1700 and East India Company Governor Elihu Yale is back in London, seemingly intent on reconciliation with his wife Catherine after ten years of separation. But those ten years have given her a taste of independence that she's not ready to easily surrender. The ghosts of her previous life continue to haunt her, however - yet another former foe returned with her husband and seemingly still intent on revenge. And a more evil enemy still, in the shape of that Jacobite Colonel John Porter who had caused such damage to her youngest daughter. Drawn back even further into espionage on behalf of her...

Liverpool, 1911. The life of young Cari Maddox is already complicated enough. Holding together her fractious Welsh family...her suffragette's struggle for women's rights...her guilty secrets. And that's before the arrival of her deranged 'cousin', Tom Priddy. Then the plight of African Kru seaman, Amos Gartee, already on strike at the Harrington Dock. All this, and a River Mersey on the verge of revolution, of rebirth. Mysteries to be solved. Sectarian divides to be crossed. Scores to be settled. Justice to be won. Revenge to be savoured.