Isabelle de Piaget is determined to elude her overprotective family by means of a hasty escape to France. But instead of making a surprise visit to her brother there, she winds up shipwrecked on the French coast with no memory of who she is or how she ended up in the dark and forbidding castle of an equally brooding lord. Gervase may have rescued her but he puts her to work as a scullery maid. He soon realises that Isabelle is actually from a highborn family who will be furious at her treatment and she may be the one who can help him keep his title and lands together.