Sixteen-year-old Susan Smithson – pretty but poor, clever but capricious – is expelled from school. At the mansion of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she attracts a young nobleman. But, at the first hint of scandal, her guardian dispatches her to Kent, where her sensible cousin Alicia lives. Here Susan mischievously inspires the local squire to put on a play. What with the arrival of Frank Churchill, Alicia’s falling in love and a tumultuous elopement, Kent will surely never seem safe again…