In 1837, Liberty Lane travels from England to visit her father in France. However, upon her arrival in Paris, she learns her dad died in a duel over a woman. She rejects the prevalent theory because her father would never fight a duel. Liberty vows to learn the truth, but her inquiries are cut short when two "investigators" try to kidnap her.

Pledging to her later father not to give up until the truth is known, Liberty flees back to England to regroup. Home Office secret agents ask her to go undercover as a governess at Mandeville Hall as they believe her father's death and a seditious plot to kill the newly crowned young queen are tied together with Sir Herbert Mandeville at the center of treason.

This early Victorian espionage thriller with gothic overtones hooks the audience once Liberty makes up her mind to learn the truth as she knows her father would never try to kill anyone. The story line is fast-paced from the onset as Liberty makes friends (not all human) while adversaries want her dead. With Mandeville Hall being a perfect dangerous gothic setting, fans will relish Liberty's first account of spying for her country and for her late father.

Murder, intrigue, and treason are but a few of the elements found in Caro's Peacock book A Foreign Affair. To discover the why and who of her father's murder, our female protagonist, Liberty Lane (Libby) must break away from the conventionalities of the Victorian Era, where women were often seen, not heard, and expected to accept fallacious accounts as facts.

A Foreign Affair has given birth to a new heroine, who not only resolves her father's suspicious death; but hinders a treacherous plot to overthrow queen Victoria from the English throne, and replace her with a caricature of a man proclaiming to be Princess Charlotte's son, cleverly saved at birth from the same people accused of poisoning her. This distortion of a king would be controlled by a group of power hungry men seeking their own interests and threatening to launch England into civil war.

In the process, Libby learns that thanks to her father's exceptionally unconventional upbringing, she has the discipline and the wittiness; she needs to survive an uncertain and harsh world. Although at first she yearns for her brother's support in her endeavors, she soon realizes that left to her own devices she is as capable as she is generous and caring as her father had been.

The alluring way, in which Caro Peacock's story captured and engaged me, it made it very difficult for me to put the book down, and when alas I turned to the last page it left me yearning for more, and feeling a sense of loss for my friend Libby.