When the Stalbridge family gathers at their grand ancestral manor to meet the Duke's soon-to-be Duchess, the occasion is meant to herald a brilliant future.

Instead, a shattering revelation destroys the Duke's carefully laid plans and exposes a betrayal that leaves him furious, humiliated and desperate. With the family assembled and expectations impossible to escape, he needs a stand-in fiancee and fast. His unlikely solution appears in the estate's orphanage, where he encounters a striking young woman who agrees to the pretence. But she carries secrets of her own, cloaked in silence and fear.

Who is she? What past is she running from?

As danger closes in and the truth begins to unravel, the Duke finds himself fighting not only for the deception to hold, but for the woman he never expected to need. How they overcome the past that threatens to destroy them both is all told in this story of fear, trust and the power of love.