"On a sunny day in July 1815, thirty-eight-year-old Philippa, Lady McKinsey, takes her sixteen-year-old daughter, Emma, and her young niece and nephew, fifteen-year-old Arabella and thirteen-year-old Percy, on an outing to Richmond Park. But when Arabella and Percy go off to pick flowers, tragedy strikes. Shots echo across the park. Two young gentlemen investigate and find Lady McKinsey and her daughter dead. As the men gaze in horror at the strangely...

The sole witness to the slaughter of eight young prostitutes at a house of refuge near Covent Garden, Hero Jarvis, daughter of the Prince Regent's cousin, Lord Jarvis, joins forces with Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, to investigate the massacre, following a trail of danger that takes them from London's seedy underbelly to the highest levels of society.

"June 1815. The people of London wait, breathlessly, for news as Napoleon and the forces united against him hurtle toward their final reckoning at Waterloo. Among them is Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, frustrated to find himself sidelined while recovering from a dangerous wound he recently received in Paris. When the mutilated corpse of Major Miles Sedgewick surfaces from the murky waters of the Thames, Sebastian is drawn into the investigation...