There are devastating consequences for Harry and Emma Clifton, her brother Giles Barrington, and their arch-enemy Lady Virginia when a suicide note is read out in court. Having fallen in love, Giles must decide if he should withdraw from politics to try and rescue the woman he loves from behind the Iron Curtain. Lady Virginia faces bankruptcy and can see no way out of her financial problems until she is introduced to a rich, hapless American. Harry and Emma’s son Sebastian Clifton, now the Chief Executive of Farthings Bank, falls in love with the wrong girl even as his rivals plot to overthrow him. Meanwhile, his father remains determined to free a fellow author from a gulag in Siberia, following the international success of the book they wrote together, the acclaimed Uncle Joe. But then something astonishing happens that none of them could have anticipated . . .