It is 1848 and the future looks grim for the beautiful, newly-widowed Grainne Shonley. With all her family gone, she has no future in her ravaged, famine-torn homeland of Ireland – so when she is offered a position in a Warwickshire manor-house, she gratefully accepts.

          But life as a housemaid in Millwood Hall has few comforts. Grainne soon makes an enemy of the formidable housekeeper Mrs Gurnock, and when the drunken, perverted son of the manor brings home and nearly kills a young prostitute, Grainne will not let the matter lie. But Gurnock will go to any lengths to shield her employers – even if it means having Grainne dragged away in chains to the local lunatic asylum…

          And the reappearance of the suave but sinister master criminal Captain Morgan Hunter brings the possibility of escape. But what future will she have as part of Hunter’s gang of thieves and pickpockets in nearby Birmingham? Especially with the new young detective Reuben Murdoch on their trail…