Innocence is a precious possession, but as mid-eighteenth-century Exeter settles to peace after The Seven Years’ War, Rachael, who is neither servant nor ward of the flamboyant painter Alexander Trelawney, is destined to lose the one thing that separates her from the whores she rubs shoulders with. A friendship begun on the derelict outshoot of one of the three houses that share a courtyard along busy Exebere Street is put under threat. Will Rachael find salvation in the widower Henri Latimer or will she fall to the bottom of society where her illegitimate birth and lack of family predicts she must? Will Geoffrey achieve what Latimer’s recent injury and subsequent illness could not?