Johnnie Easter takes his family by surprise when he falls in love with Harriet Sowerby. For all his business talent Johnnie is a shy lad, awkward at social events. But when he meets gentle Harriet, beaten into submission by her brutal parents, Johnnie reveals hidden strengths, recuing his love from her prison-like home and making her his bride. But Johnnie becomes more and more drawn into the family business, and Harriet sufers from his neglect. Until, amid the massacre at Peterloo, where her eyes are opened to the suffering of the poor around her, she meets dynamic revolutionary Caleb Rawson, who is everything Johnnie is not. And so the seeds of tragedy are sown...