Julie and Anna Martindale have both married artists - but they embark on a reckless spiral of deceit, rivalry and betrayal that ends on a fateful voyage to New York.
Handsome, freewheeling Clive Cavendish marries Julie after a whirlwind seduction - and when his ambitious schemes begin to pay off Julie is more than happy to be the wife of an up-and-coming painter and the mother of his children.
Anna's husband, Howard Buskin, is rich, moody and reclusive. He prefers painting Dartmoor's brooding landscapes to his beautiful young bride and from the first their uneasy, loveless marriage totters on the brink of crisis.
Only when American art collector Teddy Norris enters their lives with a proposal that Howard cannot ignore, and an easy-going charm that sweeps Anna into a tempestous affair, do the sisters begin to question their loyalty to their husbands and to each other.
A loyalty that will be tested to the limit on the first, and last, Atlantic crossing of the White Star's new super-liner, the unsinkable Titanic - a voyage not all of them will survive.