Beautiful, wealthy, and widowed, Lady Sarah Hartford is bored with her life. Exhausted by having to mourn a man she despised, Sarah would like nothing more than to escape the dark trappings of widowhood and find her own happiness, away from the expectations of society and her large, prominent family. When stranded at an inn due to a storm, Sarah agrees to a scandalous dare—to seduce a man into her bedchamber for the night.
William Gordon has been summoned to London to attend the deathbed of his estranged father. A bastard in birth, but not in name, William has done everything he can to distance himself from a father who hated him. When a tempting lady offers him a warm bed to ride out the storm at a coaching inn, William obliges, needing a distraction and somewhere dry to sleep for the night.
What begins as a casual flirtation blooms with intensity, but upon the couple's arrival in London, William mysteriously disappears, showing up on Sarah's doorstep two months later, a duke with a pregnant duchess in tow. While keeping their romantic history a secret from everyone around them, Sarah and William attempt to separate truth from lies and learn that they only way they can be together is to be apart.