Lisa Bingham, bestselling author of Temptation’s Kiss and Distant Thunder, brings readers into a steamy eighteenth-century romance on the English seacoast, where a young woman jumps overboard to escape her father, only to reach the shore and find herself in the arms of a black-cloaked stranger whose face is as angry as it is handsome.

Imprisoned by her father for years in a French academy, Alosie Crawford is determined to escape before he returns her to George III’s England and auctions her off to the suitor with the highest bid on Aloise and her dowry of the prized Bengal Rubies stolen from the family of Slater McKendrick.

Infuriated by the stolen rubies and other, darker crimes that McKendrick cannot forget, he sits himself on a lonely beach, waiting to abduct Crawford’s daughter and get his revenge. But rather than acting out of his hate for her father, McKendrick is surprised by Aloise’s courageous attempt at escape.

As he pulls the wet, shivering beauty to her feet, he sees her eyes hold a shattered soul that matches his own and feels a lighting stab of white-hot passion.

In his eyes, Aloise sees her destiny—the man who could destroy her or save her, the man she dared not trust, yet already so desperately loves.