Violet Harris, a 27 year old, aristocratic Englishwoman, arrives in Shanghai in the spring of 1922. She is to marry Robert Preston, a wealthy trader and heir to the Earl of Wilford. But when Violet inadvertently incurs the wrath of a brutal Chinese warlord, she is snapped up off the streets of Shanghai and finds herself his prisoner on the way to an uncertain future at his fortress deep in the heart of China. Once there, she is trained at the point of a whip to serve her new lord. Violet can’t decide between submission and rebellion. And where is Robert? Will he save her?