Gabriellen is the strong-willed daughter of Esmond Angel, a renowned playwright and manager of Lord Barpham's troupe of travelling players. In Gabriellen's eyes no man can match her father, in wit, personality or presence. He is her hero. Until she meets and falls in love with Jack Stoneham, an ambitious and daredevil privateer. Gabriellen also befriends Mark Rowan, a Welsh horsebreeder who travels the country fairs and is Queen Elizabeth's spy who discovers plots against her life.

Jack finds favour at the court, and aware of the Queen's penchant for unattached men, keeps his affair with Gabriellen a secret, refusing to marry her even when she is with child. Furious at this treatment, Gabriellen joins her father's troupe and finds some comfort in her growing talent as a writer; her father's eyesight is failing and he relies upon her help, though it must not become know, for a woman succeeding in the male-dominated world of the playhouse would meet with prejudice and persecution. But Esmond Angel is not all he seems and his links with the Lodon criminal Underworld draw Gabriellen in danger...