Catherine Coulter gives romance a gothic twist as she continues her bestselling saga of the Sherbrooke family into the next generation. Tysen Sherbrooke's daughter, Meggie, is 19 now, old enough to know the joys of love – and its sorrows. When the man she has secretly loved since childhood unwittingly breaks her heart, Meggie marries another man, Thomas Malcombe, Earl of Lancaster.

In the spring of 1824 she arrives at her new husband's castle, Pendragon, on the coast of Ireland, only to find, amid the strange local folk and fascinating twists and turns of the vast keep, that there is more to her handsome husband than she was told before they wed. She's willing to dismiss the nasty rumor she'd heard about a girl he'd ruined – until she comes to suspect that she was brought to Pendragon for some sinister purpose…