Summary
A sun-drenched manor on the California coast becomes a gilded cage for Peggy Brockman, whose petroleum-king father trades their twosome for a chandeliered menagerie of step-relations: a social-mountaineering matron and her twin peacocks of entitlement. When rumor drifts in on a salt-laced breeze that Lord George Raleigh’s yacht drifts just beyond the breakers, the stepmother’s ambition ignites; she orchestrates a garden fête designed to net aristocracy for one of her brood. The reclusive peer dispatches his valet as decoy, but Peggy—banished to the nursery—slips through hedges, commandeers a skiff, and stows away on the velvet-lined vessel where she confronts the flesh-and-blood lord over champagne and starlight. Their moonlit banter ricochets between barbed wit and unspoken electricity; by dawn he is bewitched, she is unrepentant. Retribution arrives in the guise of finishing school, yet Raleigh matriculates incognito, turning Gothic halls into a clandestine lovers’ battledrome. One comic midnight, Peggy blunders into the masculine dormitory, landing in his chamber just as lanterns blaze; scandal brews faster than morning coffee. The duo flee to a justice of the peace, only to be clapped into a provincial jailhouse on vagrancy charges. There, beneath flickering gas-lamps and iron bars, the earl reveals his coroneted surname and places a signet ring upon Peggy’s finger just as her apoplectic family bursts in. The final tableau freezes on generational jaws ajar, a girl no longer shackled by perpetual adolescence, and a lord who gambled his title for a freckled daredevil.
Synopsis
Peggy Brockman's idyllic life with her oil-magnate father is disrupted when he remarries and arrives home with his bride and her two snobbish daughters. The new Mrs. Brockman reads that Lord George Raleigh is anchored off shore in his yacht, and regarding him as a possible conquest for one of her daughters, issues him an invitation to a garden party. In quest of his seclusion, his Lordship sends his butler Wiggins to attend in his place. Peggy is banned from the party, and in revenge, sneaks aboard the yacht where she meets the real lord who is enchanted by her. For her prank, Peggy is banished to college and the lord enrolls also. One night by mistake, Peggy climbs into the boys' dormitory and finds herself in Raleigh's room. To prevent a scandal, they elope, but on the way from the justice's house are arrested and thrown in jail. Peggy's horrified family arrives just in time to witness Lord Raleigh disclose his true identity and announce that Peggy is his bride.
