Richard Gaskett has never been acknowledged. Raised in the cold shadow of his mother's house, he knows the truth of his birth but cannot prove it: Lady Skene denies him, though every glance confirms what blood demands. Now, with her legitimate heir dying and the great Skene inheritance hanging in the balance, Richard sees his chance. He moves through a world of faded grandeur and quiet violence, circling the estate like something half-starved, encountering those who would use him and those he would use in turn. Mother Carey and Miss Christmas are predators of another stripe, and Richard must decide whether to become their prey or their partner in a game where the stakes are everything he has ever been denied. This is a novel about the hunger that builds in a child who was never wanted, and what a man will do when society tells him he is nothing. Capes writes with sharp, cold precision, peeling back the polite surfaces of Edwardian England to reveal the rot beneath.
