What would it be like to meet your ancestors?

Janet Fraser, a young concert pianist, goes to stay at Thornley House, her mother's ancestral home in the Yorkshire Dales and is mysteriously transported back to the early nineteenth century.

Shocked and confused, she is mistaken for Jeanette Thornley, a member of the family who eloped some years previously. The formidable matriarch, Lady Gabrielle, grudgingly accepts her into the household and Janet quickly has to learn the etiquette of regency domestic life to avoid arousing suspicion.

Her principal ally is her "sister-in-law" Dorothea, who is unhappy in her arranged marriage to philanderer William Thornley and is reputed to have been poisoned by him.

Janet is dismayed to be courted by Jeanette's former, elderly suitor and is blackmailed into agreeing to marry him.

Can Janet keep Dorothea safe, but at the price of being trapped in the past?