In 1890, shortly before her twenty-fifth birthday, Elizabeth Portland finds herself abandoned for the second time in her life. Against her better judgement she is persuaded to act as chaperone to an eighteen-year-old society girl to see her safely through a summer on the continent before her coming out season. Caught up in the parry and thrust of society match-making, she has no thought of herself becoming an object of interest, particularly to Hugh Wentworth, heir to a duke and reportedly a philanderer who makes his living by gambling. How unfortunate that circumstances keep throwing her in his path. When he becomes the victim of scurrilous rumour, will she have the courage to come forward and tell what she knows?