Venetia Marriott arrives in Southern Spain to stay with an uncle and aunt in their rural hideaway in Rosario, near Seville. She is recovering from the tragic death of a French boyfriend, and looking for rest and relaxation. Instead she is catapulted into the local affairs of a small village and its inhabitants, notably the Quinones family and their two sons: the handsome womaniser, Fernando, and the gentler Felipe. When an old schoolfriend, the beautiful Fiona, also turns up in Rosario on the trail of a reclusive uncle, the bestselling novelist Ian Gilmour, the two girls are drawn into a web of romantic entanglements - as well as a bitter family feud which harks back to Spain's Civil War.