June 1837.The king has just died and the 18–year–old Victoria has just come to the throne. Liberty Lane is only a few years older than the new queen but comes from a republican background and has more serious concerns than the affairs of royalty. She receives an anonymous note informing her that her beloved father has died in a duel at Calais, and has gone there to retrieve his body. She suspects that he has been murdered.
Thomas Jacques Lane, a radical and supporter of French revolutionary principles, had led a rackety, unconventional life but was firmly opposed to duelling. Her attempts to uncover the truth in France lead first to a kidnap attempt, then to a meeting with a mysterious stranger who promises to tell her all he knows of her father's death in return for her acting as a spy in the house of a wealthy and titled man.
Liberty thus changes her identity and goes undercover in the huge gothic castle of the Mandevilles which sits near Windsor. What she finds there will shock her to the core. An unhappy marriage, damaged children, a secret elopement, Masonic secrets... and another murder. And at the heart of it all treasonable plot which could lead to another vicious civil war...
