Rupert Lavery is a well-known conservationist. When he dies, his son kit returns from ten years in Australia to inherit a nature reserve in the heart of the British countryside. Kit finds the nature reserve and the two determined women who staff it are more trouble than they are worth.Elizabeth Punch is single, middle-aged, and on a mission to save wildlife from inconsiderate mankind. Jess Wetherby has died orange hair, a nose stud, and aspirations to be a hunt saboteur. But when he meets Jinty O'hare- the beautiful niece of the local Master of Foxhounds, he soon discovers, that there is more charm to the Devonshire coast than he first realised.