It seems as if there will be no need to find a husband for Diana, the fifth daughter of Charles Armitage, the hard-drinking huntsman and country vicar. For Diana shares her father's passion for the hunt, secretly posing as a man in order to participate in a sport that is considered too vulgar for a lady in Regency England. Her four elder sisters have married well, but Diana fears she will never be as desirous to wed a man as she is to be one. She was born to have a man's freedom to do and say what she wishes, to move about without restraint—or so she thinks until, disguised as David Armitage, she gets a bitter taste of tawdry town life.

Diana decides that life as a lady might not be so bad—if only she were permitted to hunt! But Lady Godolphin, Diana's well-meaning if eccentric cousin, will have none of that. She was instrumental, she tells herself, in finding fine husbands for the older Armitage girls, and she is determined not to fail Diana. A certain viscount, Lord Charles Dantry, does not play by the rules, however, upsetting all the best-laid plans to turn Diana into a proper young lady. Diana the huntress becomes the hunted and learns that there is another, infinitely more exciting kind of chase.