The St. Aubyns live in Bastians, a sprawling sixteenth century house built by Spaniards just outside of the town of Tremerrion atop the cliffs on the wind-swept Cornish coast. Leah St. Aubyn, a writer branching off into poetry, is the younger second wife of Major Mallory St. Aubyn, who largely tends to the plants in his greenhouse when he isn't looking after Leah. Mallory's three offspring, Logan, Jane and Christine, love Leah like their own mother, despite she being not much older than them. Leah and Mallory's first wife, Rosanna, were friends, Leah and Mallory who married a year after Rosanna's passing. The love within the household with Leah was only strengthened when, two years into the marriage, Leah saved Logan and Jane from drowning, Leah who endured an injury in the process and now uses a wheelchair. A contentment about her situation seems to have settled into Leah's psyche since the accident. Logan, a law student, and Jane are at an age when they will be striking out on their own in their own romantic love, Logan with the return into his life of aspiring artist Catherine Woolton, an orphan of unknown parentage raised by Vicar and Mrs. Woolton, and Jane with Leah's physician, Dr. Simon Crowdy. These budding relationships open Logan and Jane's eyes to the true nature of the dynamic within the family, something that impressionable Christine and Mallory will only see with the arrival of Leah's new secretary, Sherida Binyon, at Bastians.