If Florentine and Julia's aunt can recall with a shudder anything from her short-lived marriage, it was the ravishment she received from her military husband the night of their wedding; a carnal onslaught of a front and rear-guard action that left her doubting all that she had learned of love. Could those traits somehow have passed to those two daughters of her brother. Could they pick it up from the demeanour of their aunt?

When the two sisters, of relatively impoverished background are married off they find themselves given short shrift in the marital bed, much like their aunt....