Emma Cross goes to Marble House to help her cousin, Consuelo Vanderbilt, but when the fortune teller hired to persuade Consuelo to marry the Duke of Marlborough is murdered, Consuelo disappears and her mother asks Emma to investigate.
Marrying into the newly rich but socially scorned Vanderbilt clan, Alva navigates society snubs and dark undercurrents in the lives of her in-laws and friends while testing the limits of her ambitious rule-breaking.