Tessa Murphy gazed at the fine gentlemen and ladies ascending the steps of a Manhattan hotel and dreamed of handsome stranger who would carry her off to a life of beauty and elegance ...and a love to take her breath away. S well knew that a milkman's daughter was foolish to have such fantasies. At nearly twenty, Tessa resigned herself to accepting kind, solid Brian Sullivan's proposal, though his kisses held no magic. She had witnessed too much of life's harshness to believe in fairy tales. Yet the day a wagon accident brought golden-maned Boston tycoon Chandler Tate into her life, she knew fate was at work. The attraction between them was instantaneous and blinding. He called her his innocent, his angel, and Tessa's frisson of foreboding a the dark shadow that crossed his aristocratic face soon disappeared when she was in his arms ...as his bride.

Not until she walked into Chandler's Beacon Hill mansion did her fears begin. She felt like an intruder in his gilded world, in his house of shadowed secrets. Her heart pounding, Tessa vowed to discover the truth ...about his icy sister Daphne ...his fiery rages ...and the woman called Cynthia, his mysterious first wife ....