Beautiful, young, yet fiercely independent, Shikara Bartlett sorely misses her much-loved father, the renowned archaeologist Professor Richard Bartlett, who appears to have gone missing on his latest "dig" in Egypt. What's worse is that in his absence her strait-laced guardian is determined to marry her off to the middle-aged Lord Stroud, who is pompous, boring and far too old at forty-four. She certainly does not love him - and she never will. So Shikara tries to escape, using a rope from her window. But the rope is too short and she can't reach the ground. Luckily for her, the Marquis of Linwood has just made a similar escape from a married woman's nearby boudoir and hears Shikara's cries for help and saves her. Somehow she persuades him to take her on his yacht to Egypt in search of her lost father. And, slowly but surely, Marquis who famously hates woman falls under the spell of this headstrong waif who professes to hate men.