When the shout rang down from the watch tower that hot summer afternoon, Hugh Montmercy, Baron Exmoor, lord of Bellemeade, Charlney, and Pontvieu keeps, felt no prickle of unease, no sense of foreboding that his life was about to take a course he'd neither anticipated nor desired. Still less that his lust for a stubborn, flame-haired wench would bring them both to the brink of disaster. Eleanor de Brac made the perilous sea journey to England to find a husband for herself and a stable home for her young half-sister. She's confident the rubies paid to her by a grateful sultan after her father dies protecting him will prove more than sufficient dower. Yet the one man Eleanor would choose, the only man who awakes her passion, is forbidden to her. Now she and Hugh must decide whether to defy a vengeful king and risk imprisonment, or worse.