''Sumptuous and moving. Velton weaves her tale with the threads of betrayal, thwarted dreams and good intentions gone awry'' Laura Purcell''A richly imagined and brilliantly twisty tale'' Anna Mazzola''A plot as finely detailed as Spitalfields silk'' Stacey HallsWHEN ESTHER THOREL, the wife of a Huguenot silk-weaver, rescues Sara Kemp from a brothel she thinks she is doing God''s will. Sara is not convinced being a maid is better than being a whore, but the chance to escape her grasping ''madam'' is too good to refuse.INSIDE THE THORELS'' tall house in Spitalfields, where the strange cadence of the looms fills the attic, the two women forge an uneasy relationship. The physical intimacies of washing and dressing belie the reality: Sara despises her mistress''s blindness to the hypocrisy of her household, while Esther is too wrapped up in her own secrets to see Sara as anything more than another charitable cause