Calculated Love with Arsenic and Blood

England, 1870. Behind the walls of Crowmoor, an asylum for the criminally insane, sits Lady Clara Aldermere. At fourteen she was dragged from her bed in the middle of the night, condemned as a poisoner and spared the gallows only because she was declared mad. Now she is eighteen, and she knows: the day she is pronounced sane is the day the sentence is carried out.

Then Dr. John Wynter arrives. Young, brilliant, as cold as his ice water, a physician who treats the way his age demands: with baths, with electricity, with numbers. His colleagues give Clara to him as a welcome present. He takes her to his country house, unlocks a cellar, and does exactly what science prescribes.

But Clara can count. She knows the clause in the will under which only a child of hers can secure the inheritance, and she knows that someone is paying a great deal to make sure she never becomes a mother. And Jack Wynter, who has everything under control, knows exactly one variable he cannot calculate: her.

A dark love story of gaslight, ice water and chess notation. Who is tormenting whom, and who will settle the account in the end?