At sixteen Verity becomes sole heiress to a fortune founded on the wool mills of Yorkshire and realises for the first time that she is no more than a pawn in the games of ambitious men. Obedient to the conventions of the Victorian age, she accepts a marriage of convenience and cloaks her proud spiri[...]

Grace Agbrigg has ambitions beyond merely ornamenting the home of a rich husband. But high Victorian England is still almost wholly a man's world in which women -- rich or poor -- must do the bidding of father, husband or employer. Attracted against her will to the ambitious and ruthless Gideon Char[...]