Catastrophe changes Margaret Ogilvie’s life when her three older brothers drown. She undertakes a perilous journey across the Scottish Highlands seeking the protection of the man she was betrothed to as a child; a nobleman she hasn’t seen for eight years. Shocked to discover his role in the assassination of a king has implicated her in his plot to take the throne, she finds herself in dire need of a champion. Rheade Robertson is duty bound to aid his older brother, the clan chieftain, in his sworn quest to capture the assassins of King James Stewart. Protecting Margaret from persecution will mean defying his brother. Can he bring the murderers to justice and save an innocent woman from the executioner’s axe? Or will family rivalry and a vengeful queen destroy his hopes for a future with the courageous lass he loves?

Charlotte Tremayne is an independent eighteenth century woman, a clandestine novelist, creator of a famous picaresque hero. She has little sympathy for the defeated Jacobites who languish in her uncle’s cells after Culloden, but her interest is piqued by tales of a prisoner who claims to be from the fifteenth century. His far-fetched story might provide material for her next novel. Braden Ogilvie drowns in 1436 and wakes up in a jail cell accused of Jacobite sympathies. He comes to realize he has been transported more than three hundred years into the future. Drawn to the woman who eventually believes his story, he must nevertheless return to his own time to establish the innocence of his sister accused of a crime she didn’t commit. If he leaves, will he ever find his way back to Charlotte?