Remembering his escapades at the side of a rival during London's 1960s debutante seasons, a man reluctantly accepts his dying nemesis's entreaty to locate a woman with whom the latter may have fathered a child.

"In 1916, the world is at war and the energetic Lady Montfort has persuaded her husband to offer his family's dower house to the War Office as an auxiliary hospital for officers recovering from shell-shock ... Despite the hospital's success, the farming community of Haversham ... does not approve of a country-house hospital for men they consider to be cowards. When Captain Sir Evelyn Bray, one of the patients, is found lying face down in the vegetable...

London is said to be the glittering jewel of society, a world unto itself--but to Julia Elliston it is a city of shadows. Her life is swiftly dissolving into scandal. And in Victorian society, even a whisper of scandal--substantiated or not--can be the death of a young woman's reputation. Now under the watchful eye of Lord Roy Pierson, one of the most influential men in England, Julia begrudgingly accepts his protection. But Chance Macy's power is...