'The Honourable Christopher Fancot, on leave from the Diplomatic Service in the summer of 1817, is startled to find his entrancing but incorrigibly extravagant mother on the brink of financial and social ruin - and more than alarmed that his identical twin, Evelyn, Earl of Denville, has disappeared without a trace.'
Kit, the respectable brother, is forced into an outrageous masquerade by his wayward family's tangled affairs. But in the face of Evelyn's continued absence, their rigid uncle Lord Brumby, the surprisingly wily Sir Bonamy Ripple, formidable old Lady Stavely and, worst of all, Evelyn's betrothed, Cressy, even Kit's ingenuity is stretched to the limit . . .