Drusilla's family are urging her to accept an offer from another merchant's son, but she is reluctant, even more so when she meets the dashing Cavalier, Sir Randal Thornton, and he aids Drusilla during the Parliamentary siege of Reading. She realises how impossible it would be for her attraction to come to anything, especially as her brother is fighting for Parliament, and joined the protest against the King's Ship Money tax. Then the town of Reading and its inhabitants are in greater danger, and Drusilla longs to go back to her home in Devizes.