Edie Quentance is the ugly duckling in a family of charming conformists. For generations, Quentance Bank has managed the wealth of its rich and aristocratic clients, and when Edie is pushed into joining the family bank, she finds the work very dull indeed. She passes the time trying to uncover the truth about her great-grandfather Kit, whose love of the sea she has inherited. Kit Quentance was rumored to have carried a fortune into the Titanic lifeboat with him--money that has never been found.

Edie's excavations in the family archive unearth some shocking and far more recent secrets. She realizes that Quentance Bank is not the paragon of old fashioned probity it pretends to be. As she tries to right her family's wrong-doings, Edie's position becomes increasingly dangerous. Her twin brother, her parents, her uncle--she no longer knows whom she can trust.