1998: Editor Elisa d’Abella is dead set against love. She’s suffered her share of losses. Her mother disappeared when she was ten. Her twin brother died at 23. Her husband and son were killed in an auto crash that same year, and some years later, not only has her Bronx-businessman father been murdered, but police have told her the murderer is stalking her.

Fleeing New York, she becomes a hired hand on a remote English estate in Keswick, using the only talent she has, a gift for communicating with animals, to help a black stallion overcome his fear of men. Now she has a new threat: the amorous advances of Sir Paul, the lord of the manor. As Paul holds the stallion’s life hostage to his demands, Elisa saves the horse from slaughter, riding off with him into a moonless night, but at the moment she determines the only plausible future for her is to return and buy the stallion, a freak electric storm transports her through a rift in time, and she finds herself in 1398 on the northern English estate of William de la Coeur Grifon.

Unable to find a way home, she struggles to adapt to a time rife with political intrigue and treason in which William plays a part. She assumes that’s what makes him the arrogant bully he is, demanding that she learn to hold her tongue, do as she’s told, and walk a stride behind any man, tasks that rancor her. But as she and William reveal their painful pasts and come to an accord, the burgeoning equilibrium of her new life is threatened by the arrival of a brother she couldn’t possibly have, and by a royal priest who spies for King Richard and offers to make her his mistress. She spurns his advances but, while recognizing that their magnetic attraction is a danger to her new life, agrees to become his confidante.

As she marries and becomes pregnant, her trust in these three men grows. She is torn
by their conflicting goals and the realizations that come with them. She fears William’s
treasonous actions will cost him his life. She fears her brother’s volcanic temper will cost her the last blood relative she has. She discovers that she loves two men, though, in the struggle to remain faithful to her wedding vows and to forbid any union with the priest, she is continually at war with herself. Amid all this, Elisa becomes the lightning rod for kidnapping, unspeakable acts of jealousy and betrayal, and a vendetta that could take her life. To survive, she must trust in her intuition, in William’s strength and cunning, in her careful alliance with the priest, and in the steadfastness of a hot-headed brother with a criminal past.