Lord Rothingham refuses a request from the Prince of Wales to choose himself a bride and leaves the splendours of Carlton House for his country estate. Whilst riding in the woods, this cynical autocrat discovers lovely Syringa Melton, broken-hearted at the prospect of having to lose her white stallion, Mercury, to meet the debts of a dissolute father. This fateful meeting leads Syringa to the glittering salons of eighteenth-century London and, later, to the horrors of Newgate Prison before true love triumphs over a tangle of treachery and deceit.