Unpredictable and impetuous, Francis Herries arrives in Borrowdale driven by a dream. His horrified neighbours watch as he moves both his family and mistress into his crumbling ancestral home. When he sells his mistress at the fair in Keswick he earns the nickname ‘Rogue’. In a world of superstition here is a man who is surely in league with the Devil. Then one Christmas he meets the young Gypsy girl, Mirabell Starr, and the course of his life is forever changed…