The year 1873. Eliza Touché is a housekeeper and companion of the once-famous writer William Ainsworth, cousin of her late husband. Mrs. Touché has a very diverse range of interests: literature, abolitionism, justice, class issues. Mrs. Touché suspects that her cousin is actually completely devoid of literary talent, that his friend Charles Dickens is really a tyrant and moralist, and that all of England is nothing more than a "country of facades," where nothing is as it seems. Andrew Bogle grew up a slave on a plantation. He knows very well that every grain of sugar costs a human life, that the rich profit from the poor, and that people are much easier to manipulate than they think. Finding himself in London as the main witness in a high-profile case of imposture, Bogle realizes that his future depends on the story he tells people. The "Tichborne Case," in which a butcher from Australia claimed to be the rightful heir to a vast fortune and title, captures the attention of Mrs. Touché and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he claims to be, or is he a simple fraud? Mrs. Touché is an educated woman, and Andrew Bogle is by no means a fool, but in a world of self-deception and hypocrisy, it is not so easy to determine where the truth lies.