Michaela Francis

Miss Carmine's Ladies' Correctional Service Michaela Francis

The beautiful, 36 year old, socialite, Cassandra Carmine, has a most unusual vocation. It is the year of 1871, and, from her house in London's fashionable Belgravia, she runs her Correctional Service as professional dominatrix and disciplinarian catering to an exclusive clientèle of the rich and titled ladies of London society. From débutantes to Duchesses; from wives of bishops to actresses and house maids to royalty; Miss Carmine's services much in demand. With her whips and canes she is a familiar figure in the drawing rooms of fashionable society and her house, where she is ably assisted by her domestic servants, serves as a correctional institution for some of the grandest ladies in the land.

In the summer of 1871, however, Cassandra is called upon to perform the most remarkable service of her career. She is commissioned to journey to a Lady Balding's country seat in Wiltshire ostensibly to discipline a pair of maids caught in most indecorous and indecently intimate embrace with each other. But caning the two young maids is only a charade engineered by her associate in the clandestine service of Her Majesty's Government. In reality her true purpose is to smuggle out of Wiltshire and to provide sanctuary for a young German girl; a refugee from the recent war in France whose shadowy background contains a scandalous secret that threatens two of the greatest royal houses in Europe and whose very existence poses a danger to the political stability of the continent.

Set against the rich tapestry of life in the 1870s, Cassandra's adventures take us deep into the underworld of high society in Victorian Britain. This sumptuously detailed novel provides a delicious ride of drama, romance and sexual adventure, populated with unforgettable characters and bringing to life the extraordinary age of the high Victorian era in which they lived.