Camilla Forest finds herself alone on a muddy road, left to fend for herself, when the carriage of Lord Leominster pulls up alongside. This sets off an agreement to a marriage of convenience with Camilla and Lavenham, the Lord. They move to Portugal, along with his sister, Chloe. Camilla finds herself falling in love with her husband. But will her French brother ruin everything?

Jane Aiken Hodge was born in the USA, brought up in the UK and read English at Oxford. She received a master's degree from Radcliffe College, Harvard University. Before her books became her living she worked as a civil servant, journalist, publishers' reader and a reviewer. She has written lives of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer as well as a book about women in the Regency period, Passion and Principle. But her main output has been over twenty historical novels set in the eighteenth century, including Polonaise, The Lost Garden, and Savannah Purchase, the beloved third volume of a trilogy set during and after the American War of Independence. More recently she has written novels for Severn House Publishers. She enjoys the borderland between mystery and novel, is pleased to be classed as a feminist writer, and is glad that there is neither a glass ceiling nor a retiring age in the writers' world. She was the daughter of Conrad Aiken and sister of Joan Aiken.