Alice Lacey is a lady in doubt. Beautiful, clever and wealthy, Alice learns that her birthright is being questioned. Angry with the provisions of their father’s will, her half brother, Sir Geoffrey, has Initiated an investigation that appears to prove that her parents were never married.

As a result, Alice is stripped of all she owns by Sir Geoffrey and his greedy wife. She is publicly humiliated by her sister-in-law and that woman’s greedy and malicious sister. The magnificent gowns, exquisite jewels, her valuable property-and even her once-ardent suitors-are all gone. Overnight she becomes a poor, nameless relation with nothing to offer the gentlemen who once sought her hand and her fortune.

Fortunately, she has some allies, none more so than her fearless cousin Marianne, an heiress who arrives from St Kit and who refuses to believe her aunt would have lived such a lie. There is also Alice’s godmother and one suitor who stand by her as she transforms from someone who is easily put upon to a woman who learns how to fight for her reputation and that of her mother.

This is a Victorian romance.