Claudia Evans was not the sort of woman who sat quietly waiting for life to hand her gifts. At twenty-five, she had already outlived both her parents, survived two years as a governess with a humorless New England family, and educated herself in Latin, mathematics, and botany, despite what society insisted was proper for a woman.

Claudia Evans lived in a world that prized docility, needlework, and a well-modulated voice above all other qualities in a woman. She had none of these. What she did possess was a mind that turned endlessly, a hunger that could not be satisfied with the four approved poets and a clutch of etiquette handbooks that made up most young ladies' curriculum.

So, she plotted her escape, nibbling at forbidden texts while her charges napped and the lady of the house connived at her own embroidery.