Eliza Peabody is one of those dangerously blameless women who believes she has God in her pocket. She is too enthusiastic; she talks too much. Her concern for the welfare of her wealthySouth London neighbours extends to ingenuous well-meaning notes of unsolicited adviceunder the door. It is just such a one-sided correspondence that heralds Eliza's undoing. Did her letter have something to do with the woman's abrupt disappearance ? Why will no-one else speak of her?
Venetia Lanyon, beautiful, intelligent and independent, lives in comfortable seclusion in rural Yorkshire with her precocious brother Aubrey. Her future seems safe and predictable: either marriage to the respectable but dull Edward Yardley, or a life of peaceful spinsterhood. But when she meets the dashing, dangerous rake Lord Damerel, her well-ordered life is turned upside down, and she embarks upon...