The gilded lily - Deborah Swift

In her short life Sadie Appleby has never left rural Westmorland. But one night she is rudely awoken by her sister, Ella. She has robbed her employer and is on the run. Together the girls flee their own home and head for London. Ella sets her sights on the flamboyant man-about-town Jay Whitgift, owner of a parlour for the wives of the London gentry. But nothing in the capital is what it seems, least of all Jay Whitgift. Soon a rift has formed between Ella and Sadie, and the sisters are threatened by a menace more sinister than the law.