Miss Sylvia Parnell, a beautiful heiress, leaves Bath and the Academy for Young Gentlewomen for Regency London. There she resides under the guardianship of her aunt, Lady Rowena. Sylvia's innocence and wilfulness presents an irresistible challenge to the worldly Rowena. Correction and punishment are routine in this unconventional household, until Sylvia flees, stumbling naively from one frightening adventure and sexual encounter to another...

The French Revolution, 1790 and onwards. Spirited Chantel is furious with the leader of the revolutionaries, Captain Gautier, who takes over her estate, but though hating everything he stands for is strangely attracted to this saturnine man. She is courted by a French Comte and helps him escape from Gautier, adopting the disguise that is going to cover her tracks as she organises escape routes for her persecuted friends. She dresses as a man and earns the name of The Fox, and through a series of adventures she is threatened by the feared Chief of Police, who imprisons her in his fortress...

As a student and a singer Stella is haunted by the vision of a beautiful man, Lazio, who is often in the audience when she performs, but it is not until she takes up residence in Troon Hall and visits a ruined monastery nearby that she meets him properly, and falls victim to those who made him a vampire. A dairy that once belonged to Emma, her great-great-grandmother, tells of a trip to Venice where she and her friend Candice met the leader of the Nosferatu, Prince Dimitri. Candice fell in love with him and accepted the dark gift of eternal life. Emma was distraught, and spent years trying to...