Victorian

Crumbling castles shrouded in secrets, ghostly skeletons cloaked in black veils, and innocent maidens held in the gravest of danger: the clich‚d tropes of gothic romance fill the mind of Catherine Morland, the young, naive, but warm-hearted heroine of Jane Austen's parody of the popular fiction of her time.

On a moonlit night in 1898, Kathleen Wyman lies in labour at Bessington Hall. Her husband, Edward, is sure that she has been unfaithful to him. In his blind, jealous rage he later gives away the baby to gypsy Rona Parrish, summoned to help with the delivery. Kathleen, frenzied with grief, is soon after locked away in an asylum.

Dora Fairweather wasn’t cut out to be a wife and mother, and as soon as she’s able, she turns her back on her young daughter Lissie. With no parents to protect her, Lissie has no option but the dangerous streets of soot-sodden Bradford or the workhouse orphanage. Life in the orphanage is bleak and Lissie longs for the warm embrace of her beloved father. As the years pass, Lissie learns to enjoy the camaraderie of the other girls in the workhouse, and when she’s taken under the wing of matron Connie Briggs, things begin to look up..

Phoebe Atkinson is what society might call unconventional. Instead of marrying well like other women born to wealth, she chose to be a schoolteacher. Not to mention she lives in a leaky flat in an unfashionable part of town rather than stay in her parents’ mansion. But when her most promising pupil goes missing she has only one option: beg her sister’s best friend, the powerful Duke of Ellis, for help.

Benedict Hannan has veered off his celibate, godly path and onto one of erotic exploration with his beloved criminal Sebastian Cavell. He is also trying and failing to rid himself of the insidious bonds of the deviant cabal Fratres Seminis. The cabal drew Benedict into their blasphemous schemes at the behest of his ex-lover Lord Euan Ardmillan. However, now Ardmillan is out of favour with the leader, Lawrence Blake, and considered to be a betrayer.