His was the love that came without warning…

There’s something decisively wrong about falling in love with your sister’s betrothed, Lady Martha Meyer discovers. Ashamed and terrified, she is loath to give her family yet another reason to resent her. She resolves to drown the fire inside her once and for all.

Dutiful Nicholas Garston, the Marquess of Calperton, wants to make his father proud and marry the woman he has chosen for him. However, his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets her tantalizingly rebellious younger sister.

Lifelong vows are not the only thing breaking. The broken lock of a chest reveals treason of the ungodly kind: a map to a secret that two powerful families have been trying to keep buried. And when Martha finds herself in a dark corner of the woods, Nicholas might never see her walk out again…