Isabella Lawrence is a photographer in modern day London. Her specialty is photographing old buildings prior to their restoration.One night she goes on a shoot in a derelict theatre. As she takes her shots in the auditorium, she suddenly realises someone else, someone unknown, is in the building with her. Panicking, she runs out onto the stage--and the rotted boards crumble beneath her feet, hurling her down, down, down...into the past into the body of of a jobbing Victorian actress called Arabella Lorne.Arabella is asked to marry the mysterious brooding landowner, Sir Augustus Stannion--a marriage strictly one of convenience. Despite this sham going against all Isabella believes in, she agrees, for she has no idea how else to survive in this bygone era, so familiar and yet so strange. Eventually, she comes to love the austere master of Elvingstone Manor...and there marriage is a sham no longer.But Augustus has secrets, and so does his ruinous, Gothic mansion and the eerie churchyard beyond.. Something uncanny dwells in the crypt in the graveyard, and its presence and its malice, threatens both Stannion and Isabella, body and soul.Should Isabella fight against this unearthly power and for the man she has grown to love...or should she save herself and seek a time portal through which she can return home?