The Veil of Illusion begins in 1871, fourteen years after the Indian Sepoy Mutiny. During this horrifying eruption Jai Raventhorne vanished, believed to have been executed by the British for masterminding the notorious Bibighar massacre in which over two hundred European women and children were slaughtered. His wife, Olivia, refuses to accept that Jai could be guilty of such a heinous crime; she is obsessed with the need to prove his innocence and to penetrate the dense mystery that surrounds his final days.