The lovely young Orelia Stanyon is a country girl, who was alone in the world. She was a little family, only a dying uncle and a wild cousin. Her cousin Caroline, a beautiful woman who lived a wild and impetuous existence, hardly was the proper guardian for Orelia.

One day as she returns from a visit to an ill woman, she is rescued by a mysterious dark, sardonic stranger from two drunken fops at the George and Dragon Inn, she found she could not forget the man whose sudden and passionate kiss had stirred Orelia's deepest desires.

But then, one day, Caroline announced her engagement. She was to wed the Marquis of Ryde. Handsome and irresistible, he was one of the wealthiest men in England. Perhaps now the family would be secure. Soon Orelia finds herself on the way to London as a companion to her cousin until the wedding.

Upon arriving at the home of the marquis, Orelia was in for a surprise when she met him. For she knew him as the dark, mysterious man who had secretly won her heart months before at the George and Dragon Inn.... With being thrown into high society, a plotting Dowager, and her cousin's engagement, the road to love seems lost.