Mae Fanning overcomes a scandalous year to secure a good job as a sales girl in a tiny antiques shop run by two eccentric men. It is her passport to a better life than the one she leads with her widowed mother in a poor part of Boston, and introduces her to ideas, beautiful objects and history she has never before encountered - it opens her mind and her horizons. But it also introduces her to the dangerously brittle and flawed Van der Laar siblings, Diana and James. For Mae, lacking any kind of family background or fortune, reputation and her job are all - yet like a moth to a flame she keeps being drawn back to the fatally fascinating pair and their hold over her.