“The whole scheme hangs on you, my love.” So begins Lady Mulholland’s directive to Henry Granger, her one and only son. He is to bring suitable gentlemen home from Oxford and he is to make all haste. There are seven daughters to be married—Violet, Rose, Daisy, Marigold, Lily and the twins, Poppy and Pansy—an undertaking that will span a decade. Lady Mulholland, however, is not faint of heart. She devised her plan on a long ago evening when she happened to look down her dining table and note precisely how many daughters were to be had. She is confident of its success, as she is confident in all of her plans. Whether her daughters will cooperate is another matter entirely. Violet, her eldest daughter, is a scholar. She is shrewd enough to guess at her mother’s schemes and bold enough to thwart them. Lord Smythesdon, invited to the house under false pretenses, considers himself a serious intellectual. He also considers that particular quality to be a man’s purview. As he says, there is no fact ruined faster than hearing a female spout off about it. As Violet is in the habit of spouting off quite a lot, there could not be a more ill-omened beginning. Smuckers, the fearless butler, is determined to do his bit for his mistress. He will rally the below stairs staff and enact some schemes of his own. Despite his outward bravado, he secretly fears that, in this particular instance, Lady Mulholland shall be defeated. This disturbs his peace for, as he well knows, if Lady Mulholland is not happy, nobody in the house is happy. Chemsworth Hall follows the fortunes of the Granger family in all their delightful eccentricity. Let the games begin...