Close relations

This is an enthralling tale of one man's search for the right woman.

Algie Stokes, the only son of a lockkeeper, has ambition and ideas enough to make his way honestly in the world.

To begin, there is one girl in his life, Harriet Meese, plain but a very good catch.

Then he meets Marigold Bingham, the exact opposite, astonishingly pretty and adorable, but resigned to living and working in poverty with her family on a canal boat.

Yet it is a love match...until he meets Aurelia, elegant, sensitive and utterly beautiful but, unhappily, the wife of Algie's callous employer, Benjamin Sampson.

There are two other women in Algie's life: his mother, devoted wife of Will Stokes, a beauty of her generation; and Kate, his flighty, ambitious sister.

Kate loves only herself and has her own ideas of how to make her mark, with disastrous consequences for everybody.

Always in the background is the enigmatic Murdoch Osborne, widower, established local trader, amateur thespian, ladies' man, and old enough to be Algie's father.

Five very different women. Two very significant men...