Set in London in 1795, Faro’s Daughter centres on Deborah Grantham, who helps her widowed aunt run a fashionable but precarious gaming house. When the young Lord Mablethorpe proposes to Deborah, his formidable cousin Max Ravenscar intervenes, convinced that she is an adventuress pursuing the family fortune.
Ravenscar’s attempt to buy her off begins an escalating contest involving wagers, debts, abduction and deliberate misunderstanding. Against the background of Georgian gambling culture and the uncertain legal position of gaming houses, Deborah and Ravenscar discover that mutual hostility can conceal admiration.