Summary
A giddy anarchist in lace stockings, Ann Anderson ricochets through Edwardian finishing schools like a firecracker in a cathedral, her pranks detonating every gilded rule of propriety until the final gate clangs shut. Exiled at last to Madame D’Arcy’s granite-walled academy—a mausoleum of chandeliers and hushed violins—she expects tedium, not the velvet-footed intruder who materializes at her four-poster. Robert, the self-professed bread-stealer with soot-dark eyes, spins a candle-lit tale of a dying mother, and Ann, intoxicated by the whiff of danger, swaddles him in the alibi of a soldier-spouse. The fib unravels at dawn; she is cast out, trunk clattering down the steps like a broken heartbeat. Yet the plot pirouettes: a second masked thief, a burlap sack over her head, a carriage clattering toward the river, and the vertiginous revelation that Robert’s sob-story is only the gilt top-layer of a labyrinthine con. In a derelict distillery reeking of molasses and gun-powder, identities peel away—Robert becomes someone else entirely, Ann’s own lineage is called into question, and the final curtain falls on a girl who has learned that finishing school was never about posture or piano, but about who survives when every mask hits the floor.
Synopsis
Wild young Ann Anderson keeps getting expelled from boarding schools because of her passion for pulling pranks. She is finally enrolled at Madame D'Arcy's Finishing School. One night she is awakened by a noise in her room to find a young man stealing from her. However, it turns out that the burglar, Robert, is forced to steal money to buy food for his starving mother. Ann, feeling sorry for him, tells Madame D'Arcy that Robert is actually her husband home from the army, but it doesn't work and she gets expelled from that school, too. However, circumstances take a strange turn when she gets mixed up with a second burglar, is kidnapped and discovers that "Robert" isn't quite who he said he was.
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