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Lady Skelton (Margaret Lockwood) tires of life and husband, Sir Ralph (Griffith Jones) and becomes, in secret, a cross-dressed highwayman. On the road she meets another outlaw, Captain Jackson (James Mason) with whom she falls in love. When she discovers his infidelity to her, she betrays him to the authorities; and later shoots him. Meanwhile, she falls in love with Kit (Michael Rennie), but he rejects her once she reveals her identity as the highwayman. She dies alone, fatally wounded by Captain Jackson, and her husband is free to marry the woman (Patricia Roc) whom he had forsaken for the Wicked Lady.
The Wicked Lady was one of a number of films made at Gainsborough Studios that in their melodramatic, openly erotic thematics, often embroidered by period or exotic settings, deviated from dominant trends in the British cinema of the 1940s. These films were hugely popular with audiences of the day, and were the products of a regular team of writers, directors, stars and other creative personnel. Among the stars, the leading figures were James Mason, Stewart Grainger, Patricia Roc, Margaret Lockwood and Phyllis Calvert. Three of these appear in The Wicked Lady, a film