A young noblewoman, fleeing from the darkness of her past, falls into life as a housemaid at a country manor—and into the arms of the lord who owns it

Born a lady, but now orphaned and left to the care of distant relations, Lily Trehearne's fortunes are low indeed. All she inherited from her spendthrift father is a tangled web of debt, and her ultra-pious guardian, the Reverend Roger Soames, seems determined to marry her off to his son Lewis.

Determined to save herself from that dreary fate, Lily panics and flees to Cornwall. Under the pseudonym Lily Troublefield, she accepts the first position she is offered, as a housemaid at the ominously named Darkstone Manor, property of Devon Darkwell. Lily's new master is eccentric, deeply troubled . . . and strangely irresistible.