“You have scandalised your name and ours, and the only thing to do is to make the best of it, and teach Maisie at least the first principles of ladylike conduct.” Trevor Stratheyre, from a wealthy and aristocratic English family, impulsively marries Maisie, a servant girl he meets while touring the Continent. Maisie’s mother had died at an Italian inn, leaving three-year-old Maisie to be brought up by the landlord and his wife, where she helps as a maid at the inn and cares for the animals. Maisie is charming and affectionate, but when Trevor brings her back to Stratheyre in England as his bride, to the large estate he is expecting to inherit, it is clear that Maisie’s ways are not those of the upper classes. When she tells titled guests at dinner that she was once herding some cows home and one was struck by lightning, trouble is bound to follow. Read more