A corpse recovered from the Thames is identified by John Rawlings as Sir William Hartfield, the bridegroom who failed to appear at his wedding earlier that day. What might have been dismissed as drowning soon becomes a murder enquiry, and Sir John Fielding asks Rawlings to investigate the family and acquaintances left behind by the dead man.
The trail leads through a household crowded with resentments: an overbearing matriarch, a subdued daughter, fashionable relatives and twins with a complicated shared past. Against the taverns, river traffic and drawing rooms of Georgian London, Rawlings has to reconstruct the missing bridegroom’s final movements and determine which family secret was dangerous enough to turn a ruined wedding into a killing.
