This book is set in Victorian London with the sexism of the era. The perspective character (a butch woman strongly implied as genderqueer) faces casual sexual harassment at times when dressed as a woman. She works as a gay male prostitute for a middle section of the book and is afraid of discovery and assault from clients, though those fears are not realized. She spends a substantial middle section of the book as the live-in hired escort of a rich and powerful woman. This woman becomes threatening and violent when the protagonist tries to say no to sex or otherwise resists her mistress's wishes.