London, 1871. Traveler, photographer and sometime intelligencer Adam Carver is asked by a friend from the Foreign Office to find Dolly Delaney, a West End dancing girl who has been involved with a diplomat and since disappeared. What seems a straightforward case soon proves otherwise. Carver is discomfited to come across alluring daguerreotypes of Dolly and he seeks answers from one of her fellow dancers, the feisty Hetty Gallant. Soon, Carver and his stoical manservant Quint are drawn north to York, where they are implicated in a shocking death. The pair flee across the Channel, but soon encounter new treacheries in Berlin, the imposing and dangerous capital of the nascent Germany.