Around the corner from the elegant townhouses on Albion Place is Britannia Mews, a squalid neighborhood where servants and coachmen live. In 1875, it's no place for a young girl of fine breeding, but independent-minded Adelaide Culver is fascinated by what goes on there. Years later, Adelaide shocks her family when she falls in love with an impoverished artist and moves into the mews. But violence shatters Adelaide's dreams. In a dangerous new world, she must fend for herself--until she meets a charismatic stranger and her life takes a turn she never expected. A novel about social manners and mores reminiscent of Edith Wharton, this story of love, family, and the price one must pay for throwing off the shackles of convention is also a witty and incisive dissection of the "upstairs, downstairs" English class system of the last two centuries.