Includes bibliographical references.

A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London.

The brutal double murder of renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite, has set London abuzz. Crowds pack the courtroom, the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings. But Frannie Langton claims she cannot recall what happened that evening, how she came to be covered in blood. She does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams' London home-- and into a passionate and forbidden relationship. -- adapted from jacket