The beautiful Lady Georgiana Longborough, and her friend Jennifer Parker-Jones, now the seventh Marchioness of Pemberton, are finding life in Wiltshire altogether too quiet. The answer, it seems, is for Jennifer to give a summer ball.

But social life in Wiltshire is rarely, if ever, simple. While shopping for her ball gown Lady Georgiana re-meets her first lover, the famous film director Kaminski, at the same time as her aunt the Countess, who is helping Jennifer with the arrangements, finds out that Jennifer is intent on double-crossing her.

The Countess plots to teach the young Marchioness a lesson, but will she carry through her revenge? Will Jennifer find out the true identity of her neighbor's children? Will the buxom Lady Tisbury's husband ever stop her from straying? Will life in this particular part of Wiltshire ever settle down? Not, it seems, while Charlotte Bingham's cast of characters are living there.