Hyacinth Grey has led a quiet life in Gibraltar, managing her father's household and tutoring her young half-brother. One day, a letter arrives informing her that she has inherited a small fortune from her grandmother, an infamous courtesan. Thomas Pently, alias Smithson, earned his own wealth in the East India Company. Then his mistress was murdered, and his aristocratic family summoned him home. He's now third in line to his uncle's duchy, after his aging father and one sickly cousin. Aboard the Whistler, they become friends, but can their fledgeling romance survive the whirl of London...

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light Slept with a mermaid one fine night. From this union there came three: A porpoise, a porgie and the other was me. Jack studies accountancy, lives with his maiden aunt in an upright Victorian household, and smells like a fish. The fishy smell drives girls away faster than they can be introduced. When Jack visits his lighthouse-keeper father on the Eddystone rocks, he meets his mother for the first time since he was a baby. She's a mermaid. Jack's mother sends him on a quest to find his two lost brothers, a porpoise and a porgie fish. Along the...