When they are left orphans and turned out of their tied cottage, fourteen year old Sarah Jane is forced to take her young brother to the dreaded workhouse, but she vows it will only be a temporary refuge. ‘One day I’ll be a lady,’ she tells herself. ‘One day I’ll wear silks and satins an’ ride in a carriage and people will look up to me and obey me the minute I open me mouth like they do Lady Chevington. Cookin’ an’ sewin’ an’ launderin’ jus’ won’t come into it.’ But Sarah Jane has a long journey to make before she comes anywhere near to realising her ambition. She grows up to be a real beauty who unwittingly attracts men like a magnet. There is Thomas Wistonby, a lawyer with an unhappy past who teaches her to read and write; Timothy Myson, the illegitimate son of Lord Chevington who seduces her when she is working as a skivvy at his lordship’s country mansion; there is Duncan McBryde, the gentle giant of a navvy who befriends her when, pregnant and afraid, she is turned off from her job and whose death in an explosion at the railway workings devastates her; there is Henry Carter, whom she tricks into backing her venture into setting up a string of pie shops. And there is Lord Chevington himself, who is called the ‘Railway Lord’ because he is heavily involved in building railways. She leaves her mark on the lives of all them.