For three long and lonely years, Tristan Trent, the Marquess of Hopkins, waited for his wife Elaina’s return. Eyewitnesses insist no one could have survived the storm that swept her overboard, but Tristan refuses to give up hope—even when he is trapped into a betrothal he doesn’t want and forced to declare Elaina dead. Elaina Trent has no memories of her life before waking in Alderney surrounded by strangers, and three years of trying to recall an elusive history has left her life in limbo. Determined to have a future even though her past is gone, she accepts a marriage proposal and a promise for a new life. But when a man claiming to be her brother-in-law stumbles across her, Elaina has no choice except to end her engagement and return to a husband she no longer knows. When Elaina and Tristan are finally reunited, she still cannot recall what they once shared. Can she begin anew with a gentleman she doesn’t even know and hope that love grows once again, or will they remain strangers forever?

Lord Maxwell Trent has never remained in one place for long. His fascination for history and quest for antiquities have taken him from Pompeii to Greece to India to Egypt, and now the search of an ancient sword has brought him to London—and back into Miss Rosemary Fairview’s orbit. Miss Fairview has always valued her independence. Raised by travel-mad parents and fascinated by her mother’s archaeological journals, she knew that she’d never be content to settle into the dull life of running a household. When word of the lost sword brings Rosemary to London, she finds herself in pursuit of the same relic as her nemesis, Lord Maxwell Trent. They know it’s impossible the sword once belonged to The Maid of Orléans. But that one sliver of hope, the what-if, propels them on the quest to discover the truth. Danger stalks them from Mayfair’s drawing rooms to the maze of London’s rookeries. Can they work together to find the sword—and to survive? And will they realize that perhaps they shouldn’t have been competitors at all, but something more?