Deborah Swift

London 1609. Genteel Englishwoman Elspet Leviston has always managed her father's lace business and expects to continue in his footsteps. So when her hot-headed cousin Zachary Deane appears from nowhere, his arrival in her life is like an earthquake.

Zachary has no love at all for Leviston's Lace, and when her father dies unexpectedly, Elspet is horrified to find her inheritance is tied to her cousin's and her house belongs to him. But by now, Zachary has gone on a Grand Tour, and he is in Spain. Determined to regain her rightful inheritance, she must leave her beloved England and go to Seville in search of him.

Zachary is in training at the sword school of the charismatic Senor Alvarez, and here, in the searing heat and dust of Spain, Elspet's real journey begins.

Sadie Appleby has never left rural Westmorland. But one night in the winter of 1661, she is woken by her sister, Ella, who has robbed her employer and is on the run. Together the girls flee for London. But the dead man's relatives are in pursuit.

Naples, 1633. Giulia Tofana longs for more responsibility in her mother’s apothecary business, but Mamma has always been secretive and refuses to tell her the hidden keys to her success. But the day Mamma is arrested for the poisoning of the powerful Duke de Verdi, Giulia is shocked to uncover the darker side of her trade. Giulia must run for her life, and escapes to Naples to the home of her Aunt Isabetta, a famous courtesan. But when Giulia hears that her mother has been executed she swears she will wreak revenge on the Duke de Verdi.

England 1651. England is engaged in a bitter civil war. Abigail Chaplin, a young deaf girl, is desperate for a chance to show she can work as a maidservant, like other girls her age.

When her father is killed fighting for the Roundheads, and with her family now short of money, she is sent to work where no-one else will - as a servant in the house of her enemies. For Markyate Manor belongs to arrogant sixteen-year-old heiress and Royalist, Lady Katherine Fanshawe.

Katherine has a deadly secret, and Abi swears not to tell. But when Katherine falls for Abi’s brother, a Roundhead, Abi finds her loyalties torn. And as the battle begins, can she keep both her mistress and her brother out of danger?