Sir Tristram Shield comes to visit his dying uncle Sylvester, the Lord of Lavenham, and since it is Sylvester's wish, Tristram agrees to marry his younger, half-French cousin Eustacie. Tristram is a practical, unromantic kind of gentleman, so to Eustacie he seems completely unfeeling when he won't follow along in her flights of fancy at how sorry he should feel to see her going to the guillotine wearing a white dress (she was brought out of France long before there was any danger of that), or when she asks him to ride at full-speed to her deathbed when she dies in childbirth-- he replies quite practically that he wouldn't go out on such an occasion, but this doesn't suit Eustacie at all. Quite quickly, Eustacie convinces herself and her maid that she will be completely miserable married to Tristram (she's probably right-- and she would likely make him miserable as well), so she decides to run away and become a governess (her only qualification for such a job is that she speaks French). As she makes her way out in the night, she runs into a group of smugglers (or "free-traders")-- and their leader is, of course, her disgraced cousin Ludovic Lavenham, heir to Sylvester. Everyone assumed he had fled the country due to the suspicion that he murdered a man who took a family heirloom, a talisman ring, in payment for gambling debts and then would not return it. When Ludovic, Eustacie, and Tristram all end up together again and Tristram and Ludovic finally believe each other that neither of them killed the man, they set about finding the person who did-- and in particular, finding the talisman ring that will clear Ludovic's name.
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