The Great House of Standish has stood abandoned for decades, since Ambrose Standish's grandfather gambled it away, and then lost his life in a duel challenge after accusing the winner of cheating. Ambrose and his sisters live, as did their late father, in a small house on the estate, the White House, in genteel poverty. In Ambrose's case, a life of diligent study is attended to between bouts of debilitating illness. Ambrose is really too fragile to work outside the home; and both sisters are heading into unappreciated spinsterhood.

Rafe Goshawk is the current and much despised owner of the Standish estate. Rafe is the grandson of the wealthy British entrepreneur who had won Standish, but never lived in it. Rafe’s mother was a French aristocrat who lost her life during the French Revolution. Rafe had been exposed to more terrors as a young child than most battlefield veterans ever see. By adulthood he had almost graduated from University when his father died; then Rafe took a trip to view his inheritance, Standish, and determined not to return to it until he could bring it a dynasty.

Now in the early 18th century, Rafe has a small son, who lost his mother a week after his birth and who could not live healthily in the European climate. Rafe is returning at last to Standish to live. Rafe determines to find a tutor for his son, and at the same time to resolve the problem of the remaining Standish family which he views as a quiet but ever-present blight upon his landscape. Rafe remembers well his own enamouration with his former tutor, Quinn. The man's mind held vast depth and scope and he taught Rafe so excellently. Due to the terrible legal strictures and social condemnation of homoeroticism in Regency England, Quinn had repressed his love and passion for Rafe, until Rafe pushed the situation and lost both his beloved tutor, and all interest in education except for revenge. Now Rafe will experience an opportunity to enjoy that passion again, and at the same time to reweave the lost threads of Standish estate history, by bringing in the brilliant but physically fragile Ambrose Standish to act as tutor.

Standish is an intriguing novel which presents numerous plot twists and turns. Erastes delivers a finely-researched and fascinating historical background, reaching back to the French Revolution, the European Continent, and Great Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In addition, a plethora of information is woven in on the horrific laws of the times concerning the punishments for homoerotic activites, which make the reader pale. The characters are numerous and well-tended, and the reader will find sympathy readily elicited. Caution to reader: m/m intimacy is included.