Josiah Cole is a small dockside trader who is prepared to gamble everything to join the major players of the city, but he needs ready cash and a well-connected wife. Frances Scott is penniless at age thirty-four, despite her aristocratic background, and an arranged marriage represents a mutually convenient solution. Trading her social contacts for Josiah's protection, Frances enters the world of Bristol merchants and finds her life and fortune dependent on the respectable trade of sugar, rum, and slaves. Employed by her husband and sister-in-law to train slaves as house servants, Frances meets Mehuru, a priest from the ancient and civilized African kingdom of Yoruba. From opposite ends of the earth and opposing ends of the social scale, Mehuru and Frances confront each other, and learn the conflicting desires of passion, love, and the vital need for freedom.