Series 1

Emma agrees to a pretend engagement with a young Earl in order to protect him from the horde of eligible young women besieging him.

Flora Saunt is a beautiful but poor orphan whose only asset is her face, which she uses to secure a marriage to the wealthy but unintelligent Lord Iffield, who doesn't realise she is nearly blind and needs thick, disfiguring spectacles.

Mr Prodmore owns the mortgage to the Yule family estate. He will forgive the vast debt if Yule will marry his daughter. The enchanting Grace has other ideas.

Louisa Bridgenorth commissions a portrait of the ideal man. James Mallory turns her down, but knows just the artist, Mary Tredick.

Adela, who has taken on the role of running the family since her mother's death, must work to 'save' her father from remarriage and her brother from a scheming music hall artiste.

A wealthy doctor is suspicious of a handsome man courting Catherine, his plain daughter.

Bessie Alden and Lord Lambeth meet in Newport and both seem smitten. Everyone assumes that when Bessie visits London the next spring, she's set on marriage.