The observation

Scotland, 1863. In an attempt to escape her not-so-innocent past in Glasgow, Bessy Buckley–a wide-eyed and feisty young Irish girl–takes a job as a maid in a big house outside Edinburgh working for the beautiful Arabella–the "missus." Bessy lacks the necessary scullery skills for her new position, but as she finds out, it is her ability to read and write that makes her such a desirable property. Bessy is intrigued by her new employer but puzzled by her increasingly strange requests and her insistence that Bessy keep a journal of her mundane chores and most intimate thoughts. And it seems that the missus has a few secrets of her own, including her near- obsessive affection for Nora, a former maid who died in mysterious circumstances.