A rolling stone

Lady Kesters drifts between the pages of a French novel and the flickering lights of her drawing‑room, poised on a sumptuous Chesterfield while the street outside darkens. The room breathes with lilac perfume, polished floors and a scattering of periodicals that hint at her cultured, yet somewhat constrained, world. As the silver clock chimes, she pulls aside the blind, half‑expectant, half‑impatient, ready for the arrival that might shift the rhythm of her evening.

In the same household Leila Wynyard, an orphan of a fallen cavalry hero, has spent nine seasons under the watchful eye of her austere aunt. Trained in etiquette yet penniless, she moves through society with a sharp tongue and a keen intellect that both amuse and unsettle her contacts. Now, as she orchestrates the flowers and conversation for her bachelor uncle Sir Richard’s club‑room banquets, Leila teeters between being a perpetual poor relation and the possibility of carving out a future of her own making.