Spring 1816. Grace Harper, twenty five years old, and with no family, is governess to four orphans, the young Earl of Rapley, Matthew and his three even younger sisters. Four years earlier she was employed indirectly by the children's uncle, Lord David Shalham, their guardian, who had spent the last thirteen years in India following a scandal in England for which he was wrongly accused.
When just eighteen, Matthew and a sister aged sixteen, decide to move from their settled home in rural Hampshire to the empty family house in London. Grace has perforce to follow with the other two girls and is plunged into the intricacies of formal society. Life there is fraught enough, having to learn new social skills, but then a madman connected with Lord Shalham's past pitches them all into a situation which threatens their lives.
