When Michelle D'Orage agreed to be Count Alexei Vatutin's translator at the Congress of Vienna, she was excited to spend a few weeks away from the sheltered Swiss school where she had been raised. But then she learned the handsome Russian's true reason for hiring her. Claiming to have known Michelle by the ring she wore--her late mother's gold wedding band, etched with a thunderbolt--he insisted that Michelle was in terrible danger.

Shaken and confused, she had little choice but to trust this mysterious stranger who held the key to the secrets of her past...and her dreams for the future.