Lady Constance Belmont, queen of Mayfair salons, is dragged into a glittering scandal when a smuggled ledger surfaces at Gravesend docks. Its coded pages link titled lords, government ministers and a mysterious financier to a lucrative trade in bogus "mummy powder" peddled as an elixir. Armed with sharp wit, sapphire silk and reluctant allies a dour natural philosopher and an ink-stained journalist Constance races through ballrooms, coffee-houses and fog-choked alleys to expose a conspiracy that turns fashionable obsession into political poison. The second instalment in Friedrich Gestein's series blends 18th-century elegance with brisk intrigue, revealing that beneath powdered wigs and courtly smiles, empires can crumble as easily as ancient dust.