The Duchess of Duke Street

When Louisa's brother returns from his travels after a long time away, his doting mother talks her reluctant daughter into hiring him, as the hotel is short-staffed. Arthur soon antagonises the longtime servants, precipitating an ugly family quarrel after Louisa discharges him.

Two wiseacre students secretly hatch a plan to embarrass Eliza and an eccentric. Oxford don, but they turn the tables on the would-be pranksters.

Louisa takes a callow chauffeur in tow and tries to turn him into a 'proper gentleman,' when his kind, elderly and wealthy employer dies suddenly and leaves him the bulk of her estate.

Louisa visits Lord and Lady Haslemere in Yorkshire and finds a bleak and desperately unhappy household.

Louisa urges Charlie to get on with his life and a smooth and very suave actor beds Violet, who promptly gets the sack.

With the outbreak of the Great War, the staff are galvanized to help in the effort and keep the hotel running as usual. Louisa takes in a Belgian refugee, a master pastry chef. Charlie enlists and leaves a worried Louisa as he departs for France .

Louisa is concerned when a government official informs her that the Bentinck has become a spies nest and implicates a member of her staff.

When the hotel sustains damage after it's grazed by a bomb, Ethel takes a shine to a conscientious objector, assigned to ferret out a potential UXB. Though nobody was injured, Starr, sadly, loses his beloved pooch in the rubble.

Louisa brings a bit of England to France when the Major enlists her to fashion a tea and sandwich shop, military style and Charlie (Lord Haslemere) and an ecstatic Luisa agree to marry once the 'guns are silent.'

Charlie returns to London and the Bentinck when he's been wounded and puts on a cheerful and brave face, but his situation is far more serious, as Louisa and the Major suspected.

With the war at an end, Louisa is at the precipice of an emotional collapse and financial ruin.

Ghosts of Visits to Yorkshire Past interfere with key decisions Louisa must make in the present, chiefly, deciding what will be best for her daughter, Lottie and her future.

Louisa tells Mary, Starr, and Merriman Lottie is her daughter. She has the Major show the young woman the sights of London, but inevitably, rumours swirl around her. Brian returns, embittered by the war and irritated by Mary's attempts to help him.

Lottie returns on a school holiday, bringing with her one of her teachers, Miss Olive Bradford. The Major and Miss Bradford fall in love and become engaged. Lottie falls for a handsome young man, but when she incautiously reveals who her parentage, his interest in her vanishes.

Louisa and Lottie are at loggerheads - Louisa wants her daughter to be a proper lady, as befits the daughter of a Viscount. Lottie is confident that she has the talent and the looks to become a major musical star of the London stage.

Louisa permits an American woman to write her biography. Merriman wins a newspaper contest and samples life, even sauntering into the Bentinck for a drink, before his money runs out and he returns to his usual post. Mary and Starr inform Louisa that they have become engaged.