When it comes to family secrets, Southern gentry would rather let sleeping dogs lie.

Abigail Wetherington believes the evil that stalks her family in the streets of London is a sleeping dog come back to bite them. So with her last breath, she implores her beautiful granddaughter, Lillie, to flee to the family's polo estate in South Carolina and seek the protection of someone Abigail has come to trust—Swain Butler. What Lillie doesn't know is that she is putting herself in the hands of a woman who may be the biggest family secret of them all.

"Be careful," Abigail cautions Lillie. If sleeping dogs must be roused, then call them forth softly.