Welcome to the Steampunk World of Regency...where the power of steam has already passed from the age of unsatisfactory experiments to the first country-spanning railways and ships that no longer sail at the whims of weather. Roberta Stephenson is the daughter of the 'Father of Railways'...a girl almost raised in the engine works and through her experience, and education in the most advanced halls of Miss Mather's Academy for Girls, is fit to become manager and designer at her father's steamship yard on the Clyde. And Britain needs Roberta's expertise, for fate in this world has dealt more kindly with Napoleon, allowing him to extricate most of his army from Moscow in 1812, and granting him at least a draw at Leipzig in 1813. With developments of the steamships begun in France in 1783 he is ready to take one more gamble to rid himself of the interference of Perfidious Albion, and the island's safety may depend on the steam powered rams Roberta is offering to their lordships of the Admiralty.
Complicating Roberta's professional life are her romantic suitors: Lord Julian Bond, man about town and Admiralty spy; the enigmatic Symington Holmes; and Engineer Lieutenant Alfred Worthington RN. It seems that Roberta is destined to choose one of these gentlemen, but will she choose wisely?