The Napoleonic Wars have ended, the age of the steam engine has dawned. In Winston Graham's first historical novel since The Poldarks, his heroine Emma Spry is growing up in a small corner of Cornwall. Emma receives little affection, her father killed in a duel before she was born, her actress mother's ambitions lying with a beautiful sister Tamsin, and in her own success, on stage and off. Bram Fox, a predatory male with mischievous deep-set dark eyes and a brilliant white smile, is a dangerously attractive free-spirit in the claustrophobia of Emma's world. But only Canon Robarts, relishing young Emma's independence, her wit and vulnerability, can teach her to understand the true meaning of love.