England, August, 1926

For months now, Pippa's and Christopher's neighbor Florence Schlomsky, the manhunter with the teeth, has been roaming London society looking for an opportunity to trade her father's American fortune for a British title. Both the Astley cousins, Christopher and Crispin, have landed in her marital sights, a fact which has not endeared her to Pippa.

But when Mr. and Mrs. Schlomsky arrive from America and Flossie is nowhere to be found, Pippa is first in line to offer assistance. She may not have liked Flossie, but she didn't want anything bad to happen to her. And when a ransom note arrives at the Essex House Mansions demanding fifty thousand dollars in exchange for the heiress's safe return, Pippa determines to do everything she can to get Flossie back to her parents.

With the help of Christopher and a new friend, the handsome Graf von/zu Natterdorff, a young German Count who remembers Pippa from her childhood on the Continent, Pippa sets out to find Flossie and bring her home.

But when the trail leads from the glittering salons of Mayfair to the grimy streets of Southwark and beyond, Pippa discovers that there were aspects to Florence Schlomsky she didn't know were there, and perhaps it would have been better if she had never discovered certain details about a girl she thought she knew.