When a disgraced actress accepts the help of a broken barrister, the ensuing smoldering desire between them threatens their shattered dreams and unspoken secrets. Never having learnt to read, at sixteen Lily Venableis an actress on the cusp of stardom when she steps in as understudy to the queen of the Theatre Royal in Edinburgh. When someone arranges for Lily to be caught with stolen pieces of the leading lady’s jewelry and a nice sum of money from the company’s cash box, her career is over. She flees to London, starving and without money. A young street urchin finds her weeping in an alley and takes her to Goodrum’s House of Pleasure. After nine years working there as a seamstress, she volunteers to become mistress to a young earl. She is provided a home, anonymity, and a degree of independence for the price of sharing the earl’s bed once a week. Many failed actresses have settled for less. When a successful barrister makes a fatal mistake due to his own hubris, shame and guilt turn him into a drunken recluse. Aristotle Barker-Finch III comes from a long line of renowned barristers. At 22 he goes to Edinburgh to practice law from beneath the shadow of his father. Soon the most successful and sought after barrister in Scotland, he takes the case of an illiterate 15- year-old boy accused of murdering his aristocratic master. He's so confident, he doesn't consult with his client whose signed confession, once presented in court, destroys Aristotle’s career, and takes the innocent young man’s life. Shattered, Aristotle returns to England and sinks into the life of a drunken recluse. His mother despairs of her son, bent on his own destruction, until her friend Lady Camilla Bowles Attington Carrington Whitby makes him an offer that may provide redemption. Lily believes the earl’s offer of a tutor to teach her to read may revive her career on the stage. Aristotle wants the earl’s beautiful mistress to learn to read, but more than that, if he discovers she is a murderess, perhaps he can save her from the hangman and atone for his greatest failure. Two determined people drawn to each other by desires for success soon find their shared hunger threatens to engulf them in a passion they cannot escape. To return to their dreams, they must forsake each other or face failures from which they can never return. Will the crucible of shared fire fuse the lovers together or will their fevered dreams tear them apart?