The year is 1806. While pacing the Cobb at Lyme Regis, the tall and windswept Laura Morrison exchanges keen glances with the intense Mr Templeton, but he fails to meet later appointments, leaving Laura in the lurch. Only one other lady has seen him, and she soon dies. Laura’s bitter brother and sugary sister, respective veterans of the Battle of Trafalgar and of marriage to an octogenarian, begin to doubt the reality of Mr Templeton’s existence. Laura becomes convinced that Mr Templeton was a figment of her own disordered imagination and is persuaded to seek the cure for ‘Old Maid’s Illness’ in marriage to her cousin Sir Richard, a dopey but gallant baronet. Meanwhile, strange goings-on at the deathbed of a rich old man slowly come to light, and Sir Richard finds himself irresistibly drawn to the gentlewoman companion of a beautiful, rakish countess.