With the dangerous smoothness of a tiger stalking his prey, Peter has circled the au pair Michèle. She quickly succumbs to his fascinating charisma and experiences for the first time a hitherto unknown, tender security. "I'll kill you," says Peter, as gently as cold-bloodedly. A macabre joke or a serious warning?

Richard Rhys, a painter in Victorian London, is the prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders. In a chance encounter he meets a wealthy reformer and socialite, Victoria Thornton, married to the richest man in England. Their passionate love affair results in a pregnancy and possible scandal and ruin. It is a story of redemption and true love.