There's a moonshiner up in the hills, and he falls in love with the sister of a revenooer--oops, sorry, I mean there's a Lord who is really distilling gin in St. Giles which is apparently borderline-illegal or something, I don't know my 18th century liquor laws as well as I ought, but it does seem as if gin was the first distilled liquor that was ever affordable to the common people and thus immediately became a huge social problem, and our hero! is right in the middle of it. However, he falls for an upright and upstanding lady, patroness of a foundling home, who just happens to be engaged to his almost-upright estranged brother. And she's also sister to the duke (10 points!) who is, of course, going after these (quasi-?)illegal gin stills. And she falls for him, too. How fraught! Classic Hoyt, very enjoyable.