A period tale of nineteen year old Antoinette Aston who has lived all her life in Harrogate with her aunt and uncle but when they both fall ill and die, she is horrified to find out that she is not related to them at all, as they found her, abandoned by her mother, on their doorstep when a baby. Forced to leave the only home she has ever known, she is taken into the home of Eleanor Le Strange, whom she discovers, too late, to be a notorious courtesan. Antoinette realises that her secret pasion for the Duke of Lyveden is now doomed as he will believe her to be a woman of low morals but to her surprise the Duke rescues her from the house of sin. When the Duke asks her to marry him she refuses as she has found out that her mother was mad and she fears that this will be passed on to her children.