In the year since Adele Maxwell’s husband drowned while searching for treasure in a far-off land, leaving her with little but a dilapidated estate, the Scottish baroness has kept it barely running. While attending a ball for the first time in years in a borrowed gown, her evening is ruined by a coarsely-dressed ruffian intent on forcing her to take him to a hidden treasure. That she has no idea what he wants makes no difference to him.
After returning from Waterloo for his older brother’s funeral, Stone soon becomes the Earl of Larchmont upon the death of his father. Wounded in body and spirit, he despises crowds, balls, and his mother’s Scottish lineage, yet arrives at the country ball just to please his godmother. Seeing and then saving Adele, a woman he kissed ten years earlier, catapults the couple into a wild and dangerous treasure hunt from the English countryside to a snow-covered Scottish castle.