When Stuart Tremaine, portrait painter for the highest society of Regency London, sees Polly Butler in the public room of a remote village inn, he knows that she is the model he has always looked for, and that he must paint her portrait, even if only on the sign of her husband's inn, THE IMPERIAL MAUD. What he does not know is that he will fall in love with his model, or that he already has two rivals: Will Butler, who wants to keep her as an unpaid servant in his inn, and Jack Waggoner, who would broaden her horizons by taking her to London--and a life of prostitution.
Then the presence in the same village of the mad Countess of Westbury, whose husband has stolen Tremaine's wife, and the Countess's distraught companion, Mary Grey, adds confusion to the mix.