A queer retelling of the Nathaniel Hawthorne classic gothic story "Rappaccini's daughter". Cordelia Beecher is on the run. In search of her missing brother Edward, she has fled the oppressive charity school she was raised in, desperate to find the only family she knows. Using clues from his past letters, she sets off for the sleepy town of Farrow but everyone there claims to have never heard of Edward--not even the man he was supposedly working for as an apprentice. With nowhere to go, Cordi turns to Lady Evangeline, a local botanist who owns the magnificent Edenfield estate. The benevolent lady of the manor has made it her mission to take young, often traumatized, women into her employ and protect them from man's world of wicked desires and deceits. Hired as a maid and companion to her enigmatic daughters Prim and Briar, Cordi quickly settles into Edenfield. Even as her relationship with Briar blossoms, Cordi can't help but suspect that there are secrets in the estate--and when she stumbles across evidence that Edward was once there, she's determined to find answers.