Lenore Webber-Garvey is a New York railroad heiress with a fortune as eye-watering as her family's ambitions. Promised to a cold English duke in a transatlantic alliance, Lenore refuses to become another pawn in her family's social ascent. On the day of her wedding, she flees the church, vanishing into the busy streets of London.

She is taken in by Auberon, Baron Ivestone, an aristocrat with radical views on prison reform and no patience for scandal.

Yet society does not easily forgive a runaway bride, and neither do the powerful men her disappearance embarrassed. So when the duke demands her return?threatening to derail Auberon's hard-won progress?will Lenore choose the world that shaped her or the man who loves her as she truly is?