Having acquired the first three charms in the quest to secure their family's freedom, Luka and Emilia flee into Sussex with soldiers hot on their heels, in company with a Royalist duke, a Catholic priest, a highwayman and young Tom Whitehorse. Only the Catholic underground can help them all escape – but this is a most dangerous religion in the time of Puritan rule. And Emilia and Luka still must find the elusive gypsy tribe of the cat's eye shell, who, it seems...
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.