A vulnerable young widow falls for a charming but ruthless smuggler.

When Harriet Penhallow is left widowed, she and her two children are forced to accept the charity of her late husband’s aunt. Having uprooted themselves from their life in Bath, they move into a comparatively isolated and rundown cottage on the south coast of Cornwall, nestling above a little inlet known as Prussia Cove. Little does Harriet know, but it’s the center of Cornish smuggling.

One of the ringleaders is the charismatic Jack Trevelyan, captain of The Fly and only son of Harriet’s kind new neighbor. It doesn’t take her long to work out Jack is a smuggler, despite him being a gentleman and despite the fact that she’s beginning to have feelings for him. For his part, Jack, even though he’s immediately attracted to her, suspects she might have been sent to spy on his activities.

After her father's suicide, Caroline Fairfield is left practically destitute and needing to find herself employment in a hurry. Her old friend, Ysella Beauchamp, now living in Cornwall, assures her that a family she knows is looking for a governess for nine-year-old Yves, the orphaned heir to his grandfather's title and fortune, after the previous governess left under a cloud.

He's described as weak and delicate, but turns out to be anything but, and Caroline soon discovers that Mrs Treloar, Yves's formidable aunt, has a distinct lack of concern for his welfare. To the point of seeming to want to put him in danger. And then she discovers he's being dosed every night, on his aunt's orders, with something that could prove fatal.

Major Nathaniel Treloar, disfigured in battle and returning from Europe now Bonaparte is in captivity, travels down to Cornwall to recuperate at his grandfather's estate while he decides what to do with his life. He's touchy about his damaged looks and, although he seems friendly enough, and she's strongly attracted to him, Caroline can't get out of her head the fact that he would be the one to benefit if anything were to happen to Yves.

Two people hiding secrets. Are they a match made in heaven or will fate drive them apart?

The present day

While on holiday in Cornwall, land of her ancestors, Morvoren Lucas agrees with reluctance to accompany her soon to be ex-boyfriend on a sea-fishing trip. Her morbid fear of the water, despite her name meaning ‘sea maiden' or ‘mermaid' in Cornish, turns out to be justified when a sudden freak wave tosses the fishing boat, flinging her into the sea.

1811

Kit Carlyon takes one last sweep with his nets before heading for home and fishes out what he at first mistakes for a real mermaid. Morvoren. To begin with, he thinks she's dead, but then she revives and he realizes he's stuck with an unwanted visitor just when he and his uncle don't need one. Because Kit and his uncle are smugglers, and they have a shipment from Brittany arriving that night.

Impressionable and headstrong Ysella Carlyon, younger sister of Kit Carlyon, Viscount Ormonde, makes her long-awaited debut in London Society and is swept off her feet by the dashingly handsome Captain Oliver Featherstone. Who wouldn't be? But both her mother and brother suspect he is a philandering adventurer in search of an heiress, and they disapprove of the liaison.

Part way through the Season, news comes that Kit's wife has been taken ill, and Ysella has to return with her mother to Ormonde Abbey in Wiltshire. But she's determined not to abandon Oliver, and invites him to visit her there. Together, they hatch a plan to thwart her family's disapproval and elope to Gretna Green. To Ysella, it's just a big adventure to enjoy, but she's soon to discover the realities of what she's committed herself to, and it's not nearly so much fun as she thought it would be.