Deception

1873. Eliza Touche is a housekeeper and companion to the once-famous writer William Ainsworth, her late husband's cousin. Mrs. Touche has a very diverse range of interests: literature, abolitionism, justice, and class issues. Mrs. Touche suspects that her cousin is actually completely devoid of literary talent, that his friend Charles Dickens is in fact a tyrant and a moralist, and that all of England is nothing more than a "country of facades," where everything is not as it seems.

Andrew Bogle grew up as a slave on a plantation. He knows very well that every grain of sugar costs a human life, that the rich profit from the poor, and that people are much easier to manipulate than they think. Finding himself in London as the main witness in a sensational trial about identity fraud, Bogle realizes that his future depends on the story he tells the people.

The "Tichborne Case," in which a butcher from Australia claimed to be the legitimate heir to a vast fortune and title, captures the attention of Mrs. Touche and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he claims to be, or is he just a fraud? Mrs. Touche is an educated woman, and Andrew Bogle is by no means a fool, but in a world of self-deception and hypocrisy, it is not so easy to determine where the truth lies.