John Winterfield of Winterfield Works in Birmingham, makers of church furnishings, is the stern and rigid Catholic patriarch of his family. His brutality, disguised by religious moralising, causes his younger son Philip to rebel and leave home. Apprenticed to his uncle, architect Sebastian de Troyes, Philip is inspired by his uncle's genius but forced into subterfuge by the spectre of Sebastian's drunkenness. His stuggle to protect his uncle's reputation only brings further conflict with his father, and he has to escape once more, this time to London.
Lady Kitty Valentine is the pampered and privileged daughter of an Earl. Raised in luxury, trained in the arts and social graces, she is expected to make the right marriage. But Kitty chafes against the confines of her class and when she meets Philip Winterfield, she falls in love with a man her parents can never approve of and can never allow her to marry. Everything conspires to keep them aprt, and she has to give him up, as she gives up his child. She becomes trapped in a desperately unhappy marriage to Lord Randolph Glastonbury. But her love for Philip never dies and they are reunited when she is widowed. The blissful reunion is not all that it promised. For Philip, alone for many years, is devoted to his work and Kitty and their sone Tom have to find a way to live with this brilliant but difficult man.
Ursula Winterfield, Philip's sister, also escapes from their overbearing father by marrying William Grant, a wealthy Scottish artist. But a life of leisured ease in Edinburgh fails to satisfy her and she returns to Birmingham to run the family business. Her daughter, Julia, is similarly independent and becomes a surgeon, rejecting the passionate offers of Charles Glastonbury, Kitty's son by her first marriage. Only the horror of the Great War, when she serves as a field surgeon, is enough to make her realise that she cannot live alone. But when, in the aftermath of war, Julia is faced with an even more painful dilemma - the choice between two men.
'Precisely and lovingly observed... an extremely promising first historical novel' The Sunday Times