A desperate letter from her best friend sends Lady Jane rushing from her cozy Cornwall home to the remote reaches of Northumberland. Alison's frantic plea for help hints that something sinister is going on in the gloomy halls of Winton Park, so Jane braves the misty moors in the dead of winter to get to her pregnant and bedridden friend.
A menacing sense of doom grips Jane the moment she arrives at the isolated Victorian estate. Charlotte, the lady of the manor, suffers mysterious fits and fainting spells, while her husband ignores his family to obsess over his orchid collection and the pursuit of the elusive and priceless black orchid. When Lady Charlotte's maid is found dead on the moors, Jane realizes that sickness and greed are not Winton Park's worst afflictions. Now they have a murder on their hands.
Only someone as inquisitive and determined as Lady Jane can uncover the dark secrets that link these events. Can she do it before another life is lost?
On his deathbed, Lord Pembroke took great care to try to ensure the future of his beautiful, unconventional niece, Lady Jane. Her debutante ball would feature the most eligible bachelors of London society. But when the night of the dance arrives, things do not go as planned.
To escape the superficial drama of the party, Jane seeks refuge in the garden of Rosewood Hall, where she discovers a gravely injured girl. With her last breath, the child beseeches Jane to find another girl, Mary, and to save her from the same fate she has suffered. Lady Jane vows to fulfill this final wish, a promise that will entangle her in a dangerous intrigue and take her from the safety of home to the hard streets of London. With the faded inscription in a tattered novel as her only physical clue, Jane sets out to investigate the region's orphanages and infiltrate London's most elegant homes. Can she save young Mary from a swiftly approaching doom?
