Wyndham aka Mr. Brown – At twenty-nine he is extremely wealthy, a leader of the ton, and an accomplished sportsman, living in St. James's Square.

In an effort to avoid this fate she decides to run away to Piers Luttrell, her childhood sweetheart in Somerset, where she has her own estate.

Pen is a very pretty young lady, tall & slender, with guinea gold hair and eyes of cornflower blue.

Louisa, Lady Trevor – Richard's sister and George's wife she is a handsome woman of thirty-one, with a great deal of decision in her face, and a leavening gleam of humour.

She rules her husband with a rod of iron, and together with her mother is making every effort to ensure her brother Richard marries & settles down.

(The name Cedric is one of Miss Heyer's many historical errors, having first been used by Sir Walter Scott in the novel Ivanhoe, published in 1820 – well after the period of this book – in mistake for the actual Saxon name Cerdic.)

Deeply in debt, he is relying on his daughter Melissa marrying Sir Richard Wyndham to repair the family fortunes.

A young man with a face like a fish and a wet mouth, being importuned by his mother to marry Pen Creed.

He is twenty-one years old, and described as a pleasant-faced young man with a good pair of shoulders and easy, open manners.

In an effort to hide her betrothal to, and meetings with, Piers Luttrell she pretends that Pen Creed (in her boy's disguise) is her suitor.